Congressional Record, Volume 157 Issue 141 (Wednesday, September 21, 2011)

[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 141 (Wednesday, September 21, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5800-S5830]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

EXTENDING THE GENERALIZED SYSTEM OF PREFERENCES

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of H.R. 2832, which the clerk will report by
title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (H.R. 2832) to extend the Generalized System of
Preferences, and for other purposes.

Pending:

Reid (for Casey) amendment No. 633, to extend and modify
trade adjustment assistance.
Hatch amendment No. 641 (to amendment No. 633), to make the
effective date of the amendments expanding the Trade
Adjustment Assistance Program contingent on the enactment of
the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement Implementation
Act, the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement
Implementation Act, and the United States-Panama Trade
Promotion Agreement Implementation Act.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.

Amendment No. 625 to Amendment No. 633

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk, No. 625.
I ask unanimous consent that it be made the pending business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCain] proposes an amendment
numbered 625 to amendment No. 633.

Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment
be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To extend trade adjustment assistance as in effect before the
enactment of the Trade and Globalization Adjustment Assistance of 2009)

Strike title II and insert the following:

TITLE II--TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE

SEC. 201. EXTENSION OF TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE.

Title II of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2271 et seq.)
(as in effect on the day before the date of the enactment of
this Act and without regard to any substitution made by
section 1893(b) of the Trade and Globalization Adjustment
Assistance Act of 2009 (19 U.S.C. 2271 note prec.)) is
amended--
(1) in section 245, by striking ``2007'' and inserting
``2014'';
(2) in section 246(b)(1), by striking ``the date that is 5
years'' and all that follows through ``State'' and inserting
``December 31, 2014'';
(3) in section 256(b), by striking ``each of fiscal years
2003 through 2007, and $4,000,000 for the 3-month period
beginning October 1, 2007'' and inserting ``each of fiscal
years 2012 through 2014, and $4,000,000 for the 3-month
period beginning October 1, 2014'';
(4) in section 285, by striking ``2007'' each place it
appears and inserting ``2014''; and
(5) in section 298(a)--
(A) by striking ``2003 through 2007'' and inserting ``2012
through 2014''; and
(B) by striking ``October 1, 2007'' and inserting ``October
1, 2014''.

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the amendment would authorize the
continuation of trade adjustment assistance or TAA for 2 additional
years at the level of funding the program maintained prior to the 2009
stimulus package addition. Prior to the stimulus, passed by this body
in 2009, the TAA Program cost taxpayers about $1 billion per year.
The passage of the stimulus package, which was advertised to be a
temporary injection into the economy--a temporary injection--the
stimulus was increased and expanded to the program at a cost of about
$2 billion in 2010; according to the Department of Labor estimates,
$2.4 billion in 2011, if the stimulus expansions were allowed to remain
in place.
I would remind my colleagues that with the stimulus package, these
were a one-time deal, and once the money was spent, then those programs
lapsed. Apparently not so with the TAA Program. We do not yet have a
cost score for the Reid substitute before us, but estimates indicate
the TAA agreement may lock in at least 65 percent of the 2009 stimulus
expansions for the next several years.

[[Page S5801]]

That is approximately, in my calculation, at least a $600 million
additional cost per year to the taxpayers for maintaining 65 percent of
the stimulus level of TAA. Architects of the agreement will say these
provisions sunset at the end of 2014. But we all know sunsets can be
fiction. So we are talking about 2012, 2013, and 2014. That is about,
roughly, a minimum of $1.2 billion of additional spending on the
dubious--at least in my mind dubious--benefits of the TAA Program.
My friends on the other side of the aisle have long insisted that the
price of passing trade agreements in Congress is passing TAA and other
programs similar to it, domestic spending legislation geared to assist
U.S. workers who have been adversely affected by foreign trade.
For this reason, in 2002, Congress passed the TAA legislation that
provided short-term temporary support for worker retraining and other
assistance. Many Republicans, including myself, were skeptical about
whether this program and others like it achieved their goals. But we
went along for the sake of our national interests and expanding free
trade.
In 2009, without any action taken on our three pending trade
agreements, the stimulus package dramatically increased the TAA Program
as part of the stimulus bill and increased spending on this program
annually by approximately $1 billion. In essence, a program that was
designed to assist workers who had been adversely affected by free
trade was transformed into a domestic spending program for reasons that
had nothing at all to do with expanding free trade.
What is worse, after repeatedly claiming it supports the free-trade
agreements with Colombia, Panama, and Korea, the White House earlier
this year announced that the cost of its support was reauthorization of
the new TAA with funding set not at the original 2002 level but the
2009 stimulus level.
So we had a program that had been expanded from its original cost
under the dubious guise of a temporary economic stimulus, and then we
were told this temporary funding increase, which was designed to expire
along with the stimulus, should, in effect, be turned into a permanent
domestic spending program.
After much discussion and debate, there now appears to be a proposal
to reauthorize TAA and fund it somewhere between the prestimulus and
poststimulus levels. This proposal is contained in the substitute
amendment offered by the majority leader. Some would say this is a good
deal and Republicans should accept it. Others say trade adjustment
assistance is ineffective and unproven and Congress should kill it
altogether.
I am very dubious about the benefits of TAA. But I understand also
what is doable around here and what is not. So I am offering this
amendment as a matter of principle. As I have said many times on the
floor of this body, I am not opposed to TAA nor do I seek to kill it. I
read the same media reports as my colleagues, which suggest that the
White House is holding hostage the trade agreements with South Korea,
Colombia, and Panama until Congress passes TAA.
Many of us do not like this. Many of us think this is contrary to our
national and economic interests. But it is a fact. So I recognize, as
in the past, that Congress should reauthorize TAA. The question is, How
much of the taxpayers' money should we spend to do it?
That is why I am offering this amendment. I believe Congress should
reauthorize it because we are being compelled to do so, but I also
believe we should reauthorize this program at its prestimulus funding
levels.
Let me explain why. The following are the temporary expansions to TAA
that were included in the stimulus, which cost about $2 billion in
2010, and, according to the Department of Labor, was estimated to cost
approximately $2.4 billion in 2011 if the 2009 stimulus expansions had
stayed in place.
The stimulus expanded TAA to cover workers whose employers shifted
production to any foreign country, not just those--as under prior law--
whose jobs were outsourced to countries with which the United States
has a free-trade agreement.
It expanded TAA coverage to the service sector and government
employees who lose their jobs because of trade.
It increased the tax credit available to cover private health
insurance premiums from 65 percent to 80. It increased the
appropriations cap for training from $220 million to $575 million, a
160-percent increase over the previous cap.
It created the Community TAA Program, which authorizes $230 million
for trade-affected communities to assist in strategic planning grants
up to $5 million, sector partnership grants up to $3 million over a 3-
year period, and community college and career training grants up to $1
million.
It gave $17.5 million to States for employment and case management.
It lengthened the amount of time workers could receive trade
readjustment allowance assistance by 26 weeks.
Finally, it revived the TAA for farmers and the wage insurance
program, estimated by CBO to total about $100 million for 2 years.
So we had a program that had been expanded from its original intent,
with benefits going to government employees, service sector employees,
TAA benefits going to communities, TAA benefits going to farms, TAA
benefits going to firms, under the dubious guise of a temporary
economic stimulus.
This is what the White House and the other side in Congress were
telling us had to be reauthorized in order to pass the free-trade
agreements. My amendment also addresses the claim made by some that the
agreement in the majority leader's substitute amendment not only
reduces TAA from stimulus levels but also much lower in several years.
However, according to a recent Heritage Foundation analysis, this may
not be accurate. This is important, so let me read this analysis at
length. This is from the Heritage Foundation report:

Instead of cutting TAA back to pre-stimulus levels, the
proposal restores and solidifies the most alarming aspects of
the stimulus expansion at a yet unknown cost.
It keeps the 2009 stimulus expansion for service sector
workers. TAA was originally intended to provide income
maintenance and job training to workers from the
manufacturing sector. The stimulus bill expanded eligibility
to include workers from the service and public sectors. This
expansion expired in February, but the proposal restores TAA
eligibility for service sector workers.
It restores stimulus expansion of benefits for job losses
unrelated to FTAs. The proposal retains the stimulus
expansion of providing TAA benefits to any workers who lost
their jobs to overseas production, not just TAA-certified
jobs that were lost to FTAs.
It reinstates the stimulus's 161 percent increase in TAA
for workers' job training spending. The proposal cements the
stimulus spending expansion of TAA for workers' job training
at $575 million per year from $220 million--an increase of
$355 million per year.
It continues the stimulus's creation of a new and
duplicative job training program.
The proposal keeps the TAA Community College and Career
Training Program, which has appropriations authorizations of
$500 billion per year from fiscal years 2011 through 2014.
This new job-training program is just one of the 47
employment and training programs operated across nine
agencies by the federal government.

Let me repeat that. This is another proposal that spends $500 million
for job training, even though we already have 47 employment and
training programs operated across 9 agencies by the Federal Government.

It partially reinstates the stimulus increase in Health
Coverage Tax Credit. . . .
It solidifies the wage subsidies for older workers as a
permanent program. The pre-stimulus Alternative TAA was a
temporary five-year demonstration program that paid 50
percent of the difference between new and old wages of
displaced older workers. It subsidized the wages of older
workers earning less than $50,000 per year for up to $10,000
over two years. After changing the program's name to
Reemployment TAA, the stimulus expansion increased the wage
subsidy to $12,000 over two years for displaced older workers
earning less than $55,000 and made the program permanent.
While the proposal reduces the wage subsidies to pre-stimulus
levels, it also cements into law the permanency of the wage
subsidy program.
It retains the stimulus expansion of the union VEBA
handout. Despite having nothing to do with international
trade, the stimulus expansion of TAA extended the HCTC to
Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Associations (VEBA). A
bankruptcy court can allocate a portion of an out-of-business
employer's assets to a VEBA, which assumes responsibly for
retirees' health coverage. This expansion primarily benefits
unions. Under the proposal, the federal government would
cover 72.5 percent of the cost of retiree health benefits at
bankrupt companies. This coverage occurs regardless of
whether the bankruptcies are related to free trade.

[[Page S5802]]

Let's look at an example of excess created in the ``temporary''
stimulus expansion of the TAA Program that taxpayers are still on the
hook for. According to a February 2011 study by Senator Coburn,
entitled ``Help Wanted: How Federal Job Training Programs are Failing
Workers'':

Taxpayers may have a case of indigestion when they learn,
nearly two years after the stimulus was enacted, their money
is paying lobstermen, shrimpers and blueberry farmers $12,000
each to attend job training sessions on jobs they are already
trained to do.
The stimulus reauthorized the Trade Adjustment Assistance
for Farmers program administered by the USDA, a program that
provides subsidies to producers of raw agricultural
commodities and fishermen so they can adjust to import
competition. Under the stimulus, TAA benefits were enhanced
to focus more on employment re-training.

While the Reid substitute includes a compromise to ``pare back'' some
of the expansions in the ``temporary'' stimulus spending legislation of
2009, it still expands TAA benefits and eligibility beyond the
prestimulus levels--by approximately, by my calculations, at least $600
million a year.
I acknowledge that expanding trade temporarily puts some of our
workers at a disadvantage. I remember being roundly criticized during
the 2008 Presidential campaign when I had the audacity to tell Michigan
workers the truth--that many of the jobs that had left their State for
cheaper labor markets overseas were never coming back. So I understand
that trade can create difficulties for some American workers. I am not
opposed, in principle, to supporting those workers temporarily so they
can develop new skills and find new jobs. That said, let's look closer
at how the Federal Government has been going about programs such as
this.
Earlier this year, the GAO released a study entitled ``Multiple
Training and Employment Programs: Providing Information on Collocating
Services and Consolidating Administrative Structures Could Promote
Efficiencies.'' Here is what the GAO reported on Federal employment and
retraining programs, including the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program:

Based on our survey of agency officials, we determined that
only 5 of the 47 programs have had impact studies that assess
whether the program is responsible for improved employment
outcomes. The five impact studies generally found that the
effects of participation were not consistent across programs,
with only some demonstrating positive impacts that tended to
be small, inconclusive, or restricted to short-term impacts.

So not only are many of these worker employment and training programs
duplicative, the GAO has found very little empirical evidence to
support whether these programs are even accomplishing their intended
goals--and what empirical evidence they have they found is, I repeat,
`` . . . small inconclusive, or restricted to short term impacts.'' TAA
is among these programs.
This is bad enough, but what is worse, we have not even been told how
much this expansion of TAA will cost the taxpayers. We are told the
legislation includes ``offsets,'' but we know they are not real.
Offsets allegedly include: rates for merchandise processing fees,
changes to the ``time for remitting certain merchandise processing
fees,'' unemployment compensation program integrity provisions to
create a ``mandatory penalty assessment on fraud claims, prohibition on
non-charging due to employer fault, reporting of rehired employees to
the directory of new hires.'' That is supposed to come up with hundreds
of millions of dollars.
I cannot say what most of these mean, but I can say they are not
real.
Even while extending the TAA prestimulus program, we need to analyze
whether the TAA Program is doing what it was intended to do. The
following are some of the questions and concerns we must consider:
Does the TAA Program provide overly generous benefits to a narrow
population?
According to analysis from the Heritage Foundation, based on
statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the third quarter of
fiscal year 2009, only 1 percent of mass layoffs were a result of
import competition of overseas relocation.
Is there evidence that TAA benefits and training help increase
participants' earnings?
An analysis by Professor Kara M. Reynolds of American University
found ``little evidence that it (TAA) helps displaced workers find new,
well-paying employment opportunities.'' In fact, TAA participants
experienced a wage loss of 10 percent.

The same study found that in fiscal year 2007, the Federal Government
appropriated $855.1 million to TAA Programs. Of this amount, funding
for training programs accounted for only 25 percent.
In 2007, the Office of Management and Budget rated the TAA Program as
``ineffective.'' The OMB found that the TAA Program failed to use tax
dollars effectively because, among other reasons, the program has
failed to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of achieving its goals.
Let me close by reminding my colleagues how we got to our current
predicament. It is mid-September of 2011, 2\1/2\ years since President
Obama took office, and we still have not received these important trade
agreements that were finalized half a decade ago--all because of the
White House's insistence on making a ``temporary'' stimulus program--
the dubious extension of TAA--into a permanent domestic spending
program.
This is how George Will summed it up, writing in the Washington Post
on June 8, 2011. The piece is as appropriate now as it was then:

President Obama is sacrificing economic growth and job
creation in order to placate organized labor. And as the
crisis of the welfare state deepens, he is trying to enlarge
the entitlement system and exacerbate the entitlement
mentality. . . .
On May 4, the administration announced that, at last, it
was ready to proceed with congressional ratification of the
agreements. On May 16, however, it announced they would not
send them until Congress expands an entitlement program
favored by unions.
Since 1974, Trade Adjustment Assistance has provided 104,
and then 156, weeks of myriad financial aid, partly
concurrent with the 99 weeks of unemployment compensation to
people, including farmers and government workers, and firms,
even whole communities, that can more or less plausibly claim
to have lost their jobs or been otherwise injured because of
foreign competition. Even if the injury is just the loss of
unfair advantages conferred, at the expense of other
Americans, by government protectionism.

This process should be appalling to the average American who is
looking for an improving economy, not special favors to certain special
interest groups.
At a time when our national debt has reached unsustainable levels, at
a time when Congress and the American people face some truly painful
choices about how to cut our Federal budget, at a time when some are
even considering enormous and dangerous cuts to our defense spending as
a way to get our fiscal house in order, this is no time to throw more
money than we did before the stimulus at a Federal program that, as the
GAO points out, is duplicative and possibly ineffective.
I am prepared to reluctantly support TAA if it were funded at the
prestimulus level, as a recognition of reality that some form of this
program is required in order to pass our existing trade agreements. But
we should authorize it at prestimulus levels and not one dollar more.
That is what this amendment would do. I urge my colleagues to support
it.
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there a sufficient second?
At this moment, there is not a sufficient second.
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I wish to address some of the points
raised by our colleague from Arizona--just a couple areas; one is the
question of the impact of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program,
which has been enhanced by way of the Recovery Act of 2009. I will talk
about some of the reforms as well and maybe address some of the cost
questions.
First, with regard to trade adjustment assistance prior to the 2009
period versus the period after that, I wish to submit for the Record--
and then I will walk through some of this--this document entitled
``Trade and Globalization Adjustment Assistance

[[Page S5803]]

Act (TGAAA) Worker Certification 5/18/2009-6/27/2011.'' This is a
Department of Labor document.
I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

TRADE AND GLOBALIZATION ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE ACT (TGAAA) WORKER CERTIFICATIONS 5/18/2009-6/27/2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimated total Estimated total Estimated percent
workers certified workers certified of workers
State under new under all certified under
provisions provisions new provisions
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama................................................ 4,710 11,277 41.77
Alaska................................................. 3 3 100.00
Arizona................................................ 4,969 8,540 58.16
Arkansas............................................... 807 6,192 13.03
California............................................. 20,942 30,619 68.40
Colorado............................................... 2,755 3,652 75.44
Connecticut............................................ 2,916 4,728 61.68
DC..................................................... 50 50 100.00
Delaware............................................... 13 1,281 1.01
Florida................................................ 2,867 6,196 46.27
Georgia................................................ 1,887 5,684 33.20
Hawaii................................................. 43 43 100.00
Idaho.................................................. 1,549 2,228 69.52
Illinois............................................... 6,997 19,772 35.39
Indiana................................................ 3,717 17,047 21.80
Iowa................................................... 1,479 4,380 33.77
Kansas................................................. 1,065 6,076 17.53
Kentucky............................................... 3,519 9,755 36.07
Louisiana.............................................. 601 2,261 26.58
Maine.................................................. 914 3,506 26.07
Maryland............................................... 1,556 3,118 49.90
Massachusetts.......................................... 6,821 9,745 69.99
Michigan............................................... 14,440 49,642 29.09
Minnesota.............................................. 4,325 9,166 47.19
Mississippi............................................ 392 2,566 15.28
Missouri............................................... 2,889 9,328 30.97
Montana................................................ 316 658 48.02
Nebraska............................................... 1,130 2,121 53.28
Nevada................................................. 61 89 68.54
New Hampshire.......................................... 382 1,471 25.97
New Jersey............................................. 4,744 6,329 74.96
New Mexico............................................. 1,467 2,412 60.82
New York............................................... 9,411 18,795 50.07
North Carolina......................................... 9,674 19,569 49.44
North Dakota........................................... 905 905 100.00
Ohio................................................... 7,706 33,905 22.73
Oklahoma............................................... 1,473 1,976 74.54
Oregon................................................. 6,045 11,981 50.45
Pennsylvania........................................... 9,932 27,401 36.25
Puerto Rico............................................ 42 821 5.12
Rhode Island........................................... 579 1,401 41.33
South Carolina......................................... 4,133 8,358 49.45
South Dakota........................................... 350 925 37.84
Tennessee.............................................. 6,676 17,712 37.69
Texas.................................................. 11,706 20,441 57.27
Utah................................................... 2,233 3,328 67.10
Vermont................................................ 344 964 35.68
Virginia............................................... 4,256 10,951 38.86
Washington............................................. 2,547 7,269 35.04
West Virginia.......................................... 1,760 3,688 47.72
Wisconsin.............................................. 5,731 16,864 33.98
Wyoming................................................ 0 46 0.00
--------------------------------------------------------
Total.............................................. 185,783 447,235 41.54
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. CASEY. Let me go through, by way of summary, what this depicts.
First of all, it is a document that has three columns; first is the
``Estimated Total Workers Certified Under New Provisions,'' meaning the
changes made to TAA as a result of the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009; the second column is the ``Estimated Total
Workers Certified . . .''--meaning certified under TAA--`` . . . Under
All Provisions of TAA''; finally is the ``Estimated Percent of Workers
Certified Under New Provisions'' as a result of the changes made. And
what it shows is, if you look across the country, the estimated total
workers certified under all provisions is 447,235 people. Of that, the
increase--in essence because of the 2009 changes--is 185,783. And if
you look at the percentage, that is a 41-percent increase.

So the basic point here--after a long explanation--is very simple.
Because of the changes made in 2009, we were able to help--the U.S.
Government, by way of TAA--41 percent more individuals. That is
relevant because it was helping folks to be retrained, helping them to
get the skills they needed for a new career, a new job, at the time
they needed it--during the worst economic catastrophe in 100 years,
other than the Great Depression. So if there were ever a time when we
needed to make sure that TAA worked--and it has worked--and, also, if
there were ever a time when we wanted to make sure that TAA was
strengthened and enhanced, it was during the last couple of years. That
is the point, that the 2009 changes were made because we were in the
throes, the teeth, the grip of the worst economic downturn in 100
years, other than in the 1930s.
Let me highlight a couple of States. For example, in my home State of
Pennsylvania, what all this means, if you look at the total number of
workers helped in this time period--again, talking about roughly the 2
years between May of 2009 to June of 2011 in Pennsylvania--there were
27,401 people helped. Workers helped, I should say. Of that, about 36
percent were helped solely because of the Recovery Act changes.
I know a good bit about the workers in our State. They needed that
help. They needed the help that was provided as a result of the
Recovery Act. So we have good evidence a lot of folks were helped,
certified, and then enrolled in programs to give them the skills they
needed.
The Presiding Officer is from the State of New York, and she knows
how difficult this recession has been on workers in New York. The total
number of workers certified in New York in that 2-year time period was
18,795. But half of that number, a little more than 50 percent, were
helped as a result of the 2009 changes that were made.
I say that to highlight and emphasize that the 2009 changes allowed
more workers to be retrained, to get the skills they needed to go back
to work. I think that is what we are all about here. Democrats and
Republicans all say they want workers to get back into the workforce.
This is one of the ways we do it. It is very practical. In order to get
from here to there--from unemployment to employment, and in a lot of
cases to a new job or a new career--you need to be trained. That is
what TAA does.
I will highlight two or three more States. Chairman Baucus, from the
great State of Montana, his State was helped as well. Their increase,
based upon the 2009 changes, was close to 50

[[Page S5804]]

percent. So almost 50 percent more workers in the State of Montana were
helped as well to get the skills they needed.
Let me mention as well my colleague Senator Brown who has worked so
hard on this. There were 7,706 more workers in the State of Ohio who
were certified to get the skills and training they needed because of
these changes.
And, finally, I will mention as well our colleague from Arizona. If
we look at the total number of Arizona workers certified, there were
8,540 workers certified in total, but of that 8,540, the increase was
some 4,969. So in Arizona, the increase of workers who were helped or
certified for new training, there was a 58.16-percent increase. So the
increase in Arizona was even higher, and in some States it was even
higher than that.
The point here is that 2009 changes weren't just a couple of changes
made to enhance the program or expand it for the sake of expanding a
program. I think the evidence shows we have certified more workers.
These workers have to go through a process to be certified in order for
us to provide help by way of the Federal Government and other partners
who are helping us retrain workers. I think the evidence is pretty
clear that has been a very positive change, giving more workers the
skills they needed to compete.
Let me say as well about our colleague from Arizona that I appreciate
what he said about TAA, and that he supports it. We may have a
disagreement about how to get there. He apparently doesn't want the
2009 changes to be made part of any effort going forward, but I
appreciate the fact he has expressed support for TAA. I also appreciate
the fact that when Senator Baucus, Senator Brown, I, and others in the
latter days of 2010 were trying to get an expansion of TAA, Senator
McCain worked with us to try to negotiate something. He was very
willing to talk and to work and to come together, and I appreciate
that, because we need that bipartisanship, we need that collegiality to
move this forward. So even though we have a disagreement about the
changes made, I appreciate his willingness to work with us back in
December and to continue to work with us.
Let me make one or two more points. One basic point about reform.
Folks will criticize programs and say programs aren't sometimes going
through the kind of changes we hoped for in reforming them. But we
should note for the record that in 2008, the GAO released a study which
highlighted a number of issues with trade adjustment assistance. They
set forth findings. That is why GAO is important. We shouldn't allow
programs to go on for years without some sort of reporting,
accountability, performance measures, or whatever you wish to call it.
GAO pointed out problems they believed could be the subject of reform
for TAA, and those recommendations were the foundation for some of the
changes in the 2009 Recovery Act we are debating here on the floor, and
we are debating as a result of Senator McCain's amendment. Here is what
they are. I will highlight them quickly. Here is what we are talking
about.
The amendment we are considering, or the effort we are working on to
expand TAA, does a number of things we should highlight. In addition to
making more workers eligible for training, it does a couple of things.
First of all, it consolidates administration--that is important to
highlight--it consolidates case management, and it consolidates job
search and relocation funding under the new dollars for job training.
The amendment also eliminates separate funding streams that were in
place before, but it also allows States the flexibility to use a
portion of the training funds for administration and for case
management costs. States must prioritize these funds for training and
case management, but administrative costs are capped at 10 percent of
the funds and States can also use these funds to pay for 90 percent of
the cost of job search and relocation up to $1,250.
Finally, the amendment includes 30 new performance metrics and
accountability measures across all TAA programs.
So what is the point? The point is very simple. We had a GAO study in
2008 that recommended changes to TAA. We had a Recovery Act introduced
and enacted for a variety of reasons, some of which spoke directly to
TAA in 2009. The reforms from the GAO study were incorporated in the
2009 changes. So if we stay with the original non-2009 provisions, we
won't have these reforms built in. GAO had pointed out some issues we
should address, they were addressed in 2009, and that is another good
reason why we should support the amendment that would include those
2009 changes.
Finally, on the question of costs or offsets, the 10-year cost for
TAA is now $962 million over 10 years. That is cut way back. In fact,
it has been cut by as much as half. We will talk about them more in the
record, but there are three offsets. The first, so-called ``merchandise
processing fee,'' raises $1.77 billion; the second, on unemployment
insurance, accounts for $320 million; and then finally, the Medicare
quality improvement organizations raises another $330 million. So there
are offsets--three in number--and the total cost is now $962 million
over 10 years. I think it is a reasonable price to pay for the
substantial training and retraining that TAA provides for our workers
who are living the horrific nightmare of job loss and the destruction
of their careers, and, frankly, in many cases, the destruction of their
family.
With that, Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the
absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that all time in
a quorum call be divided equally.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Amendment No. 641

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I rise in support of my amendment No.
641. As I explained yesterday, this amendment really is about
fundamental fairness.
The President wants TAA and has held hostage three free-trade
agreements to get it. Well, most of us want these free-trade agreements
and think it is wrong for TAA to move forward while the FTAs languish.
My amendment will ensure that all four legislative ships arrive in port
at the same time.
It is time for the entire trade agenda to move forward. In August, as
he toured the Midwest, the President repeatedly called upon Congress to
take the agreements up ``right now'' to help create jobs. This hollow
call for action typifies the President's approach to the trade agenda.
By calling upon Congress to act, he appears to be embracing the
agreements and pushing for their quick approval. But, like so many of
the President's trade initiatives, his words do not match his deeds.
In reality, Congress cannot take up these agreements ``right now.''
President Obama is relying upon a trade law called trade promotion
authority to protect each of these agreements from being blocked or
amended by Congress. In order to take advantage of this statutory
authority, it is not Congress but the President who must take the first
step and submit each agreement for consideration. If the President does
not submit these agreements, Congress cannot act under the trade
promotion authority. The President and his team know this. In fact,
here is a chart which outlines the TPA process, called ``How a Trade
Agreement Moves Through Congress Under Trade Promotion Authority.''
This was taken directly from the Web site of the Office of the U.S.
Trade Representative. It clearly shows that Congress cannot act

[[Page S5805]]

until the President submits the agreements.
But why take responsibility for moving the agreements when it is much
easier to blame their continued delay on Congress? The fact is, the
President wants all the benefits of trade promotion authority but none
of the responsibility.
Once they were called out on the mismatch between their words and
their deeds, the administration finally reined in their rhetoric but
provided little guidance as to what their actual plans are. In the
meantime, Republicans continued to push for consideration of the three
pending FTAs. Back in July, a group of Republican Senators signed a
letter vowing to help the administration achieve its objective of
gaining approval of trade adjustment assistance in exchange for
submitting the FTAs. Now, despite a clear path forward, the President
remains silent to this day.
As the President continues to delay, our country cedes each of these
three free-trade agreement markets to our foreign competitors, and they
are taking them over because we are dilly-dallying here instead of
doing what is right.
Our economy and our workers are suffering under horrific levels of
unemployment. Almost 1 in 10 American workers are out of a job under
this administration, and we can't afford to throw away any opportunity
to create jobs. Yet this is precisely what the President is doing. The
President himself has said these three trade agreements, once put into
law, will amount to 250,000 new jobs, and that is not something to
sniff at.
While our economy remains troubled and while the rest of the world
watches in bewilderment as the United States lets other countries take
over our export markets, we hear nothing but silence from the
President. A case in point: The European Union's exports to South Korea
increased almost 45 percent in the first 20 days since that agreement
went into force on July 1. Their share of Korea's import market
increased from 9.5 percent to 10.3 percent in just 3 weeks. Meanwhile,
the U.S. share of Korea's import market dropped from 10.5 percent to
8.4 percent. Unless we act quickly, these trends are likely to
continue.
In an open letter to the President and Congress, over 120 food groups
and companies wrote:

If there is any doubt about the seriousness of the problem
for U.S. agricultural exports, one need only consider the
damage that has already been done by the delay in
implementing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Argentina and
Brazil have negotiated trade agreements with Colombia that
have given them preferential access. As a result, U.S.-
produced corn, wheat, and soybeans have been hit hard, with
the combined share of Colombia's imports for these products
falling to 28 percent from 78 percent since 2008.

That is a big drop, mainly because of the dillydallying on this trade
agreement.
On August 15, 2011, an agreement between Canada and Colombia entered
into force, which will only make the problem worse for U.S. exporters
and our farmers. The fact is that each of these agreements is
critically important to our economy. For my home State of Utah and for
workers across the country, they mean more opportunity and jobs. It is
a slam dunk for the President to create jobs by getting these
agreements up here and getting them passed.
The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that U.S. workers
lose $8 million in wages and benefits every day these agreements are
delayed. I for one stand ready to continue to fight for their
consideration and approval. We have come a long way this year, but we
are not yet done.
I hope the President will heed my call and submit these agreements to
Congress so we can approve them, but history has shown this President
will not act unless he is forced to. This amendment I am offering will
continue to put pressure on him to act, and act soon, and I encourage
my colleagues to support it. The time for dithering and deliberation is
over. Let's adopt my amendment and ensure that our work in moving TAA
forward leads to the promised result--submission of three pending free-
trade agreements by the President and their quick enactment into law.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BAUCUS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. BAUCUS. Madam President, it is my understanding there will be two
votes at approximately 12:30. One is on the amendment offered by the
Senator from Utah, Senator Hatch, and another by the Senator from
Arizona, Senator McCain. I wish to explain, in a few minutes, why I
think it is advisable for the Senate to not adopt either of those two
amendments. Let me first address the amendment offered by my good
friend from Utah, Senator Hatch.
There are a lot of people looking for work. Today, about 14 million
Americans are looking for work. More than 6 million have been out of
work for at least 6 months. These Americans are looking to put in a
good day's work and looking to provide for their families. At the same
time, many employers cannot find enough skilled workers to fill the
jobs that are open. It is very difficult, because employers need people
with specialized skills. This is becoming more and more true with each
passing year. We need workers who are good at math. We need workers who
are good with their hands, who are trained in high-tech manufacturing.
The bottom line is, employers need an educated and skilled
workforce. Trade adjustment assistance can help bridge this gap. Trade
adjustment assistance can train workers and connect them with employers
who are looking to grow their businesses.

Let me mention a fellow who has been a big beneficiary who has been
helped by this program. His name is Kris Allen. Kris lost his job at
Montana Tunnels in Jefferson City, MT, in 2009. Because of trade
adjustment assistance, he was able to go to school at Helena College of
Technology. He wanted to be a diesel mechanic. He made the dean's list
most of the semesters. In May of 2011 he graduated. In fact, he got his
degree on a Friday and started work the very next Monday. His new job
at a trade company in Belgrade earns him $18 an hour. Kris has not
stopped there. He continues to hone his skills at Montana Resources
keeping up to date on the latest technology and machinery.
In this fast-paced globalized economy, human capital is the key to
our country's competitiveness and economic vitality. Americans such as
Kris know the benefits of a good day's work, and he could not have done
this without trade adjustment assistance. That is why I must oppose the
Hatch amendment. The amendment would withhold trade adjustment
assistance benefits to this bill until a free-trade agreement with
South Korea and Colombia and Panama is approved. It would delay
Americans such as Kris from getting the help they need to find good-
paying jobs, and the amendment would delay businesses such as New
Holland Trade Company from hiring employees and growing their company.
The Senate is here this week to consider the GSP trade adjustment
assistance bill. It is my hope the Senate will pass it in short order
and will send the bill to the House, which is expected to pass it
shortly.
We have an agreement, and that is an agreement between the leadership
of both the House and Senate, an agreement on how the Congress will
consider trade adjustment assistance and also how to consider free-
trade agreements. There is no need to legislate this process. In fact,
doing so could substantially delay the process and disrupt
disagreements, not just disrupt trade adjustment assistance but disrupt
passage of free-trade agreements.
I might add that there is a difference between the legislative
process with respect to trade adjustment assistance and free-trade
agreements. Trade adjustment assistance is legislation. It goes through
the usual legislative process. It can be delayed. There is no
requirement that it be voted on.
That is not true with free-trade agreements. Once the President sends
up a free-trade agreement, it enjoys a certain fast-tack process under
which there must be a vote in both bodies after a certain period of
time. It is not imperative between the legislative process in one and
the special fast-

[[Page S5806]]

track process for the other. It is why the agreement was reached
encouraging trust on both sides for the trade adjustment assistance
amendment to be passed by both bodies first before the President can
send up the free-trade agreements. He has indicated he will do so.
I have very strong assurance from the White House that is the case.
In fact, that is the agreement with the leadership, that if the trade
adjustment assistance passes, then the free-trade agreement will come
up and be voted on and passed in the House and then voted on and passed
in the Senate.
The best way to support our trade agenda and the best way to support
free-trade agreements is to not accept the amendment as offered by my
good friend from Utah so we can get both passed very quickly.

Amendment No. 625

Virtually, the same is true with respect to the amendment offered by
Senator McCain. I oppose Senator McCain's amendment. He wants to go
back and undo some of the progress that was made in trade adjustment
assistance. Let's start with the 2002 trade adjustment assistance law.
That made important changes in trade adjustment assistance. In fact, I
helped write that law.
In 2002 trade adjustment assistance covered manufacturing workers,
and it covered workers whose jobs shifted to countries with which we
had a free-trade agreement. So it covered workers who were in
manufacturing who lost their jobs, and then it covered workers whose
jobs were shifted to countries with which we had a free-trade
agreement. Other aspects of American employment, such as services, did
not cover the jobs that shifted to countries with which we did not have
a free-trade agreement.
That 2002 law not only covered manufacturing workers and workers
whose jobs shifted to countries with which we had a free-trade
agreement, it also doubled training funds. Doubled it. Training is so
critical. It also provided a new tax credit to help Americans better
afford health insurance for themselves and their families. That is no
small item. We all know how hard it is to get health insurance
especially for individuals in small firms. We are not talking about big
companies. We are talking about individuals who have lost their jobs.
We also know how expensive health care is; therefore, there is a great
need for health insurance. Again, that 2002 change of the trade
adjustment assistance doubled training funds. Training is so important
in today's modern society, and it provided a new tax credit to help
Americans better afford health insurance.
Our economy has changed since 2002. America's strength in
manufacturing expanded to include a robust services sector, which is
now 80 percent of our economy. Madam President, 80 percent of our
economy today is services. It is all different facets. It is call
centers, insurance, and everything you can think of that is
characterized as services. America's trade with foreign nations has
expanded to countries such as China and India, big countries with which
we do not have free-trade agreements. The service sector has expanded
just since 2002, and we have trade with other countries with which we
do not have free-trade agreements.
I believe trade adjustment assistance should cover workers both in
manufacturing and services. It should cover workers whose jobs move to
any country, especially China, whether it is an FTA country--free-trade
agreement country--or not.
These changes in realities have prompted me and my colleagues to
update that program, to update it from what it was in 2002. It was
updated in 2009. When they updated it in 2009 the law brought trade
adjustment assistance more fully to the 21st century by providing
Americans with training for the new economy. Unfortunately, those
expanded provisions expired in February. They are gone. That had a big
impact. Thousands of workers were denied access because the expiration
of the expansion of trade adjustment assistance.
For example, more than 1,000 service sector workers in both Texas and
Virginia were denied TAA benefits when the 2009 law expired earlier
this year. These workers likely will be eligible under the trade
adjustment assistance compromise I negotiated with Chairman Camp.
Chairman David Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee,
and I and our staffs spent a lot of time getting an agreement on trade
adjustment assistance, what the provisions should be, how far the
expansion should go, and how it should be paid for. It was an
agreement, a bipartisan agreement. There is not much of that around
here, but we worked hard and got the job done.
I must say, however, under Senator McCain's amendment, these service
workers I mentioned would remain shut out. They would not qualify. I
think it is time to bring us into the modern world. It is time to
provide equal access to all Americans regardless of whether they work
on a factory floor or a call center. It should not matter. If you lose
your job on account of trade, you should get trade adjustment
assistance benefits regardless of whether the job moves to Mexico, a
country with whom we do have a free-trade agreement or if the job moves
to a country such as China, a country with whom we do not have a free-
trade agreement.
I, therefore, urge my colleagues to oppose the McCain amendment. I
think it is unwise. I might also add that if either of these two
amendments pass, guess what. It gets all gummed up over in the House.
The House, therefore, cannot take up the clean trade adjustment
assistance amendment. We have to go back all over again, amend it
again, back and forth.
Do you know what that is going to do? It is going to do two things:
That is going to jeopardize passage of then updated trade adjustment
assistance. Guess what else it is going to do. It is going to
jeopardize passage of free-trade agreements. I think a vast majority of
the Members of this body and in the other body, together, want both of
these matters passed.
I must say if we had amendments here, despite them being defective on
the merits, if amendments are added, it is going to delay the process
further. The House will have to amend it again, send it back over here,
and it is going to very much delay both the trade adjustment assistance
and the free-trade agreements. For those reasons I urge that those
amendments not be agreed to.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, nothing of the sort is going to happen.
The fact is, we have had nothing but delays by the President. Just a
few weeks ago he was accusing us of not passing the free-trade
agreements when he knows we cannot even consider them. There have been
a lot of games played with us.
I remember last spring in our committee when the Trade Representative
said: We have a few more things we have to work out on Panama and
Colombia, and we will definitely send these free-trade agreements
before the August recess.
We got near the August recess, and they said: Well, we need one other
thing. We need trade adjustment assistance.
Now, if they need trade adjustment assistance--and I have no doubt
that is going to pass in the Senate if there is a fair process. I do
not believe there is any doubt it will pass in the House. The agreement
worked out by the distinguished chairman and Chairman Camp over in the
House probably will be voted on. I have to vote against it.
The fact is, all my amendment--it does evidence some distrust in this
process. All my amendment does is say: Look, we are not going to allow
trade adjustment assistance to go into effect until these three trade
agreements are sent by the President and passed. Both bodies can pass
the trade adjustment assistance on this bill, and that is fine with me.
My amendment says TAA does not go into effect until the President
submits these three treaties, and they are passed and become law. Then
trade adjustment assistance goes.
That is a very fair way of doing this. It is a way of saying to
everybody: Let's get rid of the mistrust. Let's do this in a straight-
up way. Let's do it so everybody knows what is going to happen. Trade
adjustment assistance will ultimately come into effect, but only after
the administration lives up to submitting these trade agreements and
they are passed.
Why would we want trade adjustment assistance to pass if these three
trade

[[Page S5807]]

agreements do not pass? It is just another big cost to the government.
Keep in mind the people who are out of work are getting unemployment
insurance. Trade adjustment assistance adds payments on top of that to
their unemployment insurance. Why would we do that if we are not going
to have these three trade agreements become law? It just makes no
sense. Mine is a practical amendment.
It says let's get rid of the game playing. We will do this if you do
this. Frankly, the President promised to do it, and we are still
standing here waiting for the three trade agreements to be sent here.
To me, it is hard to imagine why the President is not doing this.
By the way, on the trade adjustment assistance a little less than 7
percent of our nongovernment workers are unionized. Yet one-third of
these payments will go to union members. I do not blame my colleagues
on the other side for wanting to help anybody who is out of work or
anybody who belongs to a trade union. But do we always have to do it in
a slanted way that helps one small sector of the workers in this
country and not the rest of them? It is a problem. We have unemployment
insurance to take care of people who are out of work. We should do
that. It is important we do that. Trade adjustment assistance is just
adding some more payments on top of that.
There is a real question whether we should do it here because I asked
the representatives of the administration in the committee what jobs
are going to be lost as a result of these three agreements. They could
not come up with one. There will be, according to the administration,
250,000 new jobs that will occur, or at least jobs that will occur and
will be sustained by these three trade agreements once they are enacted
into law.
Just yesterday my friends on the other side voted down trade
promotion authority. I cannot imagine why any President would not want
trade promotion authority.
It is mind-boggling to me that this President doesn't want it. It is
the only way we are going to be able to get free-trade agreements done.
Otherwise, we are going to have to do it through other legislative
processes, which is much more arduous, much more difficult, and does
not come up with just an up-or-down vote. There is a reason for this
process, and that is to be able to do free trade in this country. Yet
every time we turn around there is another roadblock thrown up by the
other side, as though they don't want free trade. I understand that for
some unsubstantiated or ridiculous reason the unions don't like free-
trade agreements, even though they are going to, according to the
administration, create 250,000 new jobs--or jobs, anyway. Why wouldn't
they like those? They have an opportunity to unionize companies that
come into existence.
By the way, even under the stilted, one-sided National Labor
Relations Board that currently exists that is running away with our
responsibilities and legislating from the regulatory bench--even with
that board, unions win 60 percent of union elections--contested
elections. It is not as though they are being picked on or are not
being treated fairly.
By the way, I would be one of the first to make sure they are treated
fairly. I am one of the few people in this whole body who earned a
union card. I worked in the building and construction trade unions for
10 years. I acknowledge the distinguished Presiding Officer sitting in
the chair earned a union card. I am not sure we can call that a union,
working with the--just joshing. The entertainment industry unions are
not like the AFL-CIO. We are tough as nails. On the other hand, I have
to retract that because I have seen some people in the entertainment
industry as tough as nails, and the Presiding Officer is one. No
question about it. I have great admiration for him. But he ought to be
with me on this. He ought to be with me because all we are saying is,
look--and the most that would happen is a few days, enough to get the
free-trade agreements passed in the House.
So what I am saying is, first of all, let's get the President to do
what he has blamed us for not doing; that is, to send these three free-
trade agreements with these countries that are so important to us and
we are important to them. We are losing business every day because this
is being dragged out for so long. Send them so we can vote on them. TAA
will pass here, and I believe it will pass over there with the process
we have.
All I am saying is it doesn't become effective because we shouldn't
be paying for people when we don't have free-trade agreements that are
the basis for paying people. All I am saying is they don't come into
existence--the TAA doesn't come into existence until after these free-
trade agreements are ratified, are voted up or down, and become law--
voted up and become law. That is fair. It is an intelligent approach to
it. It ends the mystery. It ends what some people think is a convoluted
process. It ends what some people think is not a good-faith process. It
does it in a way that doesn't hurt anybody, and it just says: Look,
let's do it straight up so there is no more arguing or moaning or
groaning or accusations that one side is not being fair to the other.
Let's just do it this way.
So I am calling on my colleagues on the other side to vote for my
amendment. They don't lose a doggone thing. In fact, it will help this
process along, and that is one reason I brought it up.
I am personally not sure trade adjustment assistance will pass
without my amendment. That is one reason I brought it to the Senate
floor--because it is a fair, decent, honorable way of saying, OK, let's
get rid of the mysteries. Let's get rid of the arguments. Let's get rid
of the partisanship. Let's vote on these three free-trade agreements--
or excuse me, the trade adjustment assistance--which is going to add a
lot of money to the cost of this government, and let's vote on them.
When they are both voted through by the House and the Senate, then
let's bring up the three free-trade agreements which should pass
readily in both Houses. Once they become law, trade adjustment
assistance comes into being.
That is a fair, responsible way of doing this in a way that does away
with the mystery, does away with partisanship, does away with
Democratism and Republicanism and gets this process down the road.
For the life of me, I can't understand why anybody would argue with
this. I am calling on my Democratic friends and saying: Let's be
bipartisan about this. Let's send a message to the President that we
want those doggone trade agreements up here. He controls that process.
I just found it astounding when he came out and said: I wish they would
pass the three free-trade agreements when he knows we can't until he
sends them.
This agreement is not only fair, it is the right thing to do. It may
be the only way we are going to get these three free-trade agreements
done. I would like to hear a good argument against them, but there
isn't any. With these free-trade agreements, I believe there will be
thousands of jobs created. I am not sure there will be 250,000 as the
administration claims, but I believe there will be many jobs at a time
when we need jobs.
Trade adjustment assistance--there are a lot of sincere people in
this body and in the other body who believe it is absolutely essential,
even though there was not one shred of evidence as far as I heard that
any jobs would be lost as a result of these two free-trade agreements.
But I am willing to understand there may be some loss, and therefore--
and even if there aren't, to get these three free-trade agreements
through, the other side says we have to pass TAA. Fine. Let's pass it
through both bodies. Let's make it subject to getting the three free-
trade agreements passed into law because it should be subject to that.
There is no reason in the world why we would add more spending from a
trade adjustment assistance standpoint unless we have these three free-
trade agreements. That is the argument for the trade adjustment
assistance that our colleagues on the other side and some on our side
are making. I have a feeling this is the way to get this done. It is
the smart way to get it done. It is the honorable way to get it done.
It is the truthful way to get it done. It is the bipartisan way to get
it done.

I think people know I have a reputation for being able to bring both
sides together from time to time, and that is what I am trying to do.
This is not a political game as far as I am concerned. I do want these
three free-trade

[[Page S5808]]

agreements because I know it would be great for our country. We are
losing business. We have gone down from 74 percent agricultural exports
to Colombia to 28 percent. Anybody with brains would say we shouldn't
have allowed that to happen, and it wouldn't have had we passed these
three free-trade agreements, or at least the Colombia one, last year.
But Korea is such a big, even greater trading partner than Colombia--
although, when I look at what President Uribe and what President
Santos, the current President, have done to straighten out that country
and get rid of the terrorists and to bring down the violence against
union members and so forth, they deserve our support. They deserve
these agreements.
When I look at Korea and what an important partner they are in our
trade--and we are losing trade to them now; others are taking it away
from us because we haven't passed the Korean agreement--my gosh, it
doesn't take any brains to realize we are not acting like friends to
Korea.
Then look at Panama. Panama is one of the financial centers of this
hemisphere. It is a great nation. It is important to us, above all
people. It is dishonorable for us to not pass the Panamanian Free Trade
Agreement that they worked out with us and which we had to add labor
language in each one of these agreements that wasn't there before
because of this administration's fealty to organized labor. Fine.
Why don't we do what has to be done to pass these three free-trade
agreements and to get the support for TAA for those who believe that is
the right way to go and get rid of any kind of concerns that one side
or other would not live up to its share of the battle. My amendment
will do that.
I hope it is not just a partisan vote. I hope we have some Democrats
who will vote for my amendment. If we do, I think it will push this
whole process forward in a way that makes sense.
Mr. President, let me just dwell a few minutes on one of the things I
would like to get across. People ask me why I spent years working
toward a leadership position on the Senate Finance Committee. It is
pretty simple. The Finance Committee has jurisdiction over issues that
matter not only to the people of Utah but to everybody: the bloated Tax
Code we have, the inheritance taxes, health programs such as Medicare
and Medicaid, Social Security, issues that go to the heart of
international trade such as customs duties, tariff, and import quotas,
and free-trade agreements. I could go on and on. It is a very important
committee.
Sixty percent of all spending in this government comes through the
Finance Committee. Being the lead Republican on the Finance Committee
gives me a unique platform to shape all of these policies in a way that
works best for my home State of Utah, and I hope the Nation as a whole.
Today I wish to focus on international trade and why I am so
passionate about opening new markets to our goods and services. It gets
repeated ad nauseam that 95 percent of our potential customers live
outside of the United States, and there is no doubt that trade is vital
to America's competitiveness. But trade has immediate and particular
importance to jobs and the economy in my home State of Utah as well as
every other State.
Last year alone companies in Utah shipped over $13 billion in
merchandise exports to international markets--$13 billion--supporting
nearly 93,000 jobs in our State. Think about that: $13 billion and
close to 100,000 jobs thanks to products Utah companies sold outside
the borders of the United States. My State is only one State. I think
every State can tell a similar story. That doesn't even include our
service providers, who similarly take advantage of opportunities across
the globe. Companies in Utah exported to over 190 foreign markets;
companies such as Varian Medical Systems, which produces cutting-edge x
ray products that assist with various cancer treatments and industrial
security screening and which provides over 700 people with good-paying
jobs in our State.
By removing barriers to trade, free-trade agreements level the
playing field for our companies operating in markets abroad. This has
an immediate and observable impact on trade. Following the
implementation of every U.S. bilateral or regional free-trade
agreement, Utah has increased its exports to partner countries.
Let me give two examples. Utah's exports to Morocco experienced
growth of over 2,000 percent after the United States implemented a
free-trade agreement with them, and Utah's exports to Singapore
increased by over 800 percent after we implemented that FTA.
Listening to some of the pundits, it would be easy to draw the
conclusion that exports in free trade are only important to large,
multinational companies; but nothing could be further from the truth.
In 2008, the most recent year for which we have statistics, 86 percent
of Utah's exporting companies were small or midsized companies. For the
entrepreneurs who lead these small and midsized companies,
international trade is their lifeblood. But exports are only part of
the story.
Thanks to low taxes, family-friendly values, and a well-educated,
motivated, and internationally savvy workforce, Utah is a place where
people want to live and work. And it is not just the greatest skiing in
the world, although that certainly is a draw.

When foreign companies look to grow their operations or gain a
foothold in the U.S. market, they increasingly look to Utah to site
their operations. These companies invest significant amounts of capital
to open or expand facilities in our State every year.
Foreign-owned companies employ over 34,000 workers in Utah. That is
more than 3 percent of all Utah employees in the private sector. These
are well-paying jobs. U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies pay an
average compensation of over $68,000 per year. And let's not forget all
of the spending by international visitors to our world-class colleges
and universities, ski resorts, and parks.
That is why I have been pushing so hard to get the three FTAs with
South Korea, Panama, and Colombia passed and implemented. It is not the
only reason, but it is certainly a reason. These agreements have been
sitting idle for far too long. They were negotiated during the
administration of President Bush. They were wrapped in a bow for
President Obama, ready to go the day he took office. His own
administration has made some changes in them that these three countries
have agreed to. Yet President Obama still has not sent them to Congress
for a vote, which is astounding to me. The President himself says these
three agreements will create 250,000 new jobs. His failed stimulus, his
burdensome overregulation of business, his penchant for taxing and
spending to ``redistribute wealth'' all rubbed salt in the wounds of a
difficult economy. We are now left with an unemployment rate of 9.1
percent. You would think the President would be eager to do something
everyone agrees would actually create real jobs, and not just real
jobs, great jobs. But the FTAs with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia
remain on his desk.
While the President stands still, the world continues to forge ahead.
China continues to pursue policies that boost its growth at our
expense. Other countries around the world continue to negotiate trade
agreements that exclude the United States, putting Utah exporters at a
serious disadvantage, as well as other States. The consequences of this
administration's trade paralysis are real.
By way of example, the U.S. share of Colombia's agricultural imports
has already fallen from nearly 44 percent in 2007 to 21 percent in
2010. The EU and Canada swooped in to fill this vacuum. Both have now
negotiated free-trade agreements with Colombia.
During President Bush's Presidency, we passed trade agreements with
14 countries, providing a significant boost to the U.S. economy. By
contrast, President Obama has not submitted a single trade agreement to
Congress.
It certainly does not help that the President has refused to spend
any political capital to seek trade negotiating authority from
Congress. The need for it is obvious: Without it, we cannot pass good
agreements to open foreign markets for our exports. That is why every
President since FDR has sought this authority. Why doesn't this
President? I think it is a lack of experience, personally. He is smart
enough to understand this.
Every President but one has sought it. The only one who has not is
our current President. But whether he seeks it

[[Page S5809]]

or not, I am going to work to see that he gets it. And when he does,
you can be sure it will be designed to shape his negotiating objectives
so that the resulting agreements embody high standards that best serve
the economies of the United States and, in particular, my home State of
Utah.
It is vital that future trade agreements--such as the proposed Trans-
Pacific Partnership Agreement between the United States and six other
nations--protect the intellectual property of our innovators and
content creators, level the playing field for our companies which are
often forced to engage in lopsided competition with state-owned
companies and national champions, enable modern day integrated global
supply chains, and enhance market access for both goods and services
providers.
In the months and weeks ahead, we have the opportunity to shape the
economic future of our great Nation and my own great State of Utah. I
am going to do my part to ensure that trade plays a central part in
that equation.
I hope everybody in this body realizes how important this is and that
we should not keep playing these games because we have political
opportunism. Then again, that is another reason for my amendment. My
amendment says the games will be over. Both sides will vote on TAA. The
President will have to submit the agreements. Once the agreements are
passed and made into law, TAA comes into existence. And it should not
come into existence until after these agreements become law.
What it says to everybody is: Look, the games are over. This is the
way to do it. This is the fair way to do it. This is the bipartisan way
to do it.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could get these free-trade agreements
passed? Wouldn't it be a wonderful achievement for all of us here--a
bipartisan achievement, with the President getting lots of credit for
it? I think it would be a good thing. If we cannot do this, then you
can imagine what this place is going to become in the future. My
amendment is the way you get there.
I am hoping my colleagues on the other side listen to this. I hope
they pay attention. I sure hope they vote for this amendment because if
they do not, I question whether we will ever have these free-trade
agreements.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Under the previous order, the question is on agreeing to amendment
No. 641 offered by the Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch.
There will be 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to the vote.
Mr. HATCH. My understanding is both sides are waiving the 2 minutes
of debate time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HATCH. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a
sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Rockefeller) is necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Indiana (Mr. Lugar).
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). Are there any other
Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 44, nays 54, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 142 Leg.]

YEAS--44

Alexander
Ayotte
Barrasso
Blunt
Boozman
Brown (MA)
Burr
Chambliss
Coats
Coburn
Cochran
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Enzi
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Kyl
Lee
McCain
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Paul
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Rubio
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Toomey
Vitter
Wicker

NAYS--54

Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Blumenthal
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Conrad
Coons
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson (SD)
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Manchin
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--2

Lugar
Rockefeller

The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 44, the nays are
54. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of
this amendment, the amendment is rejected.

Amendment No. 625 to Amendment No. 633

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is on
amendment No. 625, offered by the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain.
There will be 2 minutes of debate, equally divided, prior to the vote.
The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the stimulus passed in 2009 was purported
to be temporary. As part of that massive piece of legislation, we made
a significant expansion and added at least $600 million a year to the
Trade Adjustment Assistance Program. This amendment would cut back to
the prestimulus number of the TAA.
It is pretty simple. It would save at least $600 million per year on
questionable programs of questionable effectiveness. But the point is,
the stimulus was supposed to be a temporary increase in spending and
not a permanent one. The Reid package makes most of it--at least 65
percent of it--permanent. The least we can do is cut it back to
prestimulus levels, which is supported by the National Taxpayers Union.
I know that will be very persuasive to my friends on the other side of
the aisle.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana is recognized.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, this country has an extremely high
unemployment rate. We all know a lot of people are losing jobs and some
are losing jobs on account of trade. The world has changed, even as
recently as 2002. In 2002, the law said: OK. If a person loses a job on
account of jobs going to a free-trade country, they are eligible for
trade adjustment assistance, but it has to be a manufacturing job.
That was changed in 2009 because the country has changed. There are a
lot of countries with which we trade that are not FTA partners--China,
India. It makes eminent sense, if someone loses a job on account of
trade with any country, that person should be eligible for trade
adjustment assistance and not just with FTA countries.
Secondly, we expanded that to services. Eighty percent of the workers
in our country are in the services sector, not the manufacturing
sector. That addition was also provided for in 2009.
For technical reasons also, if this amendment passes, it jeopardizes
both TAA as well as FTA because everything has to be renegotiated. So I
urge this amendment not be agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
Mr. McCAIN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Rockefeller) is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 53, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 143 Leg.]

YEAS--46

Alexander
Ayotte
Barrasso
Blunt
Boozman
Brown (MA)
Burr
Chambliss
Coats
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Enzi
Graham

[[Page S5810]]

Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Kyl
Lee
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Paul
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Rubio
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Toomey
Vitter
Wicker

NAYS--53

Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Blumenthal
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Conrad
Coons
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson (SD)
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Manchin
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--1

Rockefeller

The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 46, the nays are
53. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of
this amendment, the amendment is rejected.
The Senator from Montana is recognized.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Hatch
or his designee be recognized to offer amendment No. 642; that
following the Hatch amendment Senator Cornyn be recognized for debate
only for up to 15 minutes; then Senator Kyl or his designee be
recognized to offer amendment No. 645 anytime prior to 5 p.m.; that the
time until 5 p.m. be for debate on the Hatch and Kyl amendments and be
equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; that at 5
p.m., the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Hatch and Kyl
amendments, in that order; that there be no amendments, points of
order, or motions in order to either amendment prior to the votes other
than budget points of order and the applicable motions to waive; that
each amendment be subject to a 60-affirmative-vote threshold; and there
be 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to each vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Utah is recognized.

Amendment No. 642 To Amendment No. 633

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for
its immediate consideration.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Utah [Mr. Hatch] proposes an amendment
numbered 642 to amendment No. 633.

Mr. HATCH. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be
dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To modify the eligibility requirements for trade adjustment
assistance)

On page 31 of the amendment, between lines 6 and 7, insert
the following:

SEC. 224. MODIFICATION OF TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS.

(a) Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers.--Section 222
of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2272), as amended by
section 211(a), is further amended--
(1) in subsection (a)(2)--
(A) in subparagraph (A)(iii), by striking ``contributed
importantly to such workers' separation or threat of
separation and to'' and inserting ``was a substantial cause
of such workers' separation or threat of separation and of'';
and
(B) in subparagraph (B)(ii), by striking ``contributed
importantly to'' and inserting ``was a substantial cause
of'';
(2) in paragraph (3)(B) of subsection (b), as redesignated
by section 211(a), by striking ``contributed importantly to''
and inserting ``was a substantial cause of''; and
(3) in subsection (c), as redesignated and amended by
section 211(a), by striking paragraph (1) and redesignating
paragraphs (2) through (4) as paragraphs (1) through (3),
respectively.
(b) Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms.--Section 251 of
the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2341) is amended--
(1) in subsection (c)--
(A) in paragraph (1)(C), by striking ``contributed
importantly to such total or partial separation, or threat
thereof, and to'' and inserting ``were a substantial cause of
such total or partial separation, or threat thereof, and
of''; and
(B) in paragraph (2)--
(i) by striking subparagraph (A);
(ii) by striking ``(B)''; and
(iii) by redesignating clauses (i) and (ii) as
subparagraphs (A) and (B), respectively, and moving such
subparagraphs, as so redesignated, 2 ems to the left.
(c) Trade Adjustment Assistance for Farmers.--
(1) In general.--Section 292(c)(3) of the Trade Act of 1974
(19 U.S.C. 2401a(c)(3)) is amended by striking ``contributed
importantly to'' and inserting ``was a substantial cause
of''.
(2) Conforming amendment.--Section 291 of the Trade Act of
1974 (19 U.S.C. 2401) is amended by striking paragraph (3)
and redesignating paragraphs (4) through (7) as paragraphs
(3) through (6), respectively.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are talking about trade, how we create
markets for what Americans grow or build and sell abroad, which creates
jobs here at home. But I wish to talk about a rather specialized area
of trade, and that has to do with foreign military sales, and
particularly I wish to talk about a topic Senator Menendez and I
introduced a bill on last week called the Taiwan Air Power
Modernization Act of 2011. This bill requires the U.S. Government to
respond to the request of the Government of Taiwan for the sale of at
least 66 F-16 C/D fighter aircraft to Taiwan.
That sounds like a mouthful and a big subject, and it is, but let me
try to put some meat on the bone and explain why I think this is so
important.
Support of the people of Taiwan has been a bipartisan priority for
decades. Democrats and Republicans supported the Mutual Defense Treaty
with Taiwan, signed by President Eisenhower in 1954. Democrats and
Republicans came together and passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which
was signed by President Carter in 1979, and which remains the law of
the land today. The Taiwan Relations Act states that the United States
will provide to Taiwan the defense articles necessary to enable Taiwan
to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities in furtherance of
maintaining peace and stability in the western Pacific region.
What does sufficient self-defense capabilities mean? President
Reagan, in a memorandum he dictated dated August 17, 1982, laid it out.
This is about the time the third communique between Communist China and
the United States was formally adopted, because the Chinese wanted to
know exactly what this meant. Were arms provided to Taiwan a threat of
aggressive weaponry or purely for defensive purposes? According to
James Lilley, who was America's top representative in China at the time
and who later served as Ambassador to China under George Herbert Walker
Bush, that is what this was designed to do, to crystalize what the
nature of the weapons sales to the Taiwan Government would be used for.
This memorandum from President Reagan in August 17, 1982 laid it out:

. . . it is essential that the quantity and quality of the
arms provided Taiwan be conditioned entirely on the threat
posed by the People's Republic of China. Both in quantitative
and qualitative terms, Taiwan's defense capability relative
to that of the PRC will be maintained.

This is strictly for giving Taiwan the ability to defend itself
against potential Communist actions by Communist China. It was directly
proportional and reciprocal to the threat posed by the People's
Republic of China.
But Ronald Reagan was not alone in this interpretation. In fact, both
Democrats and Republicans over the years have supported numerous arms
sales to the Government of Taiwan, including the current request for 66
F-16 C/D advanced fighter aircraft.
So far this year, 47 Republicans and Democrats have signed a letter--
these are Senators--to the administration in support of this sale. In
August, 181 Members of the House of Representatives, Republicans and
Democrats alike, wrote to the administration endorsing this same sale.
Why is Taiwan asking for these aircraft and why do so many Democrats
and Republicans join together in a bipartisan way on this issue when
the parties seem to be so polarized by so many other issues? The answer
is simple and straightforward: Taiwan's air defense capabilities are
nearly obsolete, while China's military capabilities are growing at an
alarming rate. This chart demonstrates the problem.
On the right in the red you will see that China has 2,300 operational
military combat aircraft, while Taiwan has 490 operational combat
aircraft. But air defense is not just a numbers game. Quality of those
aircraft matters a lot--just as much as quantity. So what about the
quality of Taiwan's existing forces?

[[Page S5811]]

According to our own intelligence services, the Defense Intelligence
Agency, in an unclassified report last year, said that ``many of
Taiwan's fighter aircraft are close to or beyond service life, and many
require extensive maintenance support.''
China's capabilities, on the other hand, are clearly newer and
clearly growing and clearly focused on intimidating Taiwan and the
United States. China's official press agency reported in March that the
People's Republic of China will increase its military budget this year
by 12 percent, after an increase last year of 7.5 percent. But the
Pentagon estimates that China's official military budget of about $90
billion they disclose, is actually far less than the $150 billion they
actually spend. In other words, they only disclose part of their
expenditures on national security and not the full amount, which is
some $150 billion. The question is, who does China intimidate with this
growing military power?
Here is what the Pentagon had to say in its 2011 report to Congress,
called ``Military and Security Developments Involving the People's
Republic of China.'' The Defense Department observed that China
continued modernizing its military in 2010, with a focus on Taiwan
contingencies.
The Pentagon also noted that China's air force will remain primarily
focused on ``building the capabilities required to pose a credible
military threat to Taiwan and U.S. forces in East Asia.''
Let me repeat that. The Pentagon noted that China's air force will
remain primarily focused on ``building the capabilities required to
pose a credible military threat to Taiwan and U.S. forces in East
Asia.''
Some say the United States should not look at our policy with Taiwan
in a vacuum, that we should consider the context of our larger
strategic relationship with China. I could not agree more, because the
strategic situation with China these days is very troubling. Many of
China's neighbors are concerned about its military buildup and
territorial ambitions. Last year, China claimed the South China Sea as
a ``core interest,'' which unsettled Vietnam, the Philippines,
Indonesia, and other nations in the region. China also renewed a long-
running dispute with India over the borders of the Arunachal Pradesh
region.
China continues to be an enabler of the nuclear ambitions of the
regime in North Korea. This summer, Google publicly reported that a
Chinese entity has been targeting the personal e-mail accounts of U.S.
and South Korean government employees, and Pakistan's defense minister
publicly discussed the possibility of China building a naval base at
Gwadar, Pakistan, which is already home to a new strategically
important port at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman.
China, we know, has also escalated its rhetoric aimed at the United
States, and particularly the U.S. Senate. A number of my colleagues
visited Beijing last April where they reportedly received a lecture
from Chinese officials on fiscal policy. Just last week, more to the
point of this topic, China's top official newspaper used a lot of
unnecessary and bellicose rhetoric on the subject of the proposed U.S.
arms sales to Taiwan. This official newspaper of the Communist Party in
China said that those of us on Capitol Hill who support Taiwan are
``madmen.'' They said we were ``playing with fire.'' They said we could
pay a ``disastrous price'' if we continued to support our ally Taiwan,
as we are obligated to do by the Taiwan Relations Act.
I suggest the United States should not give in to this intimidation
and these threats, and that we should instead pass this legislation to
send a clear message to China that respects only strength, not
weakness; that the real madmen are those who think America will abandon
our friends and allies and our principles and our longstanding
strategic interest in the stability of East Asia.
Supporting this legislation would also greatly reassure our allies
and friends around the world. Many remember what happened when
President Clinton deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups during
the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996. That crisis developed when China
tried to intimidate Taiwan on the eve of its first free Presidential
elections by conducting a series of military exercises that included
the firing of missiles a few miles north of Taiwan. President Clinton
responded by ordering the largest U.S. military force since the Vietnam
war to deploy to the region, including carrier battle groups led by the
USS Nimitz and the USS Independence.
America's show of strength and resolve under President Clinton's
leadership did not escalate the crisis, it defused it, and it sent a
welcome signal to our friends and allies in the region. According to an
article in the current issue of Washington Quarterly, following the
crisis, ``the region's confidence in the United States soared.''
`` . . . Japan, Singapore, the Philippines and other nations all
bolstered their security ties with the United States.'' The Taiwan
Strait crisis was one of the real foreign policy success stories of the
Clinton administration. But the authors of this same article conclude
that ``forsaking Taiwan [now] would likely have the opposite effect.''
This bill deserves bipartisan support of the majority of Members of
the Senate based on our longstanding bipartisan consensus on policy
toward Taiwan, the growing gap in military capabilities between the
People's Republic of China and the Government of Taiwan, China's
aggressive behavior toward its neighbors and toward the United States,
and America's credibility with our allies and with free peoples
everywhere.
I conclude by pointing out perhaps something that is obvious, but
maybe it is not so obvious to everyone. Since we are talking about
trade, what we grow and we sell to people abroad creating jobs at home,
it is worth mentioning that selling F-16 aircraft to Taiwan creates
jobs and exports for the U.S. economy and does not cost 1 penny of
taxpayer money. This map demonstrates all the States in which direct
and indirect employment from which the export sales of F-16s to Taiwan
is projected to be at least 60 person years of employment, which is the
equivalent of 10 American workers employed full time for 6 years.
As you can see from this map, 32 States will have that level of job
creation or more as a result of the sale of these F-16s, making the
sale of the F-16s to Taiwan a coast-to-coast job engine. In fact,
according to the Perryman Group, the requested sale of F-16C/Ds to
Taiwan ``would generate some $8.7 billion in output; and directly
support more than 23,000 jobs.''
As I pointed out earlier, these jobs do not cost the American people
one cent. These are private sector jobs paid for with money coming in
from overseas because this is an export-driven industry. The only thing
the U.S. Government needs to do is get out of the way and let these
Americans continue to stay on the job and collect an estimated $768
million in Federal tax revenues. Yes, not only will we be selling these
aircraft, creating jobs, we will be generating revenue for the Federal
Treasury in the process, generated by this private sector, export-
driven economic activity.
I wish to thank the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez, for
introducing this legislation with me, and I thank my colleagues on both
sides of the aisle who have agreed to cosponsor it. I hope more
Senators will join us, and I hope we will pass this bill soon. I hope
we can help American workers continue building these aircraft to
strengthen our friends, the people of Taiwan.
Mr. President, let me just close on this comment: This is standalone
legislation I discussed here today, but I will be offering, in due
course, an amendment to the pending bill that would mandate this sale.
So I would ask my colleagues to please join us in a bipartisan way of
showing our support for our friends and allies in Taiwan and generating
jobs right here at home.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.

Disaster Assistance

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, my State of Vermont has been hit very
hard by Hurricane Irene. Widespread flooding caused a number of deaths,
the loss of many homes and businesses, and hundreds of millions--
perhaps $1 billion--in damage to property and infrastructure. I have
visited many of the most hard-hit towns, and I have been shocked and
moved by the extent of the damage I saw. Irene will go down in history
as one of the very worst natural disasters ever to hit the State of

[[Page S5812]]

Vermont. Let me share a few facts with you about the extent of the
damage.
Already, more than 5,200 Vermonters have registered with FEMA.
Remember, we are a State of only 630,000 people and approximately
200,000 households, and yet more than 5,200 Vermonters have already
registered with FEMA.
More than 700 homes were severely damaged or completely destroyed--
700 in a State which has about 200,000 households.
Between 1,500 and 2,000 families have been displaced, their housing
uncertain as we approach Vermont's brutally cold winter season. It is
beginning to get cold in Vermont.
More than 73,000 homes were left without electricity--one-third of
all of the homes in our State. Tens of thousands of Vermonters lost
their phone service, and in some areas these services still have not
been fully restored.
More than 2,000 roads were badly damaged--2,000 roads--including 135
segments of State highways. More than 300 bridges--300 bridges--were
damaged. Hundreds of roads and bridges remain closed, while many others
are only open to emergency vehicles today. Some towns still have
limited access because the roads and bridges that link them to the
outside world were destroyed.
Further, dozens of town libraries, townhalls, and municipal and
volunteer fire departments have been damaged or destroyed. Ninety
public schools could not open on time. The last one is just now opening
for the year.
Hundreds of businesses and more than 360 farms with more than 15,000
acres of farmland have been damaged, tearing at the fabric of our rural
economy.
Our Amtrak and freight services were completely suspended, as
railbeds literally washed into rivers. One Amtrak line is still down
today.
The largest State office complex was completely flooded and is closed
until further notice. Mr. President, 1,600 State employees cannot go to
work in that building. Important files and computer systems have been
ruined, disrupting the ability of the State to deliver critical State
functions.
I know that, as in times past, we will pick up the pieces in Vermont
and restore our homes and businesses. And I have to tell you that if
there is any silver lining out of that disaster, it is the fact that in
community after community, people came out, worked together, and
participated in cleanup efforts, supported each other. People from the
northern part of the State, which was hit less severely, came down to
the southern part of the State to help. Strangers helped strangers. It
was an extraordinary effort of people coming together. But the simple
fact is, if a State such as Vermont has communities that are
devastated, a State such as New Jersey has communities that are
devastated, we cannot do it alone. The scale of this disaster is too
overwhelming for a State of the size of Vermont.
The Federal Government has long played an important role in disaster
recovery. That is something we have known for many years and we have
seen time after time after time. When our fellow citizens in Louisiana
and the gulf coast suffered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina,
people in Vermont were there for them, and I can tell you how many
people told me we have to do everything we can to protect the people
who were devastated by Katrina. When the citizens of Joplin, MO, were
hit by deadly tornadoes, people on the west coast were there for them.
And, of course, when terrorists attacked the United States on 9/11, we
were all there for New York City. That is what being a nation is about.
The name of our country is the United States of America--``united,''
u-n-i-t-e-d--and if that name means anything, it means when disaster
strikes one part of the country and communities are devastated, people
are hurt, bridges and roads are out, farmers cannot produce the food,
we as a nation rally together to support those communities. That is
what States impacted by Irene expect from Congress because that is what
being a nation is about. Disaster relief, funded on an emergency basis,
is what Congress has done for decades, and it is what Congress must do
now.
The Senate did the right thing in quickly passing a $6.9 billion
disaster relief supplemental appropriations bill, and I wish to thank
all of the people active in that, from Senator Reid, to Senator
Landrieu, to Senator Leahy--all of the people who made that happen.
They did a great job.
Does that bill have everything I would like to see in a disaster
relief bill for the State of Vermont? No, it does not, quite frankly.
But it is a very good bill. It is an urgently needed bill. It is an
important step forward in the right direction. I commend, again, all of
those Senators who played an active role in moving that bill along,
including 10 Senate Republicans.
Disaster aid should not be a partisan issue, but it seems the House
Republicans are intent on making it one. The disaster funding the House
is likely to pass this week is totally inadequate and will not address
the magnitude of the damages inflicted by Hurricane Irene or the
backlog in FEMA funding that existed before it.
To my mind, it is an outrage that for the first time in modern
American history House Republicans want to have a budget debate over
disaster assistance. They threaten to block urgently needed aid unless
the cost of that help is offset by cuts in other needed programs. They
want to use Hurricane Irene as another excuse for a budget fight. And
think about the precedent that sets. What happens if tomorrow there is,
God forbid, a disaster in New Mexico or a disaster in Colorado? Does
that mean we should be cutting education or environmental protection in
order to pay for help to New Mexico or Colorado or California? If there
is a major earthquake someplace in this country and communities are
devastated, do we cut back on the needs of the children? Do we cut back
on Medicare and have that huge debate in order to pay for disaster
relief?
Historically, the U.S. Congress has said--and what they said was
right--that when disaster strikes, we as a nation come together and we
provide the support to those communities which have been hurt to get
them back on their feet. That is what we have done in this great
country, and I am offended that some of my Republican colleagues in the
House suddenly start thinking we need a major budget debate for every
disaster that is hitting this country. That is wrong. That is
extraordinarily bad public policy. That is, frankly, unpatriotic and
not what the United States is about. Yes, of course, we must continue
to address our deficit problem but not on the backs of communities in
Vermont, New Jersey, North Carolina, or other States that have been
devastated by Hurricane Irene. For those States and communities, we
must get them emergency help, and we must get it to them as quickly as
possible.
Amazingly--I must say this--this talk about budget offsets for
disaster relief comes from some of the same people who repeatedly and
conveniently ignore their own actions when it suits them. Congress
provided $800 billion to bail out Wall Street banks. I did not hear any
discussion about offsets when it came to bailing out Wall Street.
Congress extended huge tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthiest
people in this country, driving up the deficit. I did not hear any call
for offsets when we gave tax breaks to billionaires and large
corporations. The United States is spending today $10 billion a year on
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including billions to rebuild those
countries. I did not hear any call for offsets when it came to the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let me conclude by saying this: This country has its share of
problems. We all know that. But if we forsake the essence of what we
are as a nation; that is, we stand together when disaster strikes, if
we forgo that, if we no longer live up to that ideal, I worry very much
about the future of our great Nation.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). The majority leader is
recognized.

disaster relief

Mr. REID. Mr. President, last week the Senate passed three important
pieces of bipartisan legislation. It was really quite a productive
week. We reauthorized the Federal Aviation Administration, which kept
80,000 workers, including safety inspectors, on the job. We passed a
highway bill that

[[Page S5813]]

keeps 1.8 million people at work building roads and bridges and dams.
We reached a bipartisan agreement to rush relief to communities
devastated by floods, tornadoes, and wildfires. So I was hopeful, as
this week began, that it would be productive. I thought Congress might
be able to set aside party politics to accomplish the important work of
this Nation. Instead, the tea party has taken over again. The tea party
Republicans have once again allowed partisanship to rear its ugly head.
Now House Republicans, obsessed with pleasing a group of radicals--
the tea party, they are called--are refusing to give the Federal
Emergency Management Agency the funding it needs to reconstruct ravaged
communities across this great country, and they are threatening to shut
down the government if they do not get what they want.
It is bad enough that we cannot agree that victims of floods and
fires should get the help they need without delay.
We cannot even agree on what we have already agreed to. We spent
months this spring and summer negotiating a deficit reduction agreement
that allowed Congress to appropriate more than $11 billion in disaster
aid for next year. After an earthquake, weeks of wildfires, and a
hurricane that slammed the eastern seaboard, we are asking to free up
$6.9 billion in emergency funds to help Americans in need.
There is a reason we have agreed in the past that disaster funding
should be set aside from the regular budget process. There is a reason
we agreed, as part of July's deficit reduction agreement, it should be
set aside once again. Farmers who have lost their crops to floods,
families who have lost their homes to hurricanes should not be used as
pawns in a budget-bidding war.
Over the last two decades, almost 90 percent of the money Congress
has authorized for disaster relief has been done outside the regular
budget process. Why? Because we cannot determine what Mother Nature is
going to do. We do the best we can. But who would have ever dreamed
Irene would hit when it did, with the devastation it did. Who would
have ever dreamed a tornado would level the town of Joplin, MO?
We have done the best we can. I ask my Republican colleagues: Why
should today be any different than the past? FEMA is running out of
money. That is the bottom line. On Monday, they will be broke. The
President declared emergencies in 48 of the 50 States this year. We
have had 10 disasters already that have cost more than $1 billion each.
It has been 30 years since we have had so many large natural disasters.
As of this morning, FEMA's disaster fund had almost nothing left. It
will be broke on Monday. The agency that rushes to help when disaster
strikes will be out of money in just a day or two--I repeat, Monday. We
are still in the middle of the hurricane season. Turn on the Weather
Channel and see why it is so important that we get FEMA the resources
it needs to react quickly to whatever Mother Nature sends our way.
FEMA has already halted reconstruction projects in 40 States to free
funds to react to immediate needs of communities affected by the most
recent disasters. Because of these delays, FEMA will take longer to
rebuild bridges in New Hampshire and schools in Missouri and homes in
Texas, all because of Republican stubbornness.
I am stunned. We have Senators from States that have been devastated
by these disasters--one State, thousands of fires, 2,000 homes burned.
Why wouldn't people vote to help people who have had such devastation?
All politics.
FEMA has been there for people when crops they have planted and
counted on to make a living were drowned by floods. The Federal
Government has always been there to help Americans in their hour of
greatest need, when their homes where their children were raised, spent
holidays, and made memories had burned to the ground or been washed
away or blown away.
But because of the delays, FEMA will no longer be able to rebuild the
bridges, for example, in the State of New Hampshire. I just heard my
friend, the junior Senator from Vermont, talk about Vermont. Vermont
has had almost 200 bridges washed away--gone. Texas has had those
fires. FEMA has been there when schools studied in and bridges driven
on have been rocked by earthquakes or blown away by tornadoes. Never
before has Congress tried to nickel and dime the victims of these
disasters.
Americans have watched all they had go up in smoke or be washed or
blown away. That is what Republicans are doing today. They are
shortchanging communities that can least afford the delays of partisan
gridlock.
Senate majority leader George Mitchell said: ``Bipartisanship means
you work together to work it out.'' American families and communities
are relying on us to work together to work it out and holding out hope
that we will not disappoint them.
Go back a month. We were struggling, struggling hard, to work out an
agreement that in years past has been simple. We were going to just
raise the debt limit in this country on bills we had already
accumulated. It took 3 months. But we got it done. One of the things we
did was we said we will no longer have fights during this next fiscal
year on funding the government. We agreed on the numbers.
What the House could not do in good conscience directly they are
doing indirectly. They are sending us a short-term continuing
resolution to fund the government until the middle part of November.
But because they have all these extremists in the Republican majority
in the House, they could not do that. They could not do that. They
could not send us what they had already agreed upon.
In fact, they put an addition on the bill, a so-called rider on the
bill, saying the Senate is only going to be able to raise the debt
ceiling if it agrees on their number on emergencies, recognizing that
their number will only last a few weeks. Here is what they did also
that was so mean-spirited. As I have outlined in detail, we have not
paid for these disasters because they are emergencies. They are not in
the normal budget process.
But the House took money for more efficient vehicles--they took that
money and said: We are going to pay for $1 billion for the year 2011.
The year 2011 ends--fiscal year ends--the end of this month, just a few
days from now.
Everyone has said, we just need a few million dollars to take care of
it until the end of this month. As I have indicated, we have enough
money until Monday. But that is all. The end of the month is not
Monday. They took $1 billion, when only a little bit was needed, and
stripped our ability to create jobs.
I spoke to Steny Hoyer in the House. He said they are taking away
52,000 jobs from the American people by doing this. They take $1
billion and pay for this. But just to show further meanness, they take
$\1/2\ billion and rescind it. It does not go toward the debt. It does
not go for anything. They just rescind it.
Then, of course, the year 2012, they put in an amount of money that
does not go very far with all these disasters, a few weeks' worth. So
we will be back having the same fight again, which is so senseless, so
unnecessary. I would hope the House of Representatives--there will be a
vote today around 4 or 5 o'clock. I know it will be a close vote. But I
hope people in the Senate will understand how important this vote is.
We are going to have a vote, as we have indicated, on the continuing
resolution to strip out the mean-spirited amendment they have in it,
take it out and put in what has already passed here by a substantial
majority.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 642

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, earlier, I sent an amendment to the desk.
This amendment will constrain the growth of this domestic spending
program. My amendment is fairly simple. It tightens the nexus between
TAA benefits and actual jobs lost because of trade. It does this by
changing the eligibility criteria from one that only requires that
trade ``contribute importantly'' to job loss to a more restrictive
criteria that the job loss be ``substantially caused'' by trade.

[[Page S5814]]

Under the current program, the worker only has to demonstrate that
imports from or shifts in production to a foreign country--what many
folks would call the ordinary course of business--``contributed
importantly'' to their job loss.
So what does ``contributed importantly'' actually mean? The TAA
Program holds that the contributed importantly standard is met if trade
is a cause, which is important but not necessarily more important than
any other cause of the job loss.
That does not sound like a tight nexus to me, certainly not a tight
nexus to trade to me. Believe me, these fears are not theoretical. Let
me give a real-life example. I am sure, by now, everyone is familiar
with Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar firm that was lauded by President
Obama as the poster child for his stimulus and green jobs plans.
It turns out, now that Solyndra is in bankruptcy, many of its
employees are applying for job-training benefits through TAA. To fully
understand this lunacy, let's take a look at recent history.
Here is how Vice President Biden described the administration's ill-
considered plan to direct over one-half billion taxpayer dollars for
loan guarantees for Solyndra:

The Recovery Act is working and you're going to see it work
right on that site. The loan to Solyndra will allow you to
build a new manufacturing facility and with it almost
immediately generate 3,000 new well-paying construction jobs.
And once your facility opens, there will be about 1,000
permanent new jobs here at Solyndra and in the surrounding
business community and hundreds more to install your growing
output of solar panels throughout the country.

Well, that didn't quite happen. Instead, the firm failed, potentially
taking over a half billion taxpayer dollars with it. Those ``permanent
new jobs''? Well, not quite. The workers are all unemployed because
their ``permanent'' jobs no longer exist.
It gets worse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the stimulus
loans themselves were a major cause of Solyndra's bankruptcy. Here is
the headline on the chart: ``Loan Was Solyndra's Undoing.''
In selling the half billion dollar loan to Solyndra, Vice President
Biden made it clear that these were the jobs of the future, saying:

We are journeying, in a sense, closer and closer to the
sun, to a more solar-powered America. And as we do, we're
leaving a shadow of a less efficient, more damaging past
behind us.

We all know--or should know--what happened to the arrogant Icarus
when he flew too close to the Sun.

Despite the Vice President's exhortations, what happened to
Solyndra? Solyndra is set to become an even bigger drain on
our taxpayers.

How is that possible? Through the magic of TAA, of course. It turns
out that the now-unemployed former Solyndra employees have applied for
trade adjustment assistance. The irony here is profound. The
administration is now considering whether to grant these Solyndra
workers TAA benefits because competition from China ``contributed
importantly'' to their job loss. That is ridiculous, frankly.
Here is another Wall Street Journal article, entitled ``Solyndra Was
Always Likely to Fail.'' You can see in the photo what a beautiful
plant it was--with all of your taxpayer dollars.
In a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, the CEO from
another solar company--tenKsolar--explained that everyone in the solar
business knew Solyndra's business model would not work and their solar
technology was too costly.
That didn't stop the White House from giving this company a $535
million taxpayer loan--money that is basically gone now. This was
despite the fact that the government's own analysts had predicted
months ago that Solyndra would fail in September. Well, it did.
Again, look at the photo of that beautiful building that was built
with taxpayer dollars. It is pretty hard to not admire it, to be honest
with you.
The fact that TAA benefits are even being considered for Solyndra
shows how tenuous the nexus between job loss and trade can be--and
workers can still get these expanded benefits, on top of unemployment
insurance.
How can Solyndra workers get TAA, when the business collapsed due to
a bad business plan and an ill-conceived loan of taxpayer money? That
was the cause of Solyndra going under. China imports, under the current
TAA program, however, might be construed by ambitious Department of
Labor bureaucrats to have ``contributed importantly'' to Solyndra
shutting down--despite the fact that the primary cause was the business
model and the government's intervention.
This needs to stop. We can do better. If we are going to continue to
fund this domestic spending, let's at least make sure its benefits go
to those workers whose job loss is actually caused by trade. That is
what this amendment will do. It will return the TAA threshold standard
to the ``substantial cause'' level. It would require that trade would
have to be a ``substantial cause'' of the work dislocation. This
standard was included in reforms advocated for by President Reagan that
were included in the bipartisan Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981.
That deficit reduction act included the largest package of spending
cuts in history--at that time. President Reagan had noted the
unfairness of treating one class of workers who lose their job due to
foreign competition better than their neighbor, who lost his job due to
domestic competition, so he tightened the threshold criteria to be
eligible for the TAA Program.
By returning to the narrower TAA threshold, this amendment would put
reasonable constraints on the program to prevent it from expanding into
another out-of-control spending program.
I ask my colleagues to support this amendment because I think it
makes sense. There is no question it will save taxpayer dollars and
make people act more honestly with regard to the use of taxpayer
dollars and, in the end, I think it will work better than the current
approach that my friends on the other side wish to have.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.

Disaster Aid

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I am here to speak about disaster aid and
the acute need we have in my State for assistance to deal with a
disaster that occurred earlier this summer in Minot, ND.
These are pictures from the valley in Minot, ND. Minot is constructed
on two hills, with a valley in between, with the Souris River flowing
through. We have just had the worst flood ever in history, by a long
margin. The Corps of Engineers was in yesterday to see me. They
calculate that this was a 430-year flood. A flood of this magnitude
would only come every 430 years. Certainly, it is beyond anything we
have ever seen in recorded history. They say the volume in this flood
was three times the previous record; the volume of water was three
times the previous record.
These are just a handful of the homes in Minot that were inundated;
and 4,000 families lost their homes. These are modest, middle-class
families, and the homes averaged $160,000 or $170,000 in value. Yet
they are devastated, because all they are eligible for is FEMA
assistance.
As the occupant of the chair knows well, FEMA was never designed to
be a stand-alone program to recover from disaster. FEMA was designed to
work in concert with insurance programs--homeowner's insurance, flood
insurance. In this case, with a flood, homeowner's insurance doesn't
help you at all. You get nothing on your homeowner's insurance. Then
the burden falls to flood insurance. In this entire town of 40,000
people, there were less than 400 flood insurance policies. Some may
say, why didn't they have flood insurance?
That is a reasonable question to ask. The answer is very simple: No
one thought they needed flood insurance. Flood insurance was not
required because they were behind a levee that was supposed to protect
against a hundred-year flood event, and actually something more than
that. In addition, new dams, since the last major flood, have been
built in Canada to prevent such flooding--dams that were, in part, paid
for by the United States.

There was no reason for people to believe they needed flood
insurance. As a result, very few had it. The bottom line is that the
most these people, who have had their homes destroyed, can get--and
believe me, these homes are destroyed. Most of the 4,000 families who

[[Page S5815]]

lost their homes had 10 feet of water on their homes for weeks. I have
been there. I have seen these homes, and I have smelled them. It is
horrific. To restore these homes, you have to take them down to the
studs and start over again--with $30,000 at the most.
If you are a young couple starting out, and you have a $170,000 home
and a $140,000 mortgage, and the house is destroyed, and it costs
$140,000 to rebuild, and you have $30,000, you have a big problem.
Maybe you are like my cousin and her family, who had just sold their
home, and then it was flooded--but it flooded before closing. So guess
what. They had gone and bought a new home because they sold their
existing home. Then their existing home was flooded and, of course, the
person never goes to closing. So now they have two homes, two
mortgages. This is a neighborhood of middle-class and lower middle-
class families. They are devastated.
The question is, are we going to help? In the past, we have. In
Katrina, we not only provided FEMA disaster funding, we also provided
CDBG additional emergency funding. That is precisely what we did in the
1997 flood in Grand Forks, ND, a 500-year flood. We provided additional
CDBG funding. For that town alone, we provided over $170 million of
CDBG emergency funding to help deal with the catastrophic situation
there. We have provided much more than that to Katrina victims.
What we are asking here is not unprecedented, and it is not something
that hasn't been done before. It is absolutely needed.
This is the headline from the Fargo Forum, the biggest newspaper in
our State, about what is happening in Minot, ND: ``11,000 People Forced
Out of Their Homes.'' It may not sound like many in a State such as
California or New York, but in North Dakota that is one-sixtieth of the
entire State's population. That is over a quarter of the population of
this city, Minot, ND. ``The Rising Souris Moves Up Evacuation Time.''
Eleven thousand people were forced out of their homes. When they came
back, they found an absolutely unmitigated disaster.
This ran in the Minot Daily News this year: ``Projection:
Devastation. Minot Residents Evacuate as Historic Rise in Souris River
Approaches.''
This shows some of the preparation. The people tried to get out of
town and out of these homes before it hit.
Then we have this headline from June 21: ``It's a Sad Day.'' It is a
sad day because the crest was increased, in 48 hours, by 10 feet. In
other words, the city was protected to a certain level, and then Canada
lost control of their major reservoir. Their Premier told our Governor
that the floodgates are wide open, there is a wall of water coming your
way. Indeed there was. They increased, in a 48-hour period, the
projection of how high water levels would be by 10 feet.
There is no way humanly possible to build up defenses by 10 feet in
48 hours. It cannot happen. There is no possible way. With miles and
miles of levees, can you imagine trying to build that up 10 feet in
just a matter of hours? It was a sad day, Mr. President.
Here is the result--massive flooding, flooding that represented an
unusual flood in the sense that usually when you have a flood, the
water comes and goes. In this case, the water came and the water
stayed.
This is downtown Minot, ND. This is home, by the way, to one of the
two Air Force bases that are home to the Nation's B-52s. It is also the
home to 150 Minute Men III missiles, which are an important part of the
deterrence of the United States.
You can see that this downtown area was devastated by floodwaters.
The flood came--and stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed. Here you
can see rooftops, in a picture taken by Brett Miller of the North
Dakota National Guard while flying over Minot, ND. I have been to the
schools that have been flooded, and two of them were absolutely
destroyed. They have to be rebuilt. You can't possibly rehab them in
any kind of cost-effective way.
In many cases, all you see are roofs here, because a majority of the
4,000 homes that were destroyed had 10 feet of water on them. For weeks
and weeks, many of these homes had 6 to 10 feet of water on them.
Anybody who knows what water can do when it sits and is there for
weeks. When you come back, you have mold everywhere. The only possible
way to get it out is to take the house down to its studs.
Mr. President, let me just close on this photo from June 24 of this
year. Again, the Minot Daily News headline: ``Swamped.'' Indeed, we
were absolutely swamped. Water starts to inundate the valley. ``The
Corps Says Souris Flows to Double by Saturday.'' These are the
headlines people were coping with in Minot, ND.
This devastation will not be addressed for months to come. People are
already moving in to temporary FEMA trailers. Those FEMA trailers--
which are welcome because without them people would have no shelter--it
should be understood, are going to be tough to live in during a North
Dakota winter. The people living in those trailers are going to have a
tough time in a North Dakota winter. So we need help.
Yes, we need to replenish the FEMA fund, absolutely. But more than
that, we desperately need additional emergency CDBG funding. That is
what was used effectively for Katrina, and that was used effectively in
the horrible flood that hit Grand Forks, ND, 1997. So we are asking our
colleagues to do what we have done for them in disaster after disaster.
We stood with them, we joined with them, we supported them, and we are
asking that for our people at this time.
Senator Hoeven and I have an amendment for $1 billion of CDBG
funding. We have a markup occurring in the Appropriations Committee
this afternoon, and I understand they are going to agree to $400
million. But that is nationwide. The need in North Dakota alone is $235
million, according to our State's Governor. The need for emergency CDBG
funding in my State alone is $235 million, and the Appropriations
Committee is about to agree to a level of funding nationwide of $400
million.
Mr. President, there is a chasm--a chasm--between the need and the
resources available. We are going to have to do better than this, or
these 4,000 families in North Dakota who have had their homes destroyed
are going to have a pretty miserable Christmas and a pretty miserable
new year. We are better than that. We have proven so repeatedly. I hope
we are able to prove it again.
I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we charge
time during the quorum call equally between the two sides.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair, and again I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I have an amendment which I will be speaking
to in just a moment.
First, I ask unanimous consent that an editorial in the Arizona
Republic from September 21, by Robert Robb, the subject of which is
President Obama's debt-cutting plan fails to tell the whole story, be
inserted in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the amendment I will be talking about has
been filed. It is amendment No. 645. But before I describe that
amendment--which I believe and hope we will be able to vote on when we
have our series of votes later on this afternoon--I want to respond to
one thing the leader said in his remarks after lunch.
He was talking about the continuing resolution, which we believe will
be coming over from the House of Representatives later on today. That
continuing resolution, of course, has funding for the various disasters
which

[[Page S5816]]

have befallen various parts of our country.
I think the leader has indicated that he is going to be attempting to
amend that House product with an increase in that spending. He asked
the question rather rhetorically: Why aren't those Senators who have
disasters in their States willing to vote for my increased spending
amendment? Then he answered his own question, saying it is all
politics.
Mr. President, first of all, as you know, we are not supposed to ever
question the motives of fellow Senators. I am sure that isn't what the
leader had in mind, but I would suggest to the leader it is not
politics that causes people to vote against his amendment. If it were
politics, they would be voting for his amendment. Those Members who
have disasters in their States would say, surely, they want even more
money so they can be sure to cover all those disasters. So if it were
politics, they would probably be voting yes.
I suggest the reason they are voting no is because of principle.
First of all, because there is plenty of money in the House continuing
resolution to cover all of the disasters that have already occurred and
those that could be anticipated over the course of the next 7 or 8
weeks, which is the period of time covered by the bill; and, secondly,
we should never spend more money than necessary. I will stand corrected
if I am wrong, but I do not believe the majority leader's amendment has
a calculation of why all of the money he proposes is necessary based
upon emergencies or disasters that have occurred.
So I just wanted to make sure my colleagues appreciate if and when
such a vote occurs, at least for those people with whom I have spoken,
they are going to be voting on principle and on the fact there is
plenty of money for disasters. There is no reason to put in more money
than is needed, especially in our time of a very difficult deficit
situation.

Exhibit 1

[From Real Clear Politics, Sept. 21, 2011]

Obama's Duplicitous Debt Proposal

(By Robert Robb)

President Barack Obama's debt reduction plan could be
titled, The Audacity of Duplicity.
According to Obama, he is proposing $4 trillion in debt
reduction over the next 10 years, with there being $2 in
spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases.
Where to begin?
Half of the president's claimed debt reduction comes from
policies already in place. Obama says $1 trillion will be
saved by winding down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In
other words, Obama wants credit for reducing debt that was
never going to be incurred.
Another $1 trillion is from the agreement that was reached
to increase the debt ceiling. But that agreement didn't
really reduce the debt by $1 trillion. It simply adopted
future spending caps that would have that effect. However,
there were no new laws adopted that would actually reduce
spending. The caps are unenforceable promises to do something
unspecific in the future.
Obama is actually only proposing $2.1 trillion in new
stuff. Of that, nearly $1.6 trillion is increased taxes. So,
he's actually proposing $3 in tax increases for every $1 in
spending cuts.
But that still doesn't tell the real story. The ``spending
cuts'' aren't really all spending cuts. They are just things
other than tax increases, and there's over $135 billion in
fee increases. Those may be warranted, but they aren't
spending cuts.
So, Obama actually is proposing over $1.7 trillion in
additional federal revenue, making the ratio $4 in increased
taxes and fees for every $1 in spending cuts.
But that still doesn't tell the whole story. Obama, of
course, is purposing increased stimulus spending now. Net,
Obama is only proposing to decrease actual federal spending
by about $245 billion over 10 years. So, the real ratio is $7
in increased taxes and fees for every $1 in actual spending
cuts.
In short, Obama has proposed a massive tax increase while
doing very little to control federal spending.
The bulk of the tax increases, $1.2 trillion, fall on
individuals making over $200,000 a year. Supposedly, their
tax treatment would only be returned to the levels prevailing
during the Clinton prosperity, but that's another bit of
duplicity.
Obama proposes that the top two tax rates be returned to
Clinton-era levels, but doesn't stop there. He would also
limit the deductions they take, which wasn't the case during
the Clinton bliss. And his health care bill already socked
this group with an increase in payroll taxes of nearly 1
percent on wage income and an investment income tax increase
of nearly 4 percent.
In short, Obama is advocating tax rates for those earning
more than $200,000 a year much higher than the Clinton-era
rates, which Bill Clinton himself described as too high.
This is supposedly so millionaires and billionaires pay
their fair share. According to the Tax Policy Center, the top
1 percent of tax filers has 16 percent of the country's
income, but pay 24 percent of all federal taxes and 35
percent of federal individual income taxes.
According to Obama mythology, millionaires and billionaires
pay lower tax rates than average Jacks and Jills. According
to the Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent pays 18 percent
of their income in federal income taxes. The middle quintile
pays less than 3 percent. Those below that actually get more
money back than they pay in.
Obama seems really worked up over the fact that investment
income is taxed at a lower rate than wage income. But that's
not really the case. Dividends are taxed at the corporate
level before they are distributed to individuals, when they
are taxed again. Capital gains are taxed on their nominal
value, ignoring the effect of intervening inflation.
If Obama were truly interested in a bipartisan down payment
on debt reduction, he could have anchored his proposal in the
recommendations of his debt commission. The debt commission,
however, recommended about half of what Obama proposes in
additional federal revenue and raised in a way that lowers
rates across the board, including for millionaires and
billionaires.
Obama's interests, however, clearly lie elsewhere.

Amendment No. 645 to Amendment No. 633

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the amendment, as I said, is numbered 645,
and I will be discussing the contents of the amendment and why I think
it should be addressed. But let me precede that with this point.
I think the bill before us, the TAA bill, actually deserved greater
scrutiny than the process allowed. There was an opportunity for some
more fundamental changes in the TAA Program than occurred. The only
changes are pretty rudimentary, and I don't think anyone can contend
they will save substantial amounts of money or represent fundamental
reform. The process of putting this all together was by people who
supported TAA, not people like me who have a real problem with TAA. So
it is probably no surprise the program isn't substantially reformed.
Specifically, on the TAA training, which is part of what I am
focusing on, no work was done to reform the training funding to reflect
the fact there are already over 40 programs dedicated to worker
training. One of our colleagues, Senator Coburn, has done some great
work in this area to highlight the problem. Instead, the substitute
just increases overall training funding and does very minimal reform.
More broadly, there is little evidence the TAA programs are actually
effective. That is what I will speak to with regard to the piece I will
be eliminating, hopefully, with the amendment I am proposing. We are
going to spend over $1 billion on the so-called enhanced TAA provisions
in the substitute and another $7 billion on the baseline program. So $1
billion on the enhanced provisions, $7 billion on the baseline program,
and we don't even know whether it actually helps our citizens.
I have filed other amendments that I may or may not bring up,
depending upon what our schedule is, but at a minimum I hope the word
of the TAA supporters can be relied upon as we move forward. For
example, the substitute is intended to terminate baseline TAA after
2014. But due to CBO scorekeeping, CBO estimates that Congress could
actually spend another $7.4 billion for the years 2015 to 2021--years
after all the TAA is scheduled to be terminated. So I plan to work with
the CBO to ensure these savings are actually extracted from the
baseline.
This amendment I speak of repeals the TAA for the Firms Program. It
would repeal that as of October 1, 2011--in other words, the end of the
fiscal year. The amendment would only save about $16 million a year,
but I think it serves as a test of one's real commitment to reform. I
propose eliminating this small piece of the TAA that President Barack
Obama proposed be eliminated in his budget.
The President's budget recommendations for this year specifically
recommend termination of the TAA for Firms Program, and I thought--
since we have all talked about how our constituents keep telling us
they want us to come back and work together to get things done--here is
an opportunity where a Democratic President and a Republican Senator
have proposed something, and it is an opportunity for colleagues on
both sides of the aisle to get together and say, yes, there is at least
one program--it is a small one,

[[Page S5817]]

$16 million--that ought to be eliminated.
What are the reasons for the President's request this program be
dropped? According to his ``Termination, Reductions and Savings''--this
was submitted as part of the fiscal year 2012 Federal budget--the first
point is the resources would be better spent elsewhere. Here is what
the President's budget says:

The administration believes it is more effective to direct
EDA's funding towards programs that make investments to
promote globally competitive regions, rather than to assist
specific firms that have been harmed by trade.

The budget also made the point the centers are too expensive and they
are poorly selected. Here is what the President's budget said:

The non-profit Trade Adjustment Centers that administer the
program are chosen non-competitively and have high overhead
rates.

So the first point is the President's budget says: Let's get rid of
this program. It is not run well, and it is not centered properly on
where we should be centered. The second reason for elimination of this
proposal is the EDA's own budget request to Congress for fiscal year
2012 clearly shows other programs are more effective and less costly
than this program--TAA for Firms--and I will quote them directly:

The Economic Adjustment Assistance program, which is the
most flexible tool in EDA's toolbox and provides a wide range
of technical, planning, and public works and infrastructure
assistance and can get money out more quickly and with far
lower overhead costs, meaning more help for the communities
that need it.

The third reason I propose eliminating this small program is the TAA
for Firms Program doesn't require any kind of significant trade impact
for eligibility. In fact, according to the program's own Web site that
outlines frequently asked questions, here is what it says:

Question: Are only firms seriously affected by imports able
to participate? Answer: No. We work with a variety of
manufacturers and, for some, imports represent only a minor
challenge. Regardless of the degree of impact, a firm may be
eligible if it experienced sales and employment declines at
least partially due to imports over the last two years.

So that is the third problem. The fourth problem: Obviously, there
are always bound to be some success stories, but the program's 2010
annual report raises serious questions about its effectiveness. For
example, this annual report--by the way, it was required by the
stimulus bill--highlights that only 56 percent of firms in 2010
actually completed the program. That means a whopping 44 percent quit
for various reasons.
The annual report also shows that firms that started the program in
2008 had little marketed success. After 1 year, firms that completed
the program had average employment decrease by 10 percent and an
average productivity increase of 11 percent, which is only slightly
better than the Bureau of Labor Statistics' national average for the
manufacturing industry of a decrease in employment of 13 percent and an
increase in productivity of 4 percent. After 2 years, program
graduates' average employment dropped by 16 percent and average
productivity increased by 3 percent, while the national average for
manufacturing firms saw employment drop only 12 percent and average
productivity increase by 6 percent. In other words, after 2 years,
firms not in the program were doing better than firms in the program
despite all the money we are spending on it.
The fifth reason. While it is just authorization language here,
repeal does save money. The TAA for firms centers will close and their
employees will be reassigned.
We have to reduce the cost and reach of government if we are going to
prevent fiscal collapse, and that is the primary reason I am focused on
this program. It is not a huge amount of money. Under the substitute,
the program would be continued at 2002 levels or, in other words, about
$16 million a year. But that is money we don't have to spend, as the
President's own budget said, because this program doesn't work well and
in effect, as I am saying, wastes taxpayer money.
So if we can't eliminate a program such as this--a program the
administration wants to terminate, one EDA says could be done better
with other programs, that doesn't require any great connection or
impact by trade imports, that has a questionable track record with high
failure rates and outcomes at least no better than firms that don't
participate--then I am greatly discouraged about the Senate's ability
to effect any kind of actual reform.
I urge my colleagues' attention to this. I know some will say we
can't make any amendment to this whatsoever or it won't be accepted by
the House. You ask my House colleagues whether they would support this
amendment. My guess is they would say they would be happy to support
this amendment. I hope we will be able to vote for it this afternoon
and that my colleagues will support amendment No. 645.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be made
pending.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Arizona [Mr. KYL] proposes an amendment
numbered 645 to amendment No. 633.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor and join
my colleagues who were here just a few minutes ago talking about the
importance of robust funding and immediate funding for disaster relief
in our country.
Leader Reid came to the floor to explain the importance of this
issue, followed by the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Conrad, who has
helped lead portions of his State back literally from the brink of
destruction several times. So when a Member like Senator Conrad speaks,
we really should listen. He has been through--excuse me--hell and back
in parts of his State, and he really does understand what is at stake,
and some Members who think they know about disasters and have not
really quite experienced them in their State would be well advised to
listen to his plea to get this done right now.
I wish to address three specific statements that have been made on
the floor of the Senate by my friends on the other side of the aisle
that are, with all due respect, patently false.
Leader McConnell came to the floor either last night or this
morning--because it was reported in the Washington Post--and said we
don't have to worry because Congress always does what is appropriate
when it comes to disasters.
I don't even know where to begin to say how false that statement is.
And I know the leader didn't mean to mislead anyone; he just made a
comment: We don't have to worry about this; we always do the right
thing. I was there for Katrina and Rita. This Congress did not always
do the right thing. There are still things Congress should have done in
the aftermath of Katrina and Rita that have not yet been done, and
there is a whole list of things that were done by this Congress but 2
years too late or 3 years too late. So let me be very clear with people
following this debate. Congress does not always do the right thing when
it comes to disasters, and we are about ready to make another mistake,
and it is so unnecessary and so unfortunate.
No. 2, there is a disagreement going on about whether this is
politics or principle. And I know our side has said and we believe
there has to be politics involved because there is no other reason to
explain why the House Republican leadership continues to throw a wrench
into this when it is completely unnecessary. What is the principle they
are fighting for, if it is a principle? The only principle I can think
of is the principle of, when things are going smoothly, blow it up,
because that is what they are doing.
What do I mean by that? Let me take a minute to explain. As the
Republican House leadership knows full well, the Senate and the House
have already agreed--we agreed 30 days ago. Before Hurricane Irene,
before Tropical Storm Lee, before these storms ever happened, the
Republican and Democratic leadership agreed, in the big fight we had
over the whole meltdown--not of the government but of the shutdown,
almost, of the economy--we remember that, Mr. President, don't we, that
big fight we had--in that negotiation, the leadership of both Houses,
Republicans

[[Page S5818]]

and Democrats, already agreed--in anticipation that we would be running
short of FEMA money because we have been running short of FEMA money
now for 8 months, in anticipation of that, they said in that agreement:
We are going to carve out an $11 billion approximate pot of money or
cap adjustment so that when we come to ask for disaster aid, we won't
have to fight again.
Why do we like to fight so much? I mean, I can fight, I do fight, but
I choose not to. What is the principle the House Republicans are
fighting for? It must be ``when things are going smoothly, let's blow
it up.'' That is why I am so frustrated. It is an unnecessary fight to
be having. Again, we have already made provision for $11 billion. So
the leader puts in $6.9 billion--well within the range of this $11
billion allowance--and lo and behold the House leadership says:
Absolutely not. We are not doing that. We are not even going to
consider the $6.9 billion. What we are going to do is just continue
last year's level of funding, which was inadequate then. That is why we
have run out of it.
So they are going to take the inadequate level we had last year
before all these storms happened and extend it for 6 weeks and claim
victory and then come back after the fact and require, for one of the
first times--not the first time in history but one of the few times in
history--to then grab back and say: To finish the disaster money for
2011, you have to go gut a program that is very important to some
Members--more important to some than others but an important program.
The House is insisting that we gut $1.5 billion of a program that is
creating jobs in Michigan and other parts of the country. So why are we
destroying jobs when we don't have to? Again, it must be the principle
of, when things are going smoothly, when things are working, when the
leadership has actually agreed, the House Republican leadership will
just throw a wrench and really mess things up.
Thank goodness there are 10 Republican Senators in this Chamber who
don't follow that principle of throwing a wrench when things are going
smoothly. They follow the principle of common sense and compassion and
being forward-leaning when it comes to helping Americans who need our
help. Senator Blunt, Senator Rubio, Senator Snowe, Senator Collins,
Senator Murkowski, Senator Brown from Massachusetts, Senator Heller
from Nevada, Senator Hoeven from North Dakota, Senator Toomey from
Pennsylvania, and Senator Vitter from Louisiana--many of them have
experienced disasters in their States in the past and remember those
terrible days or they are experiencing them now, and they said: We
don't follow the ``throw the wrench in the gears'' principle. We are
going to follow the ``let's get it done'' principle. Let's get the work
done. Let's move forward. Let's stop fighting. Let's provide immediate
and robust funding to help our communities.

So they voted across party lines. I have done that before. I have
been elected now three times. I mean, you can sometimes cross party
lines to do the right thing, find middle ground. So they did. They
found middle ground, and we came up with the $6.9 billion package.
Now, let me say, to answer specifically the Senator from Arizona, for
whom I have a lot of respect, we did not pull this sum out of the air.
This $6.9 billion, which is much more robust than the $2.6 billion the
House wants to provide, is a much more accurate estimate based on
actual numbers given to the Appropriations Committee, which is the
committee of authority here, by the agencies that are in charge of the
disasters, from Agriculture, from the Corps of Engineers. So our
number, the 6.9 that is being ridiculed as just being pulled out of the
air--no, contraire--it was given to us by the agencies. The number that
came from absolutely nowhere, that has no bearing on any sense of
reality today, is the number the House pulled up, which is last year's
number, which was the estimate before the storms even hit. So if you
want to argue which number is more accurate, please put your money on
our number because you will lose this bet.
Our number is based on actual estimates that have already been made
of disasters that have already occurred. In fact, it doesn't even--our
number--because we don't have the estimates in, we don't even have the
estimates yet for Tropical Storm Lee or for Irene. It was too early. It
takes a while for these numbers. So when I say the 6.9 is much better
than the 2.6 and more accurate, that is true. Is it the real, actual
number that might take us through next year? Even I can't say that and
I am the chairman of the committee. I have more information than
anybody in here on this. But I can tell you one thing: It is much
better than 2.65, it is much more accurate, and at least it is based on
realistic estimates.
So when people on my side say: We don't even understand what the
Republicans in the House are fighting about, it is the truth. They
picked a fight they didn't need to pick. They are arguing over
something that was already decided. They are rejecting their own
government estimates of what these disasters cost because of what? On
principle? What is the principle? The only thing I can think of--and I
have said it five times, and I am going to say it six--it must be the
principle of, let's throw a wrench when things are working well, and I
think the American people are tired of it. It is exhausting.
So we now have projects--I would like to show the projects that are
stopped. We have a list that is literally too thick to put into the
Record, and I am not going to ask for it to be put in the Record
because somebody will have to stay here for days and type it in, and I
am not going to ask the clerks to do that. But I am going to hold it up
so people can see. These are pages and pages of projects that are
stopped right now.
I want to say directly to the House Member from Alabama, Mr.
Aderholt, who is the chairman, my counterpart, there are pages of
projects here in Alabama, in his own district, that are stopped, and he
is not helping by supporting last year's numbers for this year's
disasters. I hope he will rethink and start arguing not for his party
but for his State. Sometimes we have to put our parties aside and fight
hard for our districts and our State. I have done that before. I think
it is the right way to do it.

These are pages and pages of projects that have been stopped. They
are finished. They are not finished forever, we hope, but they are
stopped--roads, libraries, bridges. Talk about jobs, most of these are
done by small businesses, as we know. There is not any government
agency that swoops in to do these projects in small towns. They are
local contractors that get contracts with FEMA or the Corps of
Engineers for the work. They are issuing pink slips for these projects
right now. One would think that would motivate people. If compassion
doesn't motivate them, if the morality of the situation doesn't
motivate them, maybe thousands of jobs would motivate them. It seems
none of those are working. I am running out of enticements.
All these projects have been stopped. Will the $2.6 billion the House
is offering start these projects again? Yes, it will--their offer they
put on the table, that they are pushing us to accept, against which we
are fighting hard. We do not want to accept it, but we will not shut
the government down over this. We are pushing back as hard as we can
without shutting the government down because over there they keep
holding the economy hostage, then holding the government hostage. But I
am saying, yes, these projects will get started again. They will go for
6 weeks, and then we will be back where we are right now, which is no
place.
When we have a chance to fix a problem, there is already an agreement
it should be fixed, already the leadership has agreed how to fix it,
and there is an allocation of the money set aside--we still cannot do
it? Why? Because we want to come back in 6 weeks and have this fight
again? How much time is wasted.
Do you know what Tom Ridge said about this--a Republican, the first
guy who ran Homeland Security, the first Secretary? He said:

Never in the history of the country have we worried about
the budget around emergency appropriations for natural
disasters and, frankly, in my view, we should not be worried
about it now . . . we are all in this as a country. And when
Mother Nature devastates a community we may need emergency
appropriations and we ought to just deal with it and then
deal with the fiscal issues later on.

[[Page S5819]]

That is a former Secretary of the department that was in charge of
this.
Governor Christie, I spoke with him yesterday on the phone. He said
last week:

You want to figure out budget cuts, that's fine . . . you
expect the citizens of my State to wait? They are not going
to wait, and I am going to fight to make sure they don't do
it. Our people are suffering now and they need support now.
We need the support now here in New Jersey. This is not a
Republican or Democratic issue.

That is from Gov. Chris Christie, a very popular Republican, I might
say.
Then Gov. Bob McDowell, from Virginia, another Republican:

My concern is that we help people in need. For the FEMA
money, that's going to flow, it's up to them how they get it.
I don't think it's the time to get into that (deficit)
debate.

Why are we fighting over this? Why does the House Republican
leadership think last year's number that was inadequate last year is
good enough for this year when, as my staff just reminded me, we have
had 10 disasters, each one over $1 billion this last year? This is
Mother Nature. This wasn't caused by some conspiracy of the Democratic
Party; this is just what happened. Why do they want people to have to
worry whether help will be there when we can so easily fix this? On
what principle are they standing? It cannot be fiscal responsibility;
it is already provided for in the budget.
If this is conservatism, I don't think America likes that. I don't
think they will accept that. It is not their vision of conservatism, it
is their vision of foolishness.
I also think, as Patrick Leahy, Senator from Vermont, has said many
times, many people are starting to think, why is it some people in
Congress rush out to fund programs in Afghanistan and Iraq and never
wanted to debate when we went to war how we were going to pay for that.
We literally did it in 30 days. Nobody even questioned how we were
going to pay for it--literally. I was here. Maybe a few people raised
the issue this is going to be expensive, but nobody on the other side
did--to go to war, twice. Yet after a hurricane, a tornado, we now have
to have a knock-down, drag-out, full-fledged debate on how we are going
to pay for every single penny before we can give a green light to these
Governors and mayors and county commissioners. I think it is
outrageous, it is unnecessary, and it is so terribly unfair.
I don't know what is going to happen because we sent a bill over to
the House that has $6.9 billion. It, as I said, may not be enough, but
it is much better than $2.65 from last year that was not sufficient
then. We sent a bill over. It is a stand-alone bill. The House, if they
do not think the number--if they think the number is too high, take it
down a little bit or tell us they do not think this item is worth
funding--say something. We could negotiate on that number. It is not
written in the scripture, but it is the best estimate we had of what we
actually need right now.
No, they will not even look at the bill. They just send us $2.6
billion on a continuing resolution. So, basically, Senate, take our
old, tired, inadequate number and we are going to go home and then you
can shut the Government down if you don't like it. What kind of way is
that to treat disaster victims? It is no way at all.
Senator Hagan just told me--she got out of a meeting today--some of
her people are living literally in tents. I know, when I went down to
Cameron Parish, some of my people were sleeping in the open air, on
concrete. I know what these scenes are. They roll in my head.
Unfortunately, I have lots of memories about people sleeping on the
street, 500 people sleeping under an overpass waiting for the Federal
Government or the State or local government to set up a trailer or
rental unit.
Again, if we did not have the provision for this already decided, if
this was not the way we had operated in the past, I could understand
it, but everything moves us: the agreement that has already been
raised, the precedent of history, the accurate estimates of disaster.
Yet the Republicans want to fight about it. I think it is a bad fight
for them to have, let me just say. It is a shame. But we are going to
do our best to get immediate and full funding, and if we cannot, we
will be back in 6 weeks talking about it again, which is very
unfortunate because we cannot rebuild Tuscaloosa, AL, and Joplin, MO,
and parts of North Dakota, Minot, ND, and small towns in Alaska and
Alabama 6 weeks at a time. We cannot do it. When we have the money, we
have the provision, we have history and precedent on our side and the
need is so great for the Republican leadership to throw a wrench just
because they like to keep things stirred up, it is a shame.
That is where we are. We are going to do our best. This is what
Republican leaders say. This is what the pictures look like on the
ground. When it is not on CNN every night, people don't think it is
truly happening, but the fact is the fires are burning, there is rubble
in town that looks like this, the water may have receded from this
particular farm, but the damage is still there. The water I am sure has
receded from this scene, but this family is still wandering around
their lot looking for spoons and forks and things that might remind
them of what they once had, and Republicans have decided, for whatever
reason, to throw a wrench in this whole thing and make a big fight,
when it is absolutely not necessary.
We are going to keep working and see what we can do to bring relief
to a lot of this misery.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Constitution Day And Justice Antonin Scalia

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, September 17 was an anniversary with double
significance for our country. On September 17, 1787, delegates to the
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia held their final meeting and
signed the Constitution they had crafted. And on September 17, 1986,
this body voted unanimously to confirm Justice Antonin Scalia's
appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. Today, 25 years
later, he is the senior member of the Court.
These two events are profoundly related because Justice Scalia is
literally helping us rediscover the real Constitution. His approach to
doing the work of judges is helping us to rediscover the Constitution
that America's Founders gave us--the Constitution that is powerful and
solid; the Constitution that belongs to the people, protects our
rights, limits government, and makes liberty possible.
Antonin Scalia was born in Trenton, NJ, on March 11, 1936. After
graduating first in his high school class, valedictorian from
Georgetown University, and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, he
embarked on a legal career that would include stints in private
practice, government service, the legal academy, and, finally, the
judiciary.
President Reagan nominated then-Professor Scalia to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in July 1982. He appeared before the
Senate Judiciary Committee on August 4, 1982--another date with
constitutional significance. The hearing began just minutes after the
Senate voted 69 to 31 to approve a balanced budget constitutional
amendment, the only time this body has done so, at least so far. I was
an original cosponsor of that amendment. I mention that because Justice
Scalia's approach to the Constitution means that the people, and the
people alone, have authority to change it through the amendment process
outlined in the Constitution. The Senate's vote on that balanced budget
amendment was part of that process.
Professor Scalia told the Judiciary Committee that, if he were
appointed to the bench, his days of being able to comment on the wisdom
of laws enacted by Congress would be ``bygone days.'' The sense that
judges are doing something fundamentally different than private
citizens, fundamentally different than legislators, defines his
judicial philosophy.
The same theme dominated his confirmation hearing 4 years later, when
President Reagan nominated Judge Scalia to be an Associate Justice of
the Supreme Court. As that hearing opened, I quoted from the Chicago
Tribune that the nominee was determined ``to read the law as it has
been

[[Page S5820]]

enacted by the people's representatives rather than to impose his own
preference upon it.''
When Justice Scalia took the oath of judicial office, President
Reagan said that the judiciary must be independent and strong but
confined within the boundaries of a written constitution.
Public officials must swear to uphold and defend this written
Constitution. It declares itself to be the supreme law of the land.
More than 90 percent of Americans say it is very important to them. But
what exactly is it and what are judges supposed to do with it? The
answer to that question defines Justice Scalia's career and its lasting
impact on all of us.
The Constitution is a document, the oldest written charter of
government in the history of the world. Professor Steven Calabresi, who
teaches at Northwestern University Law School and once clerked for
Justice Scalia, writes that when Americans think of liberty, they think
of documents, especially of the Constitution.
Three statements at the turn of the 19th century tell us what we need
to know. First, the Supreme Court, in 1795, literally asked the same
question: What is the Constitution? Here is their answer:

The Constitution is fixed and certain; it contains the
permanent will of the people, and is the supreme law of the
land; it is paramount to the power of the legislature, and
can be revoked or altered only by the authority that made it.

Second, President George Washington echoed this theme a year later in
his Farewell Address. He said:

The basis of our political systems is the right of the
people to make and to alter their constitutions of
government. But the Constitution which at any time exists,
till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole
people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.

Third, the Supreme Court, in its 1803 decision Marbury v. Madison,
wrote that through the Constitution, the people established certain
limits for the Federal Government.

[A]nd that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten,
the Constitution is written.

There you have it. The Constitution is the means by which the people
express their will and set limits on the government. The people alone
have authority to change the Constitution and, until they do, it is
fixed and certain. One obvious way to alter the Constitution is to
change its words. But a more subtle, and even more effective, way to
alter the Constitution is to change its meaning. Words themselves are
just the form, but the meaning of those words is the substance. The
real Constitution is its words and their meaning together. Whoever
controls the meaning of the Constitution controls the Constitution
itself. When we say that only the people may alter the Constitution,
that simply must mean that only the people can change the words or
their meaning. For the Constitution to be what it is supposed to be,
both its words and their meaning must remain fixed and certain until
the people choose to change them.
Justice Scalia delivered the 1997 Wriston Lecture at the Manhattan
Institute. Its title was simply ``On Interpreting the Constitution.''
He described his topic as ``what in the world we think we're doing when
we interpret the Constitution of the United States.'' This is why it is
so important to clarify what the Constitution is in the first place, so
we know what judges are supposed to do with it.
Justice Scalia believes the only proper way to interpret the
Constitution is to find the meaning it already has, the meaning given
to the Constitution by the people who alone had authority to establish
it. Justice Scalia calls this approach originalism.
In his Wriston Lecture, he said that the Constitution ``means what it
meant when it was written.'' No one is more candid than Justice Scalia
that this approach is not easy, but no one is more certain than Justice
Scalia that this approach alone is legitimate. This approach alone
preserves both the people's control of the Constitution and the
Constitution's control of judges.
In 2005, Justice Scalia delivered a speech at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars titled ``Constitutional
Interpretation the Old Fashioned Way.'' He described originalism as
beginning with the text and giving it the meaning that it bore when it
was adopted by the people. With all due respect to Justice Scalia, he
did not invent this approach, but he is helping us to return to those
principles.
In his service on the Court, in his speeches and writings, Justice
Scalia is helping us rediscover what America's Founders told us to do
from the start. I have to emphasize that Justice Scalia has for 25
years implemented the very same approach that he described in his
hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Vice President Biden was the ranking member at the time, and his very
first question was about original meaning as a means of interpreting
the Constitution. Justice Scalia explained later in the hearing that
the starting point is ``the text of the document and what it meant to
the society that adopted it. . . . I am clear on the fact that the
original meaning is the starting point and the beginning of wisdom.''
This body knew Justice Scalia would take this approach when we
unanimously confirmed him, and he has stayed true to his word
throughout his judicial career. In addition to instructing us about the
principles we should once again follow, Justice Scalia has been
sounding the alarm about failing to do so. He condemns as ``power
judging'' the modern trend of judges substituting their own
constitutional meaning for that of the people. This amends the
Constitution as surely as changing its very words.
Judges continually find creative ways to mask their power judging.
They think of deeply impeded social or cultural values, evolving
standards of decency, and what the Constitution should mean in our
time.
One of Justice Scalia's former colleagues even said that the
Constitution is ``a sparkling vision of the supremacy of the human
dignity of every individual.'' All of these evolving standards and
sparkling visions are different ways of saying the same thing: that
judges have taken control of the Constitution by controlling what it
means.
Justice Scalia will have none of it. In a 1996 dissent, he rejected
this for what it really is; namely, the Court's Constitution-making
process. He wrote:

The court must be living in another world. Day by day, case
by case, it is designing a Constitution for a country I do
not recognize.

One of the many things I like about Justice Scalia is that he applies
his principles across the board. He has often pointed out that judges
amend the Constitution by changing its meaning in ways that liberals
like, but also in ways that conservatives like. All of it, he says, is
wrong.
Judges have no authority to design a new constitution no matter what
it looks like. Sometimes I wonder how anyone could think otherwise. How
could anyone believe that unelected judges may take the Constitution
that opens with the words, ``We the People,'' and turn it into
something else? Why would anyone tolerate judges who change the very
Constitution that judges are supposed to follow?
Justice Scalia believes no one should, and he challenges us to live
up to the principles that define our system of government and that make
our liberty possible. The real Constitution is solid and fixed. It was
established and can be changed only by the people. That Constitution,
the real Constitution, is strong enough to limit government and protect
liberty.
But that Constitution is being replaced by a very different one.
Since about the 1930s, the real Constitution controlled by the people
has been replaced in some measure by a fake constitution controlled by
judges. The Constitution is weak, pliable, and shifting, according to
them. It morphs and modifies. It shivers and it shakes.
This Constitution is a figment of the judicial imagination, and it is
written in disappearing ink. Thomas Jefferson warned that if judges
control what the Constitution means, it would become ``a mere thing of
wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into
any form they please.''
Doing so, Jefferson said, would make the Constitution nothing but a
blank paper. This is not just an academic exercise. If you think the
latest judicial mood swing is strong enough to limit government, think
again. If you think that a lump of wax or a piece of blank paper is
firm enough to protect your liberty, think again.

[[Page S5821]]

A constitution that can be changed by nothing more than a judge's
imagination is no constitution at all. This struggle over what the
Constitution is affects not only what judges do with it but also how
judges are chosen in the first place. If judges can change the
Constitution by changing its meaning, then the judicial selection
process will inevitably focus on the Constitution a judicial nominee is
likely to create. It will inevitably focus on the form into which a
judicial nominee can be expected to shape and twist the Constitution.
Speaking at the State University of New York School of Law in 2002,
Justice Scalia warned that if the Constitution's meaning is determined
by judges rather than the people, the selection of those judges becomes
``a very political hot potato. Every time you need to appoint a new
Supreme Court Justice, you are going to have a mini-plebiscite on what
the Constitution means.''
In a 2007 speech at the Jesse Helms Center, Justice Scalia similarly
compared the judicial confirmation process to a miniconstitutional
convention. If judges may write a new constitution through their
rulings, he said, the process will be about finding a nominee who will
``write the Constitution that you want.''
Justice Scalia is also affecting how we do things in the legislative
branch. The more that judges are willing to do our work for us, the
less of it we are likely to do ourselves. On the other hand, if judges
insist that we legislators say what we mean and mean what we say, then
we are likely to draft laws differently. The law that we enact, after
all, is the text of our statutes and not the speeches, reports,
comments, thoughts, or other things that consume the legislative
process.
Knowing that judges who have to interpret and apply our statutes will
look only at the law is an incentive for us to make sure if it is to be
the law, it must be in the statute. That approach is more transparent,
more accountable, and more reliable. We have Justice Scalia to thank
for pushing us in that direction.
Justice Scalia seems to be the Justice liberals love to hate. If this
were a Harry Potter movie, liberals would put Justice Scalia on a
wanted poster as ``Undesirable No. 1.'' Yet they just cannot seem to
look away. The principles upon which he stands are so compelling and
his way of winning them so powerful that whether you love him or hate
him you simply must deal with him.
Those who think judges may just make it up as they go along have a
hard time figuring out Justice Scalia because he does not follow their
game plan. Only a few months into his first term on the Supreme Court,
the Washington Post reported that though Justice Scalia was expected to
be a hard-changing conservative, he was voting with liberal Justice
William Brennan almost two-thirds of the time.
Several weeks later another Post headline read: ``Newest Reagan
Appointee Joins Liberals,'' and the percentage of agreement with
Justice Brennan seemed to be going up.
Conservative George Will's column at the end of the 1986-1987 Supreme
Court term bore the title, ``Good Grief, Scalia!''
Not to worry, though, because a Post headline just 1 year later read:
``Scalia May Be Successor as Conservatives' Chief Advocate.'' The real
way to know Justice Scalia, you see, is to know his principles. They
are principles drawn directly from America's founding from the nature
of limited government under a written constitution. No one works harder
to articulate and apply those principles day in and day out than
Justice Scalia.
Research in the last several years has demonstrated that he is the
funniest Justice in oral argument and the most cited in law reviews and
journals. His lectures around the country are consistently standing
room only. His interview on the University of California's ``Legally
Speaking'' television program has been viewed at least six times as
often as any other guest.
No doubt some of this popularity, this buzz, comes from his engaging
personality, his wit, and his sense of humor. People enjoy being with a
person like him. But it also comes from the substance, the sheer
magnitude of the message he delivers in that unique way. People like a
witty, engaging person. But they also respect powerful principles and a
message that weighs more than a passing intellectual fad.
I have so far spoken today about Justice Scalia, the jurist; I cannot
close this tribute, however, without a few comments about Antonin
Scalia, the man. The hearing on his Supreme Court nomination 25 years
ago took place in the Judiciary Committee's regular hearing room, which
is much smaller than where we hold such hearings today. His hearing
lasted just 2 days, including testimony by witnesses.

I can still remember that Justice Scalia's family occupied more than
one row in the audience. As Justice Scalia introduced them, including
all nine of his children, he said, ``I think we have a full
committee.''
Media cameras went crazy every time his youngest daughter Meg would
lean her head on her mother's shoulder. Meg was just 6 years old then.
But as I remember, she held up very well as we lawyers talked about all
sorts of jurisprudential minutiae.
That sight impressed on me Justice Scalia's deep love for family and
the sacrifice that family makes when someone like him is so devoted to
public service. He is also a man of deep faith and love for our country
and the values on which it was founded.
Five years ago, I marked Justice Scalia's 20th anniversary in a
speech on the Senate floor. At that time I put into the Record letters
from some of his former law clerks. I want to do the same today.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record after my
remarks letters from some of the following former law clerks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1).
Mr. HATCH. Edward Whelan, who clerked during the October 1991 term
and later served as my counsel when I was ranking member of the
Judiciary Committee, and is now president of the Ethics in Public
Policy Center; Paul Clement, who clerked during the October 1993 term
and later served as Solicitor General of the United States, and he is
now a partner in the Bancroft law firm; Mark Phillip, who also clerked
during the October 1993 term and later served as a U.S. district judge,
and is now a partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago; Brian Fitzpatrick,
who clerked during the October 2001 term and is now an associate
professor at Vanderbilt Law School; and Brian Killian, who clerked
during the October 2007 term, and is now an associate at the Bingham
McCutchen law firm in Washington.
In closing, all Americans owe Justice Antonin Scalia a deep debt of
gratitude. Every day he serves on the Supreme Court Justice Scalia
gives a gift to all of us. He is reintroducing us to the principles and
to the document that make our liberties possible. He invites us, in the
words of the Kellogg's Corn Flakes commercial, to try it again for the
first time.
I return to the scene of his first judicial confirmation hearing in
1982. The constitutional amendment process was underway that day, but
it was rightly happening on the Senate floor rather than in the
confirmation of a Federal judge. Keeping clear the principle that only
the people have authority to change the Constitution will give us, as
Justice Scalia often puts it, an enduring rather than an evolving
constitution. We must step up and govern ourselves rather than look to
judges to do it for us.
I hope we see this opportunity for what it is, following Justice
Scalia's lead, grasping again the principles of liberty and resolving
never to let them go.
Finally, I have been around here a long time. I have had a role with
regard to every current member of the U.S. Supreme Court and a number
of those who have gone on. I have to say that one of the most respected
men in this country is Justice Scalia. I count him as a friend. I count
him as a mentor. I count him as a teacher and professor. I count him as
one of the all-time greatest Supreme Court Justices, a man who, without
question, is as good a person as you can find.
He is a terrific human being. His life has been a life of service to
his fellow men and women. His wife is a terrific person, and as far as
I know the kids are all great too.
We have been fortunate that he has been willing to serve as he has.
We are

[[Page S5822]]

a greatly strengthened country because of Justice Scalia. There are a
number of Justices in the history of this country we have to look up
to. He is one of them. I think we should revere all of them, but he is
one of the greatest. I suspect that he will be quoted, he will be
written about, he will be talked about for a long time because of the
genuine intellect of the man, the tremendous personality he has, the
brilliant mind that we see on display every time he writes an opinion
or gives a speech or lectures to us or gives a talk.
This is one of the truly great people in our country today. I do not
care whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a
conservative or somewhere else, this is a man we ought to all respect
with every fiber of our beings, and his family as well.

Exhibit 1

Ethics and

Public Policy Center,

Washington, DC, September 9, 2011.
Hon. Orrin G. Hatch,
U.S. Senate, Hart Office Building, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Hatch: Thank you for commemorating the 25th
anniversary of the Senate's unanimous confirmation of Antonin
Scalia to the Supreme Court in 1986--fittingly, on
Constitution Day. As someone who has had the special
privilege of working both for you and for Justice Scalia, I
am particularly grateful to you for inviting me to take part
in this celebration.
Over the past twenty-five years, no one has done more than
Justice Scalia to promote fidelity to our Constitution. As
the most prominent proponent of the interpretive methodology
of ``original meaning,'' Justice Scalia has forcefully argued
that genuine fidelity to the Constitution requires that its
provisions--including, of course, its amendments--be
interpreted in accordance with the meaning they bore at the
time they were adopted. His intellectual triumph over
advocates of the so-called ``living Constitution'' approach--
under which judges are free to look to their own values or
sense of empathy in determining what the Constitution means--
has been so devastating that his opponents have largely
abandoned the term ``living Constitution'' and some have even
tried to rebrand their positions as originalist.
Justice Scalia's clear ideas are made all the more potent
by his distinctive writing, which combines a sparkling prose
and a logical rigor in a manner that is especially accessible
and appealing.
Time has a way of vindicating Justice Scalia's judgments.
Virtually everyone, for example, now recognizes the soundness
of Justice Scalia's brilliant solo dissent in Morrison v.
Olson, the 1988 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that
the independent-counsel statute did not violate the
Constitution's separation of powers. Precisely because
Justice Scalia's jurisprudence reflects the genius of the
Framers and an abiding faith in, and fidelity to, American
constitutional principles, there is ample reason to expect
that his wisdom on other hotly contested issues of the era
will ultimately prevail.
I am personally grateful to Justice Scalia for the
opportunity to serve as his law clerk for a year, for all
that I learned about the law and about legal reasoning from
working with him, and for his friendship and support during
my ensuing career. But, like all Americans, I am also deeply
indebted to him for his years of tremendous service on the
Court. May he enjoy many, many more!
Sincerely,
M. Edward Whelan III.
____

Bancroft,

Washington, DC, September 12, 2011.
Hon. Orrin Hatch,
U.S. Senate, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Hatch: Thank you for taking the Senate Floor
to mark the 25th anniversary of the beginning of Justice
Antonin Scalia's distinguished tenure on the Supreme Court of
the United States. Thank you also for inviting me to send you
a letter offering a few thoughts of my own on this important
anniversary.
I have had the privilege both of serving as a law clerk to
Justice Scalia and of arguing over 50 cases before him. I
count both experiences as high professional honors. What is
perhaps most remarkable about the opportunity to clerk for
the Justice is how much of the interaction with the Justice
is oral. To be sure, the opportunity to watch the Justice
work through drafts of an opinion is a remarkable experience.
But his writing style is inimitable, and the clerks are
relegated to the sidelines. The most valuable aspect of the
clerkship is the opportunity to discuss the Court's cases
with the Justice. Before every sitting, he had a session with
his law clerks that resembled nothing so much as an oral
argument. With 25 years of service, the Justice has now had
roughly 100 law clerks. As a reflection of the Justice's own
remarkable career, his law clerks have gone on to distinguish
themselves in academia, executive branch service, and the
judiciary. The key to their success, I believe, is that once
you have mixed it up with the Justice in an argument in
Chambers, very few subsequent professional experiences have
the capacity to intimidate.
Perhaps the only experience that can hold a candle to those
in-Chambers debates is to argue a case before the Justice and
his colleagues. Justice Scalia clearly changed the dynamic of
Supreme Court oral arguments. One only needs to listen to the
audio recording of arguments before Justice Scalia joined the
bench to appreciate his impact. Advocates used to hold forth
at length with only occasional questions from the Justices.
The Justice arrived and began asking questions in rapid-fire
succession. His colleagues did not want the newest Justice to
steal the show and began asking more frequent questions, and
as subsequent Justices joined the Court, they too joined the
fray. I do not believe it is an accident that the Solicitor
General's office only formalized its practice of holding moot
courts after Justice Scalia joined the Court.
Justice Scalia's impact on the Court has extended well
beyond oral argument. He has had a profound impact on the way
the Supreme Court, and all Judges, decide cases. The impact
is most obvious in the area of statutory construction. He has
fundamentally changed the way the Supreme Court approaches
the interpretation of congressional statutes. Coming from a
former law clerk, this could be dismissed as being less than
objective. But I have a much better source for this
observation: Justice John Paul Stevens. A few years ago, the
Supreme Court held argument in Arlington Central School
District v. Murphy, a case involving the question whether
expert fees were recoverable under a statute that allowed for
the recovery of attorneys' fees and costs. There was a pretty
good textual argument--which the Court ultimately adopted--
that expert fees were neither attorneys' fees nor costs.
There was also a pretty good argument based on the conference
report that the conferees thought that expert fees would be
recoverable. At oral argument, Justice Stevens suggested that
the latter view should carry the day because ``the rule that
you cannot look at legislative history didn't really get any
emphasis until after 1987'' and the statute at issue was
enacted earlier. To be clear, 1987 was not the date of some
watershed Supreme Court opinion about legislative history; it
was Justice Scalia's first full year on the Court.
It would be a mistake to think that Justice Scalia's
influence is limited to statutory as opposed to
constitutional interpretation, just as it would be a mistake
to pigeonhole his views as conservative or pro-Government.
Perhaps no opinion better illustrates both points than his
opinion for the Court in Crawford v. Washington. That
decision worked a fundamental reconsideration of the Court's
Confrontation Clause jurisprudence. With a classic
Scaliaesque focus on text, rather than purpose, the Court
rejected prior Supreme Court's decisions which considered the
underlying purpose of the Confrontation Clause--reliable
evidence--in favor of what the text actually guarantees: an
absolute right to confront witnesses. As he wrote for the
Court, the Sixth Amendment ``commands not that evidence be
reliable, but that reliability be assessed in a particular
manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination.'' In
the years that have followed Crawford, few areas of the
Court's constitutional jurisprudence have been more dynamic
and no criminal defendant has had a better champion in a
Confrontation Clause case than Justice Scalia.
Justice Scalia's impact has extended beyond the Court in
one more important way. An entire generation of law students
has now learned the law by reading Justice Scalia's opinions.
Even Justice Scalia's critics acknowledge the power of his
prose. I have had numerous law students--left, right and
center--confide that whenever there is a case with a Scalia
opinion, even a dissent or concurrence, they always read the
Scalia opinion first. And who can blame them? Who would want
to read about a three-pronged doctrinal test, when instead
you can read about 60,000 naked Hoosiers or even just nine
people selected at random from the Kansas City phone book.
And Justice Scalia's colorful prose can have serious
consequences--I am not sure the Court's Lemon test has ever
fully recovered from being compared to a B-movie ghoul.
Finally, the most commendable thing about your decision to
mark this anniversary is that it does not require us to wait
for the end of Justice Scalia's service to celebrate his
tenure. I can assure you that from an advocate's perspective,
Justice Scalia appears to be a vibrant young man up on that
bench. At the same time we mark his twenty-five years of
service, we can look forward to his continuing service to his
country and his Court.
Most sincerely,
Paul D. Clement.
____

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

and Affiliated Partnerships,

Chicago, IL, September 15, 2011.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch,
Hart Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Hatch: Thank you very much for honoring
Justice Scalia on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his
confirmation to the United States Supreme Court. It is an
honor to contribute a letter to your effort.
I suspect that many of Justice Scalia's colleagues in the
federal judiciary, his former colleagues from the legal
academy, and many of my colleagues in the Scalia law clerk
family will write about the Justice's

[[Page S5823]]

vast intellect and his profound contributions to the law.
Their comments will certainly be on the mark. Justice Scalia
is one of the smartest people one will ever encounter. And he
has indelibly influenced many areas of the law. He not only
has written landmark opinions concerning numerous areas of
constitutional and statutory law, he has, even more broadly,
focused debate about the proper methods of interpreting the
Constitution and federal statutes. He also has made key
contributions to the debate about the proper role of the
federal judiciary within our system of government. Not
everyone agrees with his views, of course, but I suspect most
everyone would agree that he has been, and remains, one of
the most important voices in these key discussions.
If I may, however, I am going to leave the accounting of
Justice Scalia's jurisprudential contributions to others far
more scholarly and intelligent than me. Instead, let me
please briefly address an aspect of Justice Scalia that
sometimes receives less public attention--namely, just how
nice and decent a person he is on a human level.
It is commonly said within the Scalia law clerk family that
the Justice was the nicest boss any of us has ever had. He
is, first and foremost, a teacher at heart, and he routinely
would take time, despite his workload and responsibilities,
to help us become better thinkers and lawyers. He also
treated us with the utmost professionalism and respect, and
with concern for our personal lives as well as our
professional ones. That concern has remained in the years
since we clerked for him--as he has shared our joys, with the
birth of our children, and our sorrows, with the deaths of
loved ones.
Justice Scalia's generosity with his time and attention is
not limited to his law clerks. I recall one time, in the
early summer when I was clerking, when Justice Scalia had
been working particularly hard for quite a stretch of time.
Notwithstanding those demands, he agreed to meet with a group
of school children who were touring the Court--as I recall,
somewhat unexpectedly within his schedule. Despite the
sixteen hour days he had been putting in for some weeks, he
engaged the kids at length, and fielded their many questions,
for well over an hour. There were no historians to record his
deeds, nor camera crews, but he did it just because he is a
generous and decent person. He entertained the kids (he is
quick to laugh, and quick to joke as well) but he also made
them think about important issues, and he took the time
necessary to do that, notwithstanding the long hours he had
been putting in for many weeks.
Justice Scalia will be ranked among the most important
jurists in American history because of his vast professional
contributions. He also is a model of a dedicated public
servant, who works earnestly to discharge his duties to the
American people, that can be emulated by judges throughout
the nation. But he also is an exceedingly kind and decent
person. Being a nice person is not everything, but it is
quite important indeed, and in that regard, he is also a gem.
In closing, let me please add one final thought. Any
recognition of Justice Scalia's twenty-five years of service
on the Supreme Court would be incomplete without a
recognition of his wife, Mrs. Maureen Scalia. Serving on the
Supreme Court is certainly a huge honor, but serving in that
role imposes substantial demands on any person and those
around them. I am quite confident, because I have heard
Justice Scalia say it many times, that he could not have
served on the Supreme Court without the support of his lovely
wife over his many years in the federal judiciary. She too is
owed recognition and thanks.
Thank you again for your efforts to recognize the twenty-
fifth anniversary of Justice Scalia's confirmation to the
Supreme Court. And thanks for your continuing service to the
Nation as well.
Sincerely,
Mark Filip.
____

Vanderbilt Law School,

Nashville, TN, September 9, 2011.
Hon. Orrin Hatch,
U.S. Senate, Hart Office Building, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Hatch: This month marks the 25th anniversary
of the United States Senate's confirmation of Justice Antonin
Scalia to the Supreme Court of the United States. On
September 17, 1986, the Senate confirmed Justice Scalia by a
vote of 98-0, and, on September 25, he received his
commission.
I hope that the Senate will find an appropriate moment
sometime in the coming weeks to honor Justice Scalia for this
important milestone in his service to the American people. I
realize that some members of the Senate are more fond of
Justice Scalia's jurisprudence than are others, but, no
matter where one stands on that question, I think it has to
be acknowledged that Justice Scalia has been one of the most
influential legal thinkers in modern American history--
indeed, perhaps in all of American history.
In an age where much judicial decision-making is ad hoc,
Justice Scalia distinguishes himself by following coherent
judicial philosophies known as ``textualism'' and
``originalism.'' Although these philosophies may have
predated Justice Scalia in some form, I think it is fair to
say that he brought them to life, and, in doing so, forever
changed the way lawyers, judges, and public officials talk
and think about the law.
This is not mere conjecture; it can be demonstrated
empirically. Several years ago, a student note was published
in the Harvard Law Review called Looking it Up: Dictionaries
and Statutory Interpretation, 107 HARV. L. REV. 1437 (1994).
The author examined how often the Supreme Court cited
dictionaries in its opinions. The author found that citations
dramatically increased after Justice Scalia brought his
textualist approach to statutory interpretation to the Court
in 1986. And it was not only Justice Scalia who was citing
the dictionary: all of the Justices were doing it. In short,
whether or not one agrees with Justice Scalia's philosophies,
nearly everyone acknowledges their power and nearly everyone
understands they must be grappled with.
Consider as well how often Justice Scalia appears as the
subject of law review articles. I asked a research assistant
to tally how often his name appeared in the title of a law
review article compared to the 17 other Justices who have
been his colleagues. Although it turns out that this is more
difficult to do than it sounds--Justices with common last
names generate many false positives--after eliminating the
most common false positives, my research assistant reported
what I had long suspected: law professors write many more law
review articles about JusticeScalia than about any of his
colleagues (including, strikingly, Thurgood Marshall, the
first African American on the Court, and Sandra Day O'Connor,
the first woman). My research assistant found 220 articles
about Justice Scalia, well ahead of the 150 or so for his
closest competitors (and many of the articles found for his
closest competitors were false positives not easily
eliminated). In short, love him or hate him, nearly everyone
feels the need to reckon with him.
Justice Scalia's influence is a result not only of the
strength of his ideas, but also of his rhetorical skills. Few
judges have ever turned phrases as colorfully as he does. I
witnessed firsthand the pleasure he takes from writing, and
it is an investment that has served him well. The reason he
was the thinker that brought textualism and originalism to
life may very well have been because he was the writer that
could not go unread.
Justice Scalia's long public service and his extraordinary
influence on the law deserve recognition and respect. The
Supreme Court is a much richer place today than it would have
been had the Senate not elevated Justice Scalia there 25
years ago. It would be a nice gesture of bipartisanship to
take a few minutes this month to remember him.
Sincerely,
Brian Fitzpatrick,
Associate Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University; Law
Clerk to Justice Scalia, 2001-2002.
____

September 17, 2011.
Senator Orrin G. Hatch,
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Hart Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Hatch, as one of Justice Antonin Scalia's
former clerks, I'm delighted that you are commemorating the
25th anniversary of the Senate's September 17, 1986 vote to
confirm him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of
the United States.
In hindsight, it is a wonderful coincidence that Justice
Scalia was confirmed on the 199th anniversary of the signing
of the Constitution. (The bicentennial would have been even
more fitting, but we're all grateful the Senate didn't wait a
year for it.) Over the last 25 years, his name has become a
synonym for ``originalism,'' the view that the Constitution
of the United States has only one, unchanging, original
meaning--the meaning that prevailed when it was adopted. He
has authored some of the most significant originalist
opinions the Supreme Court has ever issued, including
opinions on the accused's Sixth Amendment right to confront
the witnesses against him (Crawford v. Washington) and on our
Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms (District of
Columbia v. Heller).
Justice Scalia believes that judges must be originalists
because the United States is a nation ruled by law, not by
judges. The whole point of writing out a constitution
(indeed, of writing out any law), he observes, is to prevent
rules from being changed. As he has famously quipped, the
rule of law is a law of rules.
For Justice Scalia, these words aren't just rhetoric. They
are principles he strives to follow in all his judicial
tasks, even the most insignificant ones. My favorite example
of this illustrates the depth of his commitment to rules.
In the Supreme Court, a party can ask the justice assigned
to his or her circuit to postpone a filing deadline.
Applications for an extension of time are not exciting work,
particularly compared to everything else going on at the
Court. As a result, they aren't paid much attention. As a
further result, the vast majority of the applications are
granted--except, it turns out, in Justice Scalia's circuit.
Whereas the other justices tend to deny only a handful of
extension applications each year (less than 20%), Justice
Scalia grants only that many. Why does he take a solitary
stand over insignificant procedural motions?
Barely three months on the job, Justice Scalia gave his
answer. He had received one

[[Page S5824]]

of his first extension applications. The attorney generically
claimed that the case presented ``important questions under
the Constitution of the United States which were determined
adversely to the petitioner by the court below'' and that the
attorney, therefore, needed ``additional time to research and
prepare the [petition for a] Writ of Certiorari.'' This was
the legal equivalent of a form letter, mailed in with the
expectation that it was a technical formality, as if five
minutes of copying a prior application plus the price of
postage were all that someone needed to get an extra 60 days
to file a petition.
To the attorney's surprise, Justice Scalia denied the
request and wrote a short explanation for his decision,
making an example of the seemingly routine case (Kleem v.
INS). The Supreme Court's rules say that a party must
demonstrate ``good cause'' for an extension, and they
admonish that extension requests are ``not favored.'' If
needing more time to prepare the best possible petition was
``good cause,'' everyone could honestly claim good cause.
Then, the Court's pronouncement that extension requests are
``not favored'' would serve only to deter inexperienced
attorneys who, not being part of the savvy club, didn't know
that the rules don't really mean what they say.
Of course, the easy decision always is to grant an
application. But what is easy isn't always right, and what is
right isn't always easy. We expect judges to do what is
right, no matter how hard it is. Justice Scalia fulfills our
expectations in all he does.
Twenty five years ago, what was right was also easy: the
Senate should be proud that it unanimously consented to give
Justice Scalia a lifetime appointment to the highest court in
the land. His commitment to the rule of law is unflagging, as
strong today as it was the day he was confirmed.
Respectfully yours,
Bryan M. Killian,
Law Clerk to Justice Scalia (2007-2008).

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Senator from Oregon is
recognized.
Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, my hope is that we are moving into the
homestretch, in terms of being able to pass the trade adjustment
assistance legislation.
I strongly support efforts to promote more exports. The President has
set a laudable goal of increasing exports. We know that in the export
sector, there is an opportunity to make things here, to grow things
here, to add value to them here, and then ship them around the world.
To promote these export markets and generate the economic growth our
country wants, we have to make sure our workers have the latest, most
updated skills to make sure they can get those jobs and exports and get
American products around the world.
As I indicated yesterday, there is no doubt that the American brand
is a hit around the world. Ninety percent of the consumers are outside
the United States, and they want our products. My hope is, as I have
indicated, that we are moving toward being able to pass this
legislation, the trade adjustment assistance, to increase our exports.
Because some pretty astonishing comments have been made with respect to
the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, I wish to take a few minutes
this afternoon and make sure we can get some facts out to combat some
of the rhetoric.
For example, one comment I have heard repeatedly is that the Trade
Adjustment Assistance Program is a sop to organized labor. The argument
is that the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program is just a giveaway to
labor unions and that they are the people who want the program; that it
is something that is part of the labor priority list. I can tell the
occupant of the chair--and I am sure she hears the same thing I do at
home--that folks who are members of labor unions don't come up to us
and say what they want in the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program. They
say: Senator, I want to have a good-paying job. I want a job where I
can support my family and where I have a living wage. That is what I am
concerned about right now.
What I am concerned about is China, for example, with their low-
interest loans. In some areas, such as solar manufacturing, which I
have written the Obama administration about, they are undercutting our
solar manufacturers because they are basically giving out free money
now. That is what workers come up to Senators and say: Senator, I want
a good job, one I can make sure that when I go to bed at night, I will
know when I wake in the morning, I will be able to support my family.
Labor union folks don't walk up and say: This is what I want from the
Trade Adjustment Assistance Program.
The fact is, it has been documented by Mathematic Policy Research
that less than half the participants in the TAA were members of a
union. Let me repeat that. Less than half of those who participated in
trade adjustment assistance were members of a union. In fact, this is a
program that is available to all American workers who qualify. When we
are talking about applying, in effect, a trade adjustment assistance
petition can be filed by any of the following groups: a group of three
or more workers, an employer, a labor union, a State workforce
official, a one-stop operator or partner or any other person who is
designated a duly authorized representative.
This is, to me, the bottom line. In 2009, more than 9 out of 10
petitions for trade adjustment assistance relief were filed by nonunion
firms or groups. I will repeat that because we have heard so frequently
this is somehow a giveaway to labor or a sop to the labor unions. In
2009, more than 9 out of 10 TAA petitions were filed by nonunion firms
or groups. More than two-thirds of the eligible population for the
Trade Adjustment Assistance Program were not members of a union.
I hope that, at this point in the debate, we can make it clear, we
can make it understandable that TAA is not a program only available to
labor unions. That is not true. The Trade Adjustment Assistance Program
is not only available to labor unions. TAA is for all Americans. As
this debate continues and, as I indicated, hopefully moves into the
homestretch, I hope Senators remember that in 2009 more than 9 out of
10 TAA petitions were filed by nonunion firms or groups.
The second area I wish to touch on, in terms of trying to rebut some
of these criticisms about the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, is
the argument that there is no need to extend eligibility to those in
the service sector. In 2009, Congress expanded the Trade Adjustment
Assistance Program so service workers who are displaced by trade would
be eligible for assistance. There has been criticism of this expansion,
and I wish to make sure, again, that Senators and those listening to
this debate actually get some of the key facts.
It is important to remember that 82 percent of employment between
2006 and 2010 was in the service sector. To argue that workers in
computer programming, finance, accounting, and insurance do not face
foreign competition is simply to put our heads in the sand.
A forthcoming paper by Bradford Jensen finds that Americans employed
in businesses and professional services face more international
competition than workers in the manufacturing sector. Again, when
Senators hear this argument that there is no case for extending trade
adjustment assistance eligibility to service workers, I hope they will
think through the implications of the international competition our
workers face in this sector because those in computer programming, in
finance, in accounting, and in insurance are important workers in the
American economy. They have played a big role particularly in the
export sector. I think to arbitrarily say they should not be eligible
for the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, given what many of them
are facing in terms of international competition, isn't right.
The third argument I would like to take on directly is the argument
that, in some way, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program is almost a
duplicative program. Again, the facts show this argument doesn't stand.
A Mathematic Policy Research report from last year makes clear that
workers who lose their job due to increased imports--surging imports is
the way we ought to appropriately characterize it--those folks who are,
therefore, eligible for the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program because
of surging imports tend to be older, often have less education, and
have higher prelayoff earnings compared to other unemployed Americans.
That is why the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program is different than
the unemployment insurance program. It is tailored to meet the distinct
needs of a critical portion of the labor force. The workers are older,
and often they have less education. The transition, as the occupant of
the chair knows, can be gut-wrenching because a lot of these
individuals, before their layoffs, were

[[Page S5825]]

making good wages. Now they are wondering how they are going to be able
to get the skills and how they are going to be able to pick up the
knowledge to tap the latest opportunities that are available in
American business that is looking to export.
This is a program that doesn't duplicate any other. It is a program
that is designed to serve a unique population. I am sure we are going
to continue through the rest of the discussion about trade adjustment
assistance and see a lot of back and forth between Senators with
respect to the merits of the program.
I continue to believe we ought to start, as we analyze it, by
remembering this has always been a bipartisan program, No. 1; No. 2,
TAA petitions have been approved by Labor Departments in both
Democratic and Republican administrations. This has roots in the
bipartisan effort to support expanded trade. One study after another
shows that expanded trade--particularly tapping export markets--can
generate hundreds of thousands of jobs. But there is no question that,
as we try to make sure we don't lose a single job in America--even
short term--some workers can end up needing some help during a
transition from one job to another, and if they have been harmed by
surging imports, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program is there for
them. That is why we ought to reauthorize it.
I think we also ought to recognize it is knitted together with the
effort to pass the free-trade agreements because the free-trade
agreements are about more exports. To have all the workers we need for
the potential export markets, we have to make sure workers who have
been laid off have a chance to upgrade their skills.
We will come back to this topic, I am certain, but I hope, in the
last few minutes, I have been able to at least offer some concrete,
documented facts that make clear that the Trade Adjustment Assistance
Program is not a sop to organized labor, since, in 2009, the vast
majority of those granted relief had nothing to do with a labor union;
second, that we have made the case for why service workers, facing
aggressive international competition, ought to be eligible for the TAA;
third, I hope we have been able to lay out how this program doesn't
duplicate any others because this is a unique group who
disproportionately uses the program, who is older, often with less
education, and the transition can be particularly gut-wrenching because
very often they have higher prelayoff earnings compared to other
unemployed Americans.
I think we understand the biggest challenge for this Senate is
creating more good-paying jobs. In my State, about one out of six jobs
depends on international trade. The trade jobs tend to pay better than
do the nontrade jobs. That is why I considered it such an honor when
Chairman Baucus asked me to chair the Finance Committee's Subcommittee
on International Trade. I saw this as an opportunity to grow the Oregon
economy and to grow good-paying family wage jobs. Oregon has a very
good record in terms of manufacturing. We face a whole host of dramatic
challenges right now. For example, I am particularly concerned about
where our country is headed in terms of manufacturing in the renewable
energy sector. The Chinese are engaged in very aggressive and
questionable practices with respect to the Chinese Development Bank. In
effect, they are giving free money to companies that can manufacture
and undercut the American market. I have asked the Obama administration
to investigate this. If they do not, I am certainly going to be looking
legislatively at pursuing trade remedies.

Much of what we are faced with in terms of the renewable energy
sector, particularly generating jobs in manufacturing in that sector,
deals with making sure we have a rules-based trading system. We enjoy
the fact that China is a trading partner. Our State gets a significant
amount of jobs from exporting goods to China. But the Chinese, like
everybody else, have to comply with the rules, and there is a
substantial amount of evidence that the rules aren't being complied
with as they relate to manufacturing in the solar sector.
That is why I am using my position as chairman of the Subcommittee on
International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness to get on top
of that. We have already lost some solar manufacturers and we shouldn't
sit idly by and lose more. That is the kind of challenge we ought to be
working on together on a bipartisan basis; not coming to the floor of
the Senate and blocking a piece of legislation that gives our workers
an opportunity to get ahead--to get ahead in the private sector, to get
ahead in the export market, and to be in a position to get the good-
paying jobs that are going to be available in the years ahead if we
pass legislation to remove trade barriers.
The reality is that in virtually all of these areas, our tariffs are
low, which means that around the world countries get to send their
products to us and get almost totally free access to our market. Yet,
around the world, when we try to ship our products to them, we face
very substantial tariffs. That is what we are trying to change here on
the floor of the Senate--to level the playing field. Because if we
level the playing field, our workers get more out of it than do the
workers of other countries. And that, to me, ought to be particularly
appealing to Senators now when our folks are hurting and when there is
so much pain in communities across this country.
When I am home, I am consistently seeing workers who are walking an
economic tightrope--balancing their food bills against their fuel bills
and their fuel bills against their medical costs. They go to bed at
night wondering if they are going to have a good-paying job in the
morning, given what is being reported every day in the newspapers in
terms of layoffs and the kinds of challenges our companies are facing
in these tough global markets. That is why legislation to promote
exports makes sense. It is an opportunity to provide a new measure of
economic security to hard-working American families--to tap those
export markets. We have to make sure our workers, all of our workers,
can get the skills and those kinds of opportunities so they can qualify
for those export markets.
This legislation--passing trade adjustment assistance--is a key
component of our ability to generate more jobs in the private sector
through exports. I certainly hope we are in the homestretch of being
able to pass this legislation and then to move on to the agreements,
move on to the opportunity to generate more exports, because that means
more work--good-paying work--for our people.
Madam President, with that, I yield the floor at this time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I also believe profoundly that increasing
our exports, improving our trading opportunities for businesses in this
country can do a lot to get Americans back to work. It employs a lot of
people across this country today, and it is important we get these
trade agreements done. I couldn't agree more with what my colleague
from Oregon had to say about that in terms of its impact on the
economy.
What is unfortunate, in my view, is the fact we have had to wait so
long to get where we are. We have had trade agreements now that have
been teed up, literally signed back in December of 2006 for Colombia,
Panama, and South Korea, in 2007, and it strikes me that at the least
we have lost a tremendous amount of opportunity and a tremendous amount
of market share as a result of the delay.
I would have hoped yesterday we would have passed trade promotion
authority, because that allows us at least to be at the table to
negotiate trade agreements in the future. We have been basically locked
out of that since trade promotion authority lapsed back in 2007. This
is a global economy, and the world is passing us by. Every single day
we are not engaged, that we are not out there negotiating trade
agreements with countries around the world somebody else is, and every
single day we are losing opportunities for American business to export
and to grow our economy and to create jobs here at home.
What I want to speak to today is an amendment I filed earlier this
afternoon that deals with what I believe is a very important topic, and
that is the high cost of delay when it comes to the pending free-trade
agreements. Much attention has been paid in this debate to the pros and
cons of trade adjustment assistance, and that is certainly

[[Page S5826]]

a debate we ought to have. But we should not overlook the fact there
has been a real cost to America's economy and American business
associated with the President's strategy to link passage of the free-
trade agreements to the renewal of an expanded Trade Adjustment
Assistance Program--very unfortunate, especially considering what even
the White House acknowledges, which is that passing the trade
agreements is one of the best things we can do in the short term to
create jobs.
According to the Business Roundtable, the passage of the trade
agreements will support 250,000 American jobs. The U.S. Chamber of
Commerce estimates this figure could be as high as 380,000 U.S. jobs.
You would think passage of these trade agreements, which were signed in
2006 and 2007, would have been a priority, and an early priority, for
the Obama administration. Yet here we are, more than 2\1/2\ years into
this administration, and the President still has not made a commitment
to sending us the trade agreements so we can consider them.
I hope what we are doing today puts in place a process whereby that
will happen. But as of right now, we have yet to see those trade
agreements, notwithstanding the President's assertions he is committed
to growing trade and to getting these trade agreements passed. That
can't happen until they are submitted to the Congress for ratification.
I am hopeful the trade bill before us now will allow us to get to a
full and fair debate on the trade adjustment assistance and, in so
doing, we will finally get to where we have removed what I hope is the
last obstacle blocking passage of the three free-trade agreements.
My amendment is very simple. Under the current trade promotion
authority procedures, the International Trade Commission must prepare a
report that is submitted to Congress no later than 90 days after a
trade agreement is signed. However, there is currently no requirement
the ITC conduct a study to assess the negative impact on U.S.
businesses when we delay implementation of an agreement, as we have
with Korea, Colombia, and Panama. My amendment would simply require
that the International Trade Commission assess the negative impact to
U.S. businesses if a trade agreement is signed but has not been
considered by Congress within 2 years.
The ITC study would focus on lost U.S. exports, how the delay has
impacted U.S. trade objectives, as set forth under TPA, as well as how
the delay impacts the protection of U.S. intellectual property
overseas. The study would also estimate the impact on U.S. employment
if the trade agreement in question continues to languish. And, finally,
the ITC would be required to update this study in every year subsequent
that the trade agreement is not considered by Congress or if it is not
entered into force.
My amendment follows a basic principle: If the President believes a
trade agreement is in America's national and economic interest, he
needs to submit it to Congress. The three pending trade agreements,
which hopefully will be considered soon, are a good case in point.
Consider that U.S. companies have paid more than $5 billion in tariffs
to Colombia and Panama since the trade agreements with these nations
were signed more than 4 years ago. That is $5 billion American
companies have had to put out in the form of tariffs to these countries
because these trade agreements--which were signed more than 4 years
ago--haven't entered into force.

More importantly, U.S. businesses have lost countless business
opportunities in Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Without trade agreements
to ensure similar treatment for our exporters, American businesses will
continue to face high tariff and nontariff barriers abroad. Consider
just one example: the market for agricultural products in Korea, which
is the world's 13th largest economy. Korea's tariffs on imported
agricultural goods average 54 percent compared to an average 9-percent
tariff on these imports into the United States. Passage of the Korea
Free Trade Agreement will level this playing field. Yet the
administration continues to delay sending these agreements to Congress.
At a time of near record unemployment and slow economic growth, this
delay is unacceptable. This ongoing delay is having a real impact on
American businesses and it will only get worse. The Colombian market
for agricultural products is another good example of the high cost of
delay. In 2010, for the first time in the history of U.S.-Colombia
trade, the United States lost to Argentina its position as Colombia's
No. 1 agricultural supplier.
Consider the story of the three main crops we grow in South Dakota--
soybeans, corn, and wheat. The combined market share in Colombia for
these three U.S. agricultural exports has decreased from 78 percent in
2008 to 28 percent in 2010--a decline of 50 percentage points.
We are living in a global economy. America cannot afford to stand
still and to stay on the sidelines when it comes to trade. In 1960,
exports accounted for only 3.6 percent of our entire GDP. Today,
exports account for 12.5 percent of our GDP. Exports of U.S. goods and
services support over 10 million American jobs. It is long past time
for us to get back in the game by passing the three pending trade
agreements and then to work aggressively to make sure our
administration is in a position, with trade promotion authority, to
negotiate new agreements that will open new market opportunities for
American business. America's manufacturers, America's farmers, and
America's service providers cannot afford to wait any longer.
What this amendment does, very simply, is require us to weigh and to
evaluate and analyze the impact of delay when it comes to implementing
these free-trade agreements. We have seen in these examples of Colombia
and Panama and South Korea with great clarity the economic impact--the
loss of market share--that has occurred to many of our exporters as a
result of this delay. It is important we know, that American business
know, that the American people know what we are losing when we delay
these agreements, as has happened here with these three particular
agreements.
It is a straightforward amendment, and I offer it to raise what I
think is an important issue, which is that when we get signed
agreements, we need to take action on those. They need to be submitted,
to be ratified and enacted by the Congress, or we are going to continue
to lose out on critically important opportunities for American
exporters.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, before he leaves, I simply want to say to
the distinguished Senator from South Dakota, who is the ranking
Republican on our subcommittee, that I very much enjoy working with
him. I have listened carefully to his remarks, and it seems to me what
we ought to be addressing in the Senate is our country's opportunities.
This is about opportunities. Trade agreements present an opportunity
for more exports, something--as the Senator from South Dakota touched
on--that is particularly promising for areas such as agriculture. I
know in South Dakota and Oregon these are huge opportunities. America
is about exports, and free-trade agreements are about opportunities to
export.
The Trade Adjustment Assistance Program is about opportunities for
our workers to update their skills. In a sense, American business is
only as competitive as its workers. That is why, in my view, we have
always had this tradition--a bipartisan tradition which I have tried to
highlight this afternoon--of making sure we look at every possible
opportunity to advance trade.
Before the Senator came to the floor, I think I talked about--and he
and I have talked about this--the fact that our tariffs have
historically been low compared to the rest of the world; they have big
tariffs. We have trade agreements that level the playing field, and our
side gets more out of it than everybody else. It has been part of the
bipartisan approach to trade. It seems to me we have the chance--and I
hope we are heading into the home stretch, because I think the Senator
from South Dakota has correctly noted it is certainly time to get this
done--to get this to the President's desk; that we can resolve this by
saying this is an opportunity to see Congress--the Senate--at its best.
Because we can be in the opportunities business, trade agreements
generating opportunities for exports that are

[[Page S5827]]

clear winners for the American economy when we have unemployment,
economic insecurity, surging imports from Japan.
We need opportunities for our businesses to export, but we also need
opportunities for our workers, and I hope that as we move into the home
stretch of this discussion, we can see that trade adjustment assistance
is an opportunity for our workers to update their skills. As they
update their skills, that is going to make American businesses--
particularly our exporters--more competitive because they will have
workers who can take the jobs.
I wish to express my appreciation to the Senator from South Dakota.
He and I have worked very closely on a whole host of issues, in fact
some that I think are going to be a big part of the future debate. The
Senator from South Dakota and I want to make sure those who manufacture
digital goods in our country and offer digital services get treated
fairly in international markets. This is also a promising opportunity:
digital goods--software, for example--digital services such as cloud
computing. Under the legislation the Senator from South Dakota and I
have offered, we can break down some of the barriers to those kinds of
products. I am looking forward to working with him on that and a number
of other issues.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I just want to say I thank the Senator
from Oregon. He and I have worked together on a number of issues, not
the least of which is some of these trade issues, and I look forward to
continuing that collaboration. I do believe the Senator from Oregon is
someone who really understands the value of opening export
opportunities for American businesses and has worked and advocated on
their behalf in his time in the Senate.
I think the Senator would also understand the frustration some of us
have expressed, and perhaps is felt even by him and others, that these
things have languished for so long. I understand the issue of trade
adjustment assistance is very important to him and many other Members
on his side of the aisle, as well as some on our side, but it strikes
me at least that we could have been at this a lot sooner and not have
relinquished and given up so many of the lost market opportunities I
mentioned in my remarks. It certainly impacts an agricultural State
such as mine and many other Members who represent agricultural areas of
this country.
If you look at the loss of market share that has occurred in just
these last few years since we have sort of been locked out and other
countries have moved in to fill that vacuum, it is very frustrating to
many of us to have witnessed that. That is why this amendment sort of
gets at the idea that we need to know what the economic impacts are
when these trade agreements don't get dealt with. One way or the other,
these agreements need to get dealt with, and here we are, almost 5
years later with regard to Colombia and over 4 years later with regard
to Panama and South Korea. That is way too long for us to be out of the
game, so to speak, and it has cost us mightly. So I hope we can get
these done.
He is right, we have a process in place that I hope will enable us to
finally accomplish this. But we ought to make sure that doesn't happen
again in the future.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). Without objection,
it is so ordered.
Mr. HATCH. As I understand it, we are prepared to vote.

Amendment No. 642

The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. Under the previous order, the
question occurs on amendment No. 642 offered by the Senator from Utah,
Mr. Hatch, with 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to the vote.
The Senator from Utah is recognized.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise in support of my amendment No. 642.
It is fairly simple. It tightens the nexus between TAA benefits and
actual jobs lost because of trade by requiring a stricter standard to
receive TAA benefits. The expanded TAA benefit offered by my friends
across the aisle continues the ``contributed importantly'' standard
that says if trade is a cause which is important, but not necessarily
more important than any other cause of the job loss, TAA benefits can
be provided. That is not a tight nexus.
As a result, many workers are eligible for TAA benefits even if their
job loss was not caused by trade. My amendment requires that trade
would have to be a ``substantial cause'' of job loss for TAA benefits
to be available. This standard was established by President Reagan when
he constrained spending on TAA.
By returning to the stricter TAA standard, this amendment puts
reasonable constraints on the program to stop it from expanding into
another out-of-control spending program.
I ask my colleagues to help the American taxpayers and constrain TAA
spending by supporting this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Hatch
amendment. In a time of surging Chinese imports, high unemployment, and
widespread economic pain, the Hatch amendment would make it harder for
workers, companies, and farmers to obtain trade adjustment assistance
in order to be able to compete in the global economy. Specifically, the
Hatch amendment would take Congress back to a standard for qualifying
for TAA benefits that was a demonstrated failure in the early 1980s.
Chairman Baucus and Chairman Camp have put together a reasonable TAA
agreement. It is bipartisan. That bipartisan agreement ought to be
preserved, which is why the amendment by the Senator from Utah should
be rejected.
I strongly urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Rockefeller) is necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi) and the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 40, nays 57, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 144 Leg.]

YEAS--40

Alexander
Ayotte
Blunt
Boozman
Burr
Chambliss
Coats
Coburn
Cochran
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Kyl
Lee
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Paul
Risch
Roberts
Rubio
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Toomey
Vitter
Wicker

NAYS--57

Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Blumenthal
Boxer
Brown (MA)
Brown (OH)
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Conrad
Coons
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Graham
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson (SD)
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Manchin
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Portman
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--3

Barrasso
Enzi
Rockefeller
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 40, the nays are
57.

[[Page S5828]]

Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this
amendment, the amendment is rejected.

Amendment No. 645

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question occurs
on amendment No. 645, offered by the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl,
with 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to the vote.
The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, this amendment is very simple. It eliminates
one small piece of the TAA Program called TAA for Firms.
Now, why would I do this? Strictly for bipartisan reasons, to
demonstrate my agreement with President Obama, who also supports the
repeal of this particular piece of the TAA. In his budget submission of
this year, it specifically recommended the elimination of this program.
It is only $16 million a year, but it is inefficient. As the
President's budget pointed out, it does not achieve its objectives as
well as other programs do.
Measured against other programs, the firms that are supposedly helped
actually fail at a bigger rate than other firms that are not in the
program. As a result, I decided I would support one of the elements of
the President's budget: to eliminate this TAA for Firms Program.
Friends, if we are serious about any kind of reform for TAA, surely
we can agree upon a clearly bipartisan proposal of the President of the
United States, which is supported by Republicans in the Senate. I ask
for your support for this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Kyl
amendment. It is an antismall business amendment. There is a lot of
talk around here about government getting out of the way of job
creators, but let's be clear. Firms using TAA are those job creators.
They are small businesses such as RBB Systems in Wooster, OH, CB
Manufacturing in West Carrollton, and auto and truck suppliers in
Bolivar.
In my State alone, 96 percent of companies assisted with TAA for
Firms--this program that Senator Kyl wants to eliminate--96 percent of
those companies that were in business in 2006 are still in business.
When a job creator goes out of business because of an unfair trade
deal, we know what happens. Workers lose their jobs, communities lose
revenues, funds for schools are cut, funds for public services.
TAA is a lifeline not just for workers, but this program for firms,
TAA for Firms, is a lifeline for small businesses and community schools
and all of that which matters to our tax base and our communities.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Kyl amendment.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Rockefeller) is necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi) and the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 43, nays 54, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 145 Leg.]

YEAS--43

Alexander
Ayotte
Blunt
Boozman
Burr
Chambliss
Coats
Coburn
Cochran
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Kyl
Lee
Lieberman
Lugar
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Paul
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Rubio
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Toomey
Vitter
Wicker

NAYS--54

Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Blumenthal
Boxer
Brown (MA)
Brown (OH)
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Conrad
Coons
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Graham
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson (SD)
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Manchin
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--3

Barrasso
Enzi
Rockefeller
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 43, the nays are
54. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of
this amendment, the amendment is rejected.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask the majority leader--I need about 2
minutes for the chairman and I to have a colloquy.
Mr. REID. OK. I spoke to the Republican leader a few minutes ago, and
we think we are on a path to complete this most important piece of
legislation in the morning. This is an agreement we had--that we would
try to finish this--and we will expeditiously work toward other matters
relating to trade as soon as we can.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I wanted to inform the majority leader, I
was going to have a brief colloquy with the chairman who, I think, will
be back in a few minutes.
In the meantime, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a
brief colloquy with the distinguished chairman.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Moldova

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the original Jackson-Vanik amendment was
offered to the Trade Act of 1974, and it was led in this body by the
great Democratic Senator of Washington, Henry ``Scoop'' Jackson. That
amendment prohibited the United States from entering into Permanent
Normal Trade Relations with any country that placed restrictions on the
freedom of emigration and other human rights of its people. This law
was later expanded to cover countries with non-market economies. The
major impact of the Jackson-Vanik restriction was that it prevented the
United States from granting ``most-favored nation'' trading status to
the Soviet Union, which at the time was placing awful restrictions on
the ability of its Jewish citizens to emigrate and flee the persecution
they experienced behind the Iron Curtain.
Jackson-Vanik applied to Moldova when it was part of the Soviet
Union, and it remained in place following Moldova's independence 20
years ago. This made sense at the time, because the country continued
to be ruled by communist governments, which ensured an unfortunate
continuity with Moldova's Soviet past at a time when the country's
neighbors were reaping the benefits of liberation.
But Mr. President, the situation in Moldova is now fundamentally
changed. In August 2009, a coalition of democratic and reformist
parties managed to win power in what international organizations deemed
a free and fair election. For the first time in two decades, Moldova
had a noncommunist government, and with it, the potential for real
reform. The goal of this coalition is reflected in the name that they
have given themselves: the Alliance for European Integration. Their
platform is to deepen Moldova's democratic institutions, pursue free
market reforms, fight corruption, and work on integrating Moldova into
Euro-Atlantic institutions. This is a new generation of leaders, and
they represent the great hopes of their citizens.
I visited Moldova in June. I met at length with their Prime Minister
and other senior leaders, and I can tell you firsthand this government
is committed to leading Moldova toward a future of political and
economic freedom.

[[Page S5829]]

Yes, major challenges remain to the realization of this vision, but for
the first time in Moldova's history as an independent nation, its
current government is on the right track. They are pursuing the right
goals and policies. Their intentions are good and admirable.
In the face of continued opposition from elements in Moldova that
want to drag the country back to its troubled past, the current
government is trying to move the country forward. They are taking on
the hard challenges. When I asked how we in the United States could
best support their efforts, all they asked of me--all they asked of us
in Congress--is one thing: It is not additional foreign assistance. It
is not more of our taxpayers' dollars, although that assistance is
important too. It is the repeal of Jackson-Vanik, so Moldovans can
develop their own country, grow their own economy, and deepen their own
free market reforms through normal trading relations with the United
States. Nothing we could do would provide greater moral and material
support for Moldova's reformers.
I wish to thank Senator Baucus for his continued support of the
people and the country of Moldova. I understand that any amendment to
the legislation that is pending would be harmful to the progress of the
trade agreements, and I appreciate that fact and hope the chairman can
perhaps--hopefully before the end of the year--take up the repeal of
Jackson-Vanik as it applies to the country of Moldova, a country that
is very much in need of it.
I want to read a statement made by Vice President Biden during his
visit to Moldova this year.
He said:

We will work with the Congress and with your government to
lift the Jackson-Vanik amendment and establish permanent
trade relations. We believe that will be good for Moldova and
for the United States.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
a letter from the National Council on Soviet Jewry concerning Moldova.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
National Conference

on Soviet Jewry,

Washington, DC, September 29, 2010.
Hon. Max Baucus,
Chairman, Committee on Finance U.S. Senate, Dirksen Senate
Office Building, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: On behalf of NCSJ, I want to state our
support for the graduation of the Republicof Moldova from the
Jackson-Vanik Amendment. Moldova has satisfied the
requirements of the two areas central to the Amendment's
intent: Jews are free to emigrate, in accordance with the
Helsinki Final Act and established principles of
international law; those who choose to remain in Moldova can
practice Judaism and participate in Jewish culture and
language without reservation.
Jewish community life has flourished since the dissolution
of the Soviet Union. Synagogues, community centers and
schools serve the community without government interference.
While incidents of popular anti-Semitism and intolerance
still take place in Moldova, NCSJ has been working with the
Moldovan government through a variety of avenues, including
the OSCE, to address these issues. In January, when Prime
Minister Filat met with the American Jewish community and
testified before the U.S. Helsinki Commission, he committed
to reforming Moldova's law on preventing and combating
discrimination.
Moldova has been admitted to the WTO but still falls under
the strictures of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. We hope that
you will find an appropriate legislative vehicle to graduate
Moldova from Jackson-Vanik.
If you or your staff have any questions, please contact me
at your convenience.
Sincerely,
Mark B. Levin,
Executive Director.

Mr. McCAIN. I again thank the chairman for his consideration and for
his continued support for the people of Moldova.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana is recognized.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I very much thank my friend for bringing
this up. Moldova is a country which joined the World Trade Organization
in 2001, and for various reasons--basically, it is Jackson-Vanik or the
relic of Jackson-Vanik--Moldova has not been granted PNTR. But Moldova
has made huge, successful strides in its government, in its political
and economic reforms. I am very impressed with Moldova. It is a friend
to the United States.
Although we cannot deal with that issue on this bill, I want to make
it very clear to my friend from Arizona that we will take up
legislation this year to ensure that Moldova is granted PNTR status and
becomes a full member in the world community. I make that pledge to my
friend from Arizona to get that done this year.
Mr. McCAIN. I thank the chairman. I know he has an incredibly heavy
schedule, with the legislation before us today and other matters before
the committee, but I also know he knows--and I want to assure him--when
the people of Moldova hear of his commitment, this will be a happy day
in Moldova. I thank the chairman.
Mr. BAUCUS. And I thank the Senator for standing for the people of
Moldova.
I yield the floor.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the Senate is in consideration of trade
policy this week with an extension of the Trade Adjustment Assistance
Program. TAA is the main way we help American workers cope with the
negative effects of our globalized economy. It is a crucial program in
both good times and bad, and it must be renewed.
TAA helps workers who have lost jobs through no fault of their own,
but rather because of increased competition from imports or because of
offshoring. TAA provides workers with critical income support, job
training, job search and relocation assistance, and assistance with
health insurance premiums. TAA relieves some of the hardship these
workers face--helping them get back on their feet and back into jobs.
Trade adjustment assistance is designed to help these workers with
unique needs. Workers who qualify for TAA are mostly older workers--
more than half are over age 45--and they often have a hard time getting
back into the workforce. Unfortunately, we have all heard many sad
stories about workers in their fifties or sixties spending years
looking for new work. Many have been at their jobs for decades. They
often do not have education beyond high school. For these workers
especially, the job training and other services offered by TAA are a
way for workers to gain new skills and enter into new and growing
industries or occupations.
We have watched the middle class struggle over the last several
decades. We see that incomes are stagnating, health insurance and other
costs are skyrocketing, good jobs are disappearing. There are many
reasons for this, but unfair trade agreements and the failure to
enforce our trade laws are certainly among them. When cheaper imports
come in to the U.S., American workers making competing goods or
providing competing services can lose their jobs as their companies
lose business. We have watched manufacturing companies and
manufacturing jobs disappear, and now jobs in the service sector are
being offshored as well.
So there is no question that TAA must continue. The thousands of
workers who have been laid off as a result of trade are depending on
us, as will the thousands more who could lose jobs in the future.
We also have to restore improvements to the program that were
included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but which
expired earlier this year. These improvements updated TAA to respond
better to our changed economy. The provisions made sure that more
resources were available for workers to go back to school and get
training in a new field. They also extended TAA to workers in the
service sector--in addition to manufacturing workers already covered.
They also ensured that the program was available to workers whose jobs
have been shipped to any country, like China or India, even where the
US does not have a free trade agreement.
This expansion has been very successful. More than 4 out of 10
workers--nearly 200,000--who qualified for TAA from the passage of the
Recovery Act until those provisions expired earlier this year,
qualified because of the Recovery Act provisions. In my State of Iowa,
a third of the 4,100 workers that qualified in that time period did so
under the new provisions. Some of the workers who have participated in
the TAA program had worked at companies that are well known in my
State: 1,100 workers from Electrolux alone were certified eligible for
TAA.
My State of Iowa has suffered many layoffs as jobs have been shipped

[[Page S5830]]

abroad, especially in the manufacturing sector. I have received many
letters from Iowans who have been able to take advantage of TAA. One
person who was laid off from her factory job went back to school to
become a licensed practical nurse, and she hoped to go on to become a
registered nurse. Another Iowan wrote of how important the health care
tax credit has been to her and her husband, who was one of 300 people
laid off from his company. Another Iowan wrote about how her job was
being shipped to China; she was thinking of using TAA services to go
back to college.
A related program, the TAA Community College and Career Training
Grants Program will be extremely beneficial to workers through the
community college system in Iowa and other states. I am thankful that
this program will soon move ahead, and I understand that grant
recipients will be announced next week.
This grant program will provide to community colleges in every State
funds they desperately need to build capacity and meet training demands
for 21st century jobs. The funds will total $500 million a year for 4
years, a huge and necessary injection of funds into the community
college system. The grants will enable local leaders from the
education, workforce, economic development, and business communities to
work together to develop and expand programs as they help workers
succeed in acquiring the skills, degrees, and credentials needed for
high-wage, high-skill employment while also meeting the needs of
employers for skilled workers. Community colleges and their partners
can use the funds to develop innovative programs or replicate evidence-
based strategies.
The advanced manufacturing and health care sectors are among the
largest and fastest-growing sectors in the Iowa economy, and recent
projections indicate that employers in these sectors will continue to
need workers with advanced skills to fill vacancies. TAA training
grants support the training of these workers. Iowa Central Community
College, for example, has developed an entrepreneurism and business
development program to respond to regional needs. Iowa Lakes Community
College has started a wind turbine program--one of the first of its
kind in the country--that prepares workers for ``green-collar'' jobs
and ensures that graduates have the skills that area employers need.
I am very hopeful that we will reauthorize TAA this week. When we
pass this legislation, we will ensure that a wider range of workers can
continue to access TAA benefits and services, and that resources are
available so that workers are prepared for high-skill jobs with family-
sustaining wages. We owe American workers nothing less.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado). Without objection, it
is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following
morning business, tomorrow, September 22, the Senate resume
consideration of H.R. 2832; that the only remaining amendments in order
to the Casey-Brown-Baucus amendment and the bill be the following:
Rubio amendment No. 651, Thune amendment No. 650, and Cornyn amendment
No. 634; that there be up to 5 hours of debate on the Rubio, Thune, and
Cornyn amendments equally divided between the two leaders or their
designees, with Senator Cornyn controlling 1 hour of the Republican
time and with Senators Rubio and Thune each controlling 30 minutes of
the Republican time; that at a time to be determined by the majority
leader, after consultation with Senator McConnell, the Senate proceed
to votes in relation to the Rubio, Thune, Cornyn, and Casey amendments,
in that order; that there be no amendments, points of order, or motions
in order to the amendments prior to the votes other than budget points
of order and the applicable motions to waive; that each amendment be
subject to a 60-affirmative vote threshold; and that there be 2 minutes
of debate equally divided prior to each vote; that upon the disposition
of the amendments, the bill, as amended, if amended, be read a third
time; that there be up to 10 minutes of debate equally divided between
the two leaders or their designees prior to a vote on passage of the
bill, as amended, if amended; that the bill be subject to a 60-
affirmative-vote threshold; finally, there be no points of order or
motions in order to the bill prior to the vote on passage of the bill
other than budget points of order and the applicable motions to waive.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________