[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 22 (Wednesday, February 5, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H1600]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      PRESIDENT OBAMA'S PROPOSALS

  (Ms. DeLAURO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, last week, President Obama laid out a 
series of proposals: ``build new ladders of opportunity into the middle 
class'' and revive and sustain a core tenet of our American system--as 
he put it: ``the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, 
you can get ahead.''
  I could not agree more with many of the President's proposals. 
Increasing the minimum wage, supporting job training and education, and 
ensuring equal pay for equal work are all necessary to meet the serious 
economic challenges of our time: stagnant wages and the lack of upward 
mobility.
  But the President's push for fast track authority for the Trans-
Pacific Partnership trade agreement, or TPP, flies in the face of these 
reforms. Twenty years after the NAFTA agreement involving Mexico and 
its $10 a day wages, we know that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which 
includes Vietnam and its 28 cents per hour minimum wage, will depress 
wages. It will lead to the offshoring and the loss of American jobs.
  Raising American's living standards, restoring the middle class, 
creating American jobs, and increasing wages--those are our economic 
goals. That is what we should achieve as a society. The Trans-Pacific 
Partnership fails on all of these goals, and we should defeat fast 
track.

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