[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 147 (Tuesday, October 4, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S6060]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, there is a lot of talk these days 
about how Washington is broken and how, unless we do something to fix 
it, the solutions to our most urgent problems will remain out of reach. 
The fact is, that is not really true. Congress is not frozen in a state 
of perpetual gridlock, and the now imminent passage of three long-
awaited free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea 
shows it.
  For 2\1/2\ years, I and other Republicans have stated as clearly as 
we could to anyone who would listen that we are willing and eager to 
work with the Democrats on legislation on which we know both sides 
agree. Free-trade agreements fall squarely into that category. That is 
why I have been calling on the President to approve them since his very 
first day in office. Yet, for reasons I will touch on in a moment, he 
has actually held back.
  It is true that the President had to be convinced of the importance 
of these agreements. After all, he ran for office promising to 
renegotiate NAFTA. But once he did come around, his reluctance to act 
became an emblem for the administration's entire approach to jobs in 
which results have taken a back seat to ideology. All the President had 
to do was to follow through on his own pledge--send these trade 
agreements to Congress--and we would have had an early bipartisan 
achievement which didn't add a single dime to the deficit and which, by 
his own estimates, would protect tens of thousands of jobs right here 
at home. Instead, the President passed over what could have been a job-
creating, bipartisan layup and devoted the first weeks of his 
Presidency to a highly partisan stimulus that has since become a 
national punch line.
  So now, 2\1/2\ years after the stimulus was signed into law, there 
are 1.7 million fewer jobs in America, and the President is just this 
week getting around to free-trade agreements we all knew would create 
jobs, all of which raises a question: Why didn't we do this sooner? I 
think there are two reasons we didn't do it sooner.
  First, the White House was under pressure from unions that don't like 
free trade. They have been extracting promises from the White House for 
2\1/2\ years in exchange for their support. That is one reason.
  The second reason the White House didn't send these agreements up 
sooner is that the political operators over at the White House seem to 
believe they benefit from the appearance--the appearance--of gridlock. 
They are over there telling any reporter who will listen that they plan 
to run against Congress next year. Their communications director said 
as much to the New York Times 2 weeks ago.
  So that is their explicit strategy--to make people believe Congress 
can't get anything done. How do they make sure of that? Well, they do 
that by proposing legislation they know the other side won't support 
even when there is an entire menu of bipartisan proposals the President 
could choose to pursue instead. How else do we explain the President's 
standing before the country in January extolling the job-creating 
potential of these free-trade agreements, asking Congress to pass them 
as soon as possible, and then sitting on them until yesterday, 
preventing Congress from taking the vote? How else do we explain the 
fact that the President spent the past few weeks running around the 
country demanding that Congress pass a so-called jobs bill right away 
even as leading members of his own party admit the Democrats wouldn't 
have the votes to get it through Congress even if it came to the floor? 
As one senior Democratic aide put it yesterday: ``Nobody is all that 
excited about the President's jobs bill.''
  That is how to create dysfunction--by refusing to acknowledge that we 
live under a two-party system in this country and that as long as we 
do, the two parties will have to cooperate to some extent in order to 
get legislation through Congress. It is the refusal to accept this 
reality that leads to inaction. The President can govern as though this 
is the Congress he wants or he can deal with the Congress he has. Along 
the first path lies gridlock, and along the second lies the kind of 
legislative progress Americans want. As for Republicans, well, we have 
been crystal clear from the outset that we prefer the latter route.
  So this morning, I reiterate the same plea I have consistently made 
for the past 2\1/2\ years. My suggestion to the President is that he 
put aside proposals for which we know there is bipartisan opposition 
and focus instead on proposals on which we know both sides can agree. 
Free-trade agreements are a good first step, but they are just that--a 
first step. If we are going to tackle the enormous challenges we face, 
we need to come together on much more than that. There is bipartisan 
agreement, for instance, on the need to increase domestic energy 
exploration, to reverse job-killing regulations, and to reform the 
corporate tax code so we are more competitive. If the White House 
really wants to make a statement, it will work with us on all of these 
issues. If it doesn't, Americans will only conclude that it would 
rather have an issue to run on than an impact.
  With these trade agreements, we are showing we can work together to 
create jobs and help the economy, and it is something we should do a 
lot more of around here.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.

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