[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 69 (Wednesday, May 18, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3086-S3088]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      Trade Adjustment Assistance

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the 
senior Senator from Virginia who is about to speak. I will be brief.
  I wish to applaud the President today on his comments and the 
administration's comments, especially the comments of Trade Ambassador 
Kirk and Gene Sperling, the President's top economic adviser. They have 
made it clear they will not submit the three free trade agreements--one 
with Colombia, one with Panama, and one with South Korea--until 
legislation has come to their desks to take care of the issue of trade 
adjustment assistance.
  This Congress, because of some objections on the other side of the 
aisle, allowed the trade adjustment assistance language to expire in 
February. That simply means many workers who lost their jobs because of 
free trade agreements, or lost their jobs because of trade--not 
necessarily the countries we had trade agreements with--were going to 
get some assistance so they could, in fact, be retrained so they could 
go back to work. Losing their jobs had everything to do with what 
happens in other ways but has nothing to do with their job performance 
or even their company's job performance.
  The President made the right decision by saying we are not going to 
move forward with these free trade agreements. I don't much like them, 
but that is not the point. We are not going to move forward until we 
have helped these workers find jobs.
  Second, we are going to make sure, as Senator Casey and I have said 
on the floor before, that the health coverage tax credit is also 
renewed. That matters, to be able to continue the health coverage of 
many workers.
  And, third, that the work of Senator Wyden, Senator Stabenow, and 
Senator McCaskill will continue, to work on trade enforcement in making 
sure

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these trade rules and trade laws that are in effect will actually be in 
force so we can protect American jobs.
  When we pass these trade agreements, they always cost us jobs. It is 
about time we take care of workers and communities that suffer from it.
  I thank Senator Webb, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I wish to speak today on the pending 
nomination of Professor Goodwin Liu for a seat on the Ninth Circuit 
Court of Appeals. Regretfully, I will be voting against this nomination 
for reasons I will explain. At the same time, I wish to emphasize my 
profound respect for this institution and for my fellow Senators from 
both parties, and I believe it would be wrong to vote against a cloture 
motion whose intent is to proceed with debate on the merits of one who 
has been nominated to be a judge. I made this point loudly and clearly 
when the nomination of one of my Virginia constituents, Barbara Keenan, 
was filibustered. Philosophical consistency--and my admiration and 
respect for all the work Chairman Leahy has been doing in order to fill 
the many vacancies in our Federal court system--compel me to vote to 
proceed with the debate on Mr. Liu, but I do not, however, intend to 
vote in favor of his confirmation.
  I have met with Mr. Liu. I have read many of his writings and most of 
the testimony from his two confirmation hearings. He is clearly 
talented and whatever he ends up doing, he is certain to have a long 
future in our country. He also has been blessed beyond words by the 
goodness of our society. Both his parents came to this country already 
as physicians. He attended our finest universities. He was a Rhodes 
scholar. He is a Yale Law School graduate, and he has spent almost his 
entire career as a talented, if somewhat controversial, professor of 
law. When I met with Mr. Liu I found him to be personable and clearly 
bright.
  But intellect in and of itself does not always give a person wisdom, 
nor does it guarantee good judgment, and the root word of judgment is, 
of course, judge. This is our duty today: to decide whether Professor 
Liu's almost complete lack of practical legal experience, coupled with 
his history of intemperate, politically charged statements, allows us a 
measure of comfort and predictability as to whether he would be fair 
and balanced while sitting on one of the highest courts in the land. 
Mr. Liu's temperament and his frequently strident political views have 
been called into question by many well-intentioned observers, including 
my respected colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham, who, like myself, voted 
in favor of both Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. Senator Graham concluded 
that Professor Liu seems better fit for a life in politics rather than 
on the bench. My own concern is that we in the Senate have no real 
ability to know whether Mr. Liu would temporize these views or conduct 
himself in a different manner if he were to be given a seat in one of 
the highest judicial positions in our country.
  The list is long, and time is short, but I would summarize my 
concerns through two observations.
  The first involves Professor Liu's public comments regarding Supreme 
Court Justice Alito, which I know will be repeated by others. Mr. Liu's 
view was that:

       Judge Alito's record envisions an America where police may 
     shoot and kill an unarmed boy to stop him from running away 
     with a stolen purse . . . where a black man may be sentenced 
     to death by an all-white jury for killing a white man . . . I 
     humbly submit that this is not . . . the America that we 
     aspire to be.

  Obviously, I share the view of many others that whether one agrees or 
disagrees with Justice Alito's view of the Constitution, this is hardly 
a fair representation of his view of our society.
  The second observation is more telling and it goes to the America we 
all should aspire to be: an America where every person, regardless of 
race, creed, national origin, or personal circumstances, has the same 
opportunities to succeed to the full extent of their potential. Let me 
make a point that a lot of people seem uncomfortable with in speeches 
on this floor. That means White people too. Economic disadvantage is 
not limited to one's race, ethnic background, or time of immigration to 
America. When it comes to policies that are designed to provide 
diversity in our society, we do ourselves an enormous injustice by 
turning a blind eye to the wide variance among White cultures as we 
discuss greater representation from different minority groups.
  For all of his emphasis on diversity programs, I do not see anywhere 
that Mr. Liu understands this vital point. In fact, one tends to see 
the opposite. In 2004, Mr. Liu made a speech at an American 
Constitution Society Conference. In this speech he mentioned: ``The 
power of the courts to influence society, . . . the power of legal 
principle to ratify inequality.'' He then went on to comment:

       If we work hard, if we stick to our values, if we build a 
     new moral consensus, then I think someday we will see 
     Millikan, Rodriquez, Adarand, be swept into the dustbin of 
     history.

  So we know, first, that Mr. Liu wants to use the courts to influence 
society and to ratify his view of inequality. OK. How does that fit 
into Adarand being swept into the dustbin of history?
  What was Adarand about? Well, it was about Randy Pech, one of five 
kids born to a welder and a mom, whose family had lost their farm in 
Iowa during the Great Depression. The mom then worked as a sales clerk 
in a department store. Neither of them had ever gone to college. Mr. 
Pech left college after 3 years and started a company that put up 
guardrails along highways. His startup was the money he would have used 
in his fourth year of college and his loan was accomplished by using 
his parents' retirement pensions as collateral. He made a bid as a 
subcontractor on a highway construction project in Colorado that was by 
far the lowest bid, but he lost to a minority-owned company because our 
own government was paying bonuses to contractors who made subcontracts 
with so-called ``disadvantaged businesses,'' and Mr. Pech happened to 
be White. The Supreme Court decided that this was wrong and decided in 
Mr. Pech's favor, although the Civil Rights Commission pointed out 10 
years later that the Supreme Court's decision was still not being 
complied with by Federal agencies.
  Mr. Liu offered an explanation for his comments during his 
confirmation process, but taken in the context of his other remarks, I 
find that statement unconvincing.
  Last July I wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal saying that 
while I continue to support the original goal of affirmative action, 
which was to assist African Americans who still suffer the badges of 
discrimination and slavery, it is time for us to recognize that we harm 
ourselves any time we cut away any person or group from the opportunity 
to reach their full potential in our wonderful and unique society. As 
one can imagine, I got a few questions from some groups about this 
article, so let me answer those questions--and sum up my concerns about 
Mr. Liu--with an observation.
  The same day my Wall Street Journal ran, July 23, a Remote Area 
Medical Clinic was held in the open air of the Wise County fairgrounds 
in the Appalachian mountains of southwest Virginia. These clinics bring 
medical professionals into underserved areas where medical care is hard 
to find. They are not that different from what we used to do out in the 
impoverished villages of Vietnam when I was a Marine infantry officer 
many years ago. Twelve of my staff members went down to Wise County to 
volunteer. Working in tents, mobile units, and horse stalls, over these 
3 days the RAM clinic took care of 6,869 patient visits and pulled more 
than 4,000 teeth in the open air of the Wise County fairgrounds. In 
this part of Virginia, nearly half the population lives below 200 
percent of poverty, almost a quarter of them have no insurance 
whatsoever. Age-adjusted mortality rates in some counties are as much 
as 70 percent higher than in the rest of Virginia. This Appalachian 
mountain region is, of course, predominantly White. Let me emphasize 
that these conditions come from cultural issues based on many 
generations of hardship and strife and not simply individual choice.
  Back there in those mountains, there is no doubt somebody who is 
thinking that if he could put together a little money and maybe get 
somebody to believe in him, maybe he could start up a

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construction company just like Randy Pech did and compete for 
government contracts on a completely fair playing field, which has 
always been the gift and the miracle of America. I want him to have 
that opportunity, just as I want every other American to have it. And I 
don't want a judge on a circuit court somewhere telling him that his 
own chance for a fair and prosperous future should be swept into the 
dustbin of history.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.