[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 3 (Thursday, January 8, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H142-H147]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I am here on behalf of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus in our Special Order hour where we want to share
with the American public our concerns about a trade deal that we think
will be coming through Congress in the first few months or first half
of this session.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the biggest and the baddest of the
trade deals that we have seen come before this country. It represents a
dozen countries. From Chile to Japan, almost 800 million people are
represented by countries that would be included within the Trans-
Pacific Partnership, and it represents 40 percent of the world's
economy.
Yet the trade agreement has been drafted largely in secret. No one
from the public has seen it. Quite honestly, Members of Congress
haven't seen it. But about 600 people in this country are involved with
the drafting of this trade deal. It has great ramifications that go
beyond trade, the 29 chapters that make up the Trans-Pacific
Partnership.
We anticipate there also could be a move from leadership to introduce
legislation to Fast Track the trade deal. What that means to Fast Track
it is to really take away the public's ability, through their elected
Members of Congress, to have a say, to be able to debate and to amend
the trade deal.
We anticipate that could be one of the first votes that would come to
us this Congress about trade. We at the Progressive Caucus want to
share with the public the various concerns that we may have about this
very, very large, all-encompassing trade deal that could affect
American jobs, could affect food safety, could affect environmental
concerns, could affect things like buy American laws, currency policy,
and many, many more issues.
I am joined by a number of Members of Congress today who would like
to take part in this, and I would like to, at this time, yield to my
colleague from the great State of New York, who has put a number of
efforts towards this in working very strongly to make sure the public
knows what is in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
I would like to yield to Mr. Paul Tonko from New York.
Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Pocan. It is great to
join him in this hour of discussion about the Fast Track method that
has been associated with trade negotiations and with fair trade/free
trade concepts alike.
I represent a district in upstate New York, the 20th Congressional
District, which is primarily the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk
River Valleys, and it was there that we became the donor area to the
Erie Canal that gave birth to westward movement for this Nation and
sparked an industrial revolution. It was there that we saw the
development of a necklace of communities, dubbed mill towns, that then
rose as the epicenters of invention and innovation that saw
manufacturing booming as we went forward as a nation.
Many an immigrant called that their new home, that region their new
home, and they tethered their American Dream to the prosperity that was
continuing to grow in the region. I think back to the manufacturing
sector and all that it meant to my ancestors, all it meant to me and
the opportunities that came into my life, and it was that empowerment
that came through the availability of work, the dignity of work, the
opportunity to earn a paycheck that really made a difference.
I think of those same towns today having really lost millions of jobs
across America. We are reflective of all those towns that became those
manufacturing centers, that enabled people again to engage in
meaningful employment and to be able to have those dreams, those
American Dreams fully, fully strengthened by the opportunity for work.
When I see the reduction of standards, of environmental standards,
where we are willing to have our children exploited by the ugly sins of
the past with concerns for child labor laws that might erode, when we
think about some of the inequities that are brought to bear with the
denial of collective bargaining, all of these items have snuck into
trade negotiations. There is an importance for Congress to be able to
provide the oversight and the assessment of these various negotiations,
where we can look at these trade deals and suggest amendments or have
sound debate.
We not only have a right as Members of Congress, I think the public
that we represent has a need for Congress to review these documents and
to suggest improvements. So I look forward to this hour of discussion
where you and I and our several colleagues will join together in
speaking to the wisdom, or lack thereof, of some of the processes that
have followed this entire trade discussion.
We are talking about a trade deficit now that has ballooned beyond
belief, to record proportions, and where we are putting our economy and
that American Dream at risk and where we are denying meaningful
employment to those whom we represent here in Washington.
I thank you for leading us in this hour of discussion, and I know
that the information that we will exchange will be very critical and
important to people who will be airing into this discussion and
allowing them to trade those, exchange those ideas with their given
elected representatives.
With that, I thank you for leading us in this important discussion.
Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative Tonko. As you mentioned, one of
the concerns we have, not only in your region but in my district, is
the loss of jobs that we have had because of some of these past trade
deals that haven't quite gone as promised.
It has been estimated we have lost 4 million U.S. jobs due to just
three trade deals, and three-quarters of those jobs lost were in the
manufacturing sector.
I had mentioned earlier today at a press conference in Rock County,
Wisconsin, a county that I share with Representative Paul Ryan, we used
to have Parker Pen, made good American-made quality pens. A thousand
jobs at one time were in that community working at Parker Pen. In early
2010, the final jobs had moved to Mexico. That is just one example of
the number of jobs that we lost just in south central Wisconsin, much
less Flint, Michigan, and Los Angeles, California, and other parts of
the country. So we appreciate your efforts and your comments.
I would like to also yield to another colleague of mine from the
great State of California, someone who has been a strong member of our
Progressive Caucus. I would like to yield to Representative Janice Hahn
of the great State of California.
Ms. HAHN. Mr. Speaker, I am rising in solidarity today with millions
of American working families who are deeply concerned about the impact
that harmful trade deals have on our Nation. I am proud to join with my
colleagues in the Progressive Caucus in explaining why we oppose this
so-called Fast Track authority for international trade deals.
[[Page H143]]
Let me be clear. I am very much pro-trade. Trade is essential to the
economy of my district, and I am proud to represent the Port of Los
Angeles, the largest container port in the country. Trade is essential
to our economy in my district, but it is essential to the economy of
the whole State of California--and of course, dare I say, the whole
Nation--the many wonderful and diverse exports we do promote in our
State: films, creative content made in Hollywood, the fruits and
vegetables grown in Central Valley, the wines from Sonoma and Napa, the
innovative products developed in our Silicon Valley, or the goods that
are manufactured in California factories.
Trade is essential to our entire U.S. economy. Trade creates and
sustains American jobs, not only at our ports in this country, but
throughout the entire supply chain. Trade helps American businesses
reach new markets, grow, prosper.
Trade helps American consumers gain access to many products that we
value, and trade is not an exclusive Democratic issue or Republican
issue. Everyone who wants our Nation to prosper understands the
importance and value of engaging in trade and being globally
competitive and connected.
That is why I am proud that as a progressive Democrat I was able to
join with a conservative Republican, Ted Poe, and we have worked
together to cochair our Congressional PORTS Caucus. We now have about
90 Members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, coming together over
the issue of investing in and sustaining and making competitive our
Nation's seaports. We might disagree on other policy issues, but we
have a common understanding of the economic benefits of trade,
especially trade passing through our ports. So I want to say it again,
and I hope it is clear that I strongly support trade.
However, I am opposed to trade deals with other countries that have
harmful consequences on our American workers and deals that give unfair
advantages to those who exploit workers and destroy the environment.
That is why I oppose Fast Track.
I believe with all my heart that Congress has a constitutional duty
to oversee trade agreements, but Fast Track takes away our authority to
regulate trade and to be involved in these negotiations. Under Fast
Track, we would only be able to vote for or against a deal that has
been negotiated without us, and we would not even have the opportunity
to amend it. That sounds like a recipe for a raw deal, not a good deal.
I am honored to hold public office and to have earned the support and
the trust of those who depend on me to stand up for them and what is
best for them. I take my responsibility very seriously to represent
them and act in their interests, as I think every Member of Congress
does, and I think our constituents are counting on us to make trade
deals that are fair and beneficial.
I think Fast Track undercuts our authority and our ability to provide
this oversight. I hope that we can support trade and have good trade
agreements, but I hope we can all oppose the idea of Fast Tracking
these trade deals.
Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative Hahn. I think you said it very
eloquently. We are all for trade. I don't think there is a Member in
this body who doesn't want to see trade happen, but we want fair trade.
We don't want the so-called free trade that makes it harder for
American workers, that depresses our wages and ultimately includes a
whole lot of other things that affect everything from food safety to
environmental concerns to our ability to have something as basic as buy
American laws and buy local laws. So thank you for your comments.
I would also like to yield to a gentleman, a colleague, and a friend
from the State of Michigan, someone who represents the Flint and
Saginaw area. I would like to yield to Representative Dan Kildee from
the great State of Michigan.
Mr. KILDEE. First of all, thank you to my colleague, Mr. Pocan, for
his leadership on this and for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, this is a really important subject for the American
people. It is a really important subject for the people that I
represent in Flint, Michigan, in Saginaw, Michigan, Bay City.
You mentioned Flint. It is my hometown. I was born and raised there.
September 16, 1908, General Motors was incorporated in Flint, Michigan,
and it was a company that brought together carriage-makers and wheel-
makers, and they put the world on wheels.
About 30 years later, the workers in that city at General Motors
organized and got the first UAW contract. Between the auto industry
itself and the organized workers who were able to then claim their fair
share of the tremendous wealth generated by their productive capacity,
we built the American middle class. We built an amazing society that
gives opportunity, gave opportunity, I think, to just about anybody who
felt they could work hard and would put in the time and get a fair wage
and get decent benefits and be able to go to work with some dignity.
{time} 1645
We built something that was truly amazing.
It was not that long ago, because of globalization and because of
trade deals like the one that is being considered right now, that the
Federal Government, rightfully, and this President, rightfully, stood
up for the American auto industry and put it back on its feet. They
gave the American autoworker--the American worker--the chance to
reclaim that dignity that so many people fought for even decades ago.
What I worry about is that everything that those people worked and
fought for could go away. In fact, even the great work that this
President did to rescue the American auto industry could all be for
naught if we continue down this path of pursuing trade policy that puts
corporate and stockholder and offshore interests, really, in front of
the interests of the American people and the American worker.
My hometown has seen this play itself out. I remember--I was in local
government--when the North American Free Trade Agreement was adopted.
We keep hearing that the agreement that is being contemplated right now
is a vastly different sort of agreement, but we don't see that. What we
do hear and see is the very same language and the very same rhetoric
and the very same explanations or excuses about the need to grant Fast
Track authority to negotiate this agreement and bring it back to
Congress for a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote. The same arguments that are
being made now were being made then, and the people whom I represent
truly believed that they were sold a bill of goods.
At one point in time, in my hometown of Flint, Michigan, we had
79,000 autoworkers. This was a city that was never more than 200,000 in
population, so this is a city that really grew up around American
manufacturing. It was direct GM employees, but it was suppliers and a
whole community built around this incredible productive capacity that
started over a century ago; but in just a few short years, we have gone
from that 79,000 number to about 10,000 autoworkers in my hometown.
When I think about trade and these trade deals, it is not a question
of sort of the big geopolitical tensions that we are trying to address.
It is not even a matter of this kind of esoteric argument about the
philosophy of trade policy. It is about Flint and Saginaw and Bay City,
Michigan, families who have worked hard their whole lives and who stand
to lose everything because we are continuing to pursue trade policy
that thinks about the short-term profits of multinational corporations
and not about strengthening the long-term integrity of the American
middle class. This is a dangerous path that we are on.
What is particularly concerning to me is that, when I go home, as I
do--as you all do--we get questions about this.
The questions are: ``We keep hearing that this trade agreement will
have a high standard, a high set of standards, and that it will not be
like past agreements.'' Even some here in Washington have said that we
are fighting old battles and that this is a new day. Yet, when I have
to answer to my constituents' questions like: ``Will these agreements
have environmental protections and enforcement mechanisms for those
environmental standards unlike some previous agreements?'' I have to
say, ``I don't really know because we don't have access to the
documents. We don't have access to the process. We haven't been asked
to weigh in.''
[[Page H144]]
``Will the agreements have labor standards that guarantee that
American workers won't have to compete with nations that outlaw labor
unions?'' for example.
``I don't know because we have not seen that language.''
We are being asked to accept on faith that, somehow, miraculously,
this trade agreement is going to look dramatically different than
others, even of those that have been fairly recently passed.
Finally, I am asked, ``Will there be protections to keep other
nations from manipulating their currency?'' No matter what else is in
any of these trade agreements, if currency can be manipulated to a
point so that the price of one nation's exports makes it impossible for
us to compete with them, all is lost.
From what we hear, there will be no currency provisions or at least,
if there are any at all, they certainly won't be strong enough to have
any influence whatsoever on the ability of these nations to undermine
the American economy by dumping goods, by manipulating currency in a
fashion that makes it impossible for us to compete.
This is the wrong track for this country. It is something for which
Congress needs to stand up and assert its constitutional role in
defending. I stand with my colleagues, and I know many, many others who
simply are not going to sit idly by no matter who the President is--a
Democrat, a Republican, or otherwise--and allow the prerogatives of
Congress, which means the prerogatives of the people who sent us here,
to be overlooked. It would be a dangerous path for us to take, and I am
very grateful to my friend Mr. Pocan for his leadership and for the
leadership of many others here on this issue.
I am glad to stand with you in fighting this battle.
Mr. POCAN. Again, thank you so much, Representative Kildee.
When you mentioned the auto industry, I have to admit that I grew up
in Kenosha, Wisconsin. American Motors was the company that ran the
town. Almost everyone had a family member or a neighbor who worked at
American Motors. Now, granted, we made Pacers and Gremlins, so there
were some mistakes along the way. American Motors eventually went away
to Renault, and it went away to Chrysler. It went away to nothing as
well as the people who had the strong family-supporting wages from that
auto industry. Now the companies that have replaced the auto industry
are, quite honestly, jelly bean manufacturers and companies like that.
It does not pay the same wage. It doesn't support the family in the
same way.
Just as we were promised with the Korean free trade agreement,
especially around autos, in that 70,000 jobs would be created, instead,
60,000 jobs were lost. That is exactly why we have to be involved now
while it matters, not after it has been negotiated. We don't have a
debate, and we don't have a chance to amend it. So thank you for all of
your work on this on behalf of the people of Michigan.
I would also like to yield to another colleague of mine, someone who
has been a stalwart in the Progressive Caucus, someone I respected long
before I ever had the chance to come to Congress. I would like to yield
to my great colleague, Representative Barbara Lee, from the great State
of California.
Ms. LEE. Thank you very much.
Let me thank you, Congressman Pocan, for yielding but also for your
tireless leadership on behalf of the American people and for leading
not only this Progressive Caucus special hour but each and every one of
them for so many years. You have been our voice. I think the American
people are hearing from us through you, so I just want to thank you
again for really beating the drum across America, allowing the American
people to know what the real deal is here in Washington, D.C.
Let me also thank all of my colleagues in the Congressional
Progressive Caucus for rising tonight to talk about why we are strongly
opposed to Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mr. Speaker, when it comes to trade deals and American jobs, Congress
should never be a rubber stamp. As the Representative from California's
13th Congressional District, I have the honor and the privilege of
representing the Port of Oakland--one of our Nation's busiest
seaports--and also the airport. I support trade because it is critical
to the economy of my district and our Nation. Trade is good when it is
fair, when it is open, when it is transparent, and when it creates
good-paying jobs here in America. Trade is bad, however, when it ships
American jobs overseas so that the 1 percent can reap even greater
profits. For this reason, I join the vast majority of Americans--
Americans from both parties--in opposing Fast Track for the TPP. Bad
trade hurts all American workers--American families, American
businesses, and also, especially, those individuals and businesses in
communities of color.
Of the 2.7 million jobs lost because of the U.S.-China trade deal, a
disproportionately high percentage--35 percent, mind you--came from
communities of color. That is outrageous. Now, after these individuals
lost their jobs, their situations got even worse. When they found a new
job, it was, on average, for a 30 percent lower wage. The loss of these
jobs and wages totals more than $10 billion in lost economic growth for
these communities, not one time, but each and every year. Enacting
another bad trade deal will continue to prevent communities of color
from building wealth and moving into the middle class. In addition to
the negative impact on communities of color, Fast Track for TPP will
not provide an opportunity to add critical labor and environmental
protections that are critical to respecting human rights and preserving
our planet.
That is why my colleagues and I are here, saying ``no'' to Fast Track
for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trade negotiations should not be
conducted in back rooms. The American people and Members of Congress
deserve to know what is in these deals. That is why, again, Congress is
so important. Otherwise, people have no say. They have no voice on
trade policies that really affect their economic livelihoods--their
ability to put food on the table and their ability to aspire into the
middle class. Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership does not
help the American people. It only allows special interests and
corporations to craft trade deals that are bad for the American people.
Mr. Speaker, it is time to turn the lights on the TPP. If the United
States is going to pursue a trade deal in the Pacific, Congress needs
to fully debate it so we are certain that it creates jobs and all the
protections that we all are standing for and know about and want right
here in America.
Over the last 20 years, the U.S. has lost nearly 3.5 million jobs due
to NAFTA and the United States-China trade deal. Many of these jobs
were lost in California and in communities of color. Let's not make the
same mistake again. Let's stand together in opposing Fast Track because
it will sacrifice American jobs and environmental protections in the
name of international corporate profits. Let's take Fast Track off of
the table, and let's start talking about creating good-paying American
jobs for American families.
Thank you, once again, for your tremendous leadership.
Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative Lee.
I look forward to working with you on our Progressive alternative
also for the budget, when, I think, we will showcase many of those
initiatives that we would much rather see the country do to help create
good-paying jobs and get more people back to work. So thank you for all
of your efforts.
At this point, I would like to yield to a colleague of mine from the
great State of Ohio, who has seen much of this firsthand and who,
today, has very eloquently explained her experiences of being around
when NAFTA had passed. Let me yield to Representative Marcy Kaptur from
the great State of Ohio.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the very able gentleman from
Wisconsin, Congressman Pocan, for organizing all of us this evening and
for his indefatigable efforts to tell the truth about what is happening
to the workers of our country and those around the world.
I rise with you tonight because America--our wonderful country--has a
huge ``good jobs'' deficit because we have a gigantic free trade
deficit. Our trade policies export more U.S. jobs than U.S. products.
More and more foreign imports come across our shores
[[Page H145]]
than we send goods out, and the gap grows wider every decade at
extraordinary proportion. Never before in American history have so many
good jobs been outsourced off our shores. America's workers have had
income shortages--every family knows it--because America has had this
jobs hemorrhage due to the flawed, Fast Tracked free trade agreements
that have been ramrodded through this Congress.
Since 1975, when Wall Street's free trade regimen began to lock down,
America has amassed a $9.5 trillion trade deficit with the world. If
you count up every year, numbers don't lie, and this has translated
into a gigantic, unprecedented jobs loss of over 47.5 million lost
American jobs--good jobs from coast to coast, living-wage jobs, jobs
that have evaporated from our communities, jobs that have been shipped
out. We know the places as we just look at the tags on any products--
Mexico, China, Vietnam, Korea, Bangladesh, Honduras, Guatemala, Turkey,
El Salvador--to dozens of Third World nations--frankly, most very
undemocratic--where workers are treated like a bonded class. Workers
everywhere--here, too--are being treated like expendable parts. Yes,
American jobs are being shipped out to penny-wage sweatshops behind the
Iron Curtain of anonymous towns in distant countries most Americans
will never visit.
{time} 1700
Anonymity, worker exploitation, and hidden squalor are fundamental to
free trade. And so are the stories of Americans who struggle to earn a
living, who lose their jobs and are forgotten, are forgotten in their
plight.
In our country, the impact on the average American family has been a
loss of real income of $7,000 a year. Imagine that. The public knows
it.
The people who elected me to Congress--and I thank them--have allowed
me to be a voice, to put the ugly puzzle of outsourcing together. And I
have made it my mission to travel the world to find the companies that
fled our shores. And I have traveled to find them.
I have lots of photos, and I have lots of interviews. And I have had
time to talk to unemployed Americans too--far too many--and the
exploited workers of developing nations and to visit the plants that
have been displaced from this country and built elsewhere.
The titans who run these global transnational corporations, their
operatives, and the Wall Street giants that finance them couldn't care
less about workers anywhere or the communities in which they live. And,
frankly, these new bosses of global production don't care about
democracy or the rule of law either. They pay whatever they want, and
they can pay off as they see fit.
I have seen workers making Maytag washing machines in Monterrey,
Mexico. Those used to be made in Newton, Iowa. These Mexican workers
don't earn enough to buy the very washing machines they make. And with
the jobs lost from Newton, the poverty rate in Newton has dramatically
increased in the town that Fred Maytag proudly helped build. However--I
don't know if you have noticed--the quality of those machines has gone
down too. Who can be proud of what is happening?
I have visited the homes where those workers from Monterrey live and
other maquiladora factory zones and have see firsthand their
impoverished living standards.
I have stood at a surreal location in Mexico following NAFTA's
passage called Michigan-Ohio Avenues and witnessed the jobs outsourced
from our country from a windshield wiper factory that used to be
located in New York.
I have met women in the garment industry from Honduras and El
Salvador who earn 10 cents for every T-shirt they produce in those
sweat shops down there, barricaded off behind barbed wire and
outsourced from places like the Carolinas. The women are being paid 10
cents an hour for every T-shirt that then comes in here and is sold for
$20 each at stores and shopping centers around the country. Meanwhile,
the booming garment and textile industry of the Carolinas, like the
furniture industry too, has all but disappeared, and the tens of
thousands of jobs that went with them. I visited those massive
shuttered factories, and they reminded me of the auto plants that
existed in my industrial region.
I have tracked furniture jobs to Vietnam and have seen child laborers
perched with their bare feet on the edge of large wooden bowls that
they sand and spray with lacquer paint, wearing no face masks, with no
air filters, breathing in the fumes and chemicals certain to damage
their fragile lungs and bodies.
Let me just say in closing, as an Ohio Representative, we have lost
over 5 million manufacturing jobs alone in northern Ohio since the
passage of NAFTA, which I fought with every ounce of being that I had
here in 1993. We lost that fight. A 12-votes switch here would have
made the difference. And as I speak here today, another global company,
Hugo Boss, a German-owned company, is shutting down a factory in
Brooklyn, Ohio, where workers had their pay cut 17 percent 2 years ago
to save that company. You can walk into any Hugo Boss outlet, and you
can see men's suits selling for $1,200 apiece. What a tragedy. What a
tragedy for our country. What a tragedy for workers globally.
I will say to my wonderful colleague from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan),
thank you so much for doing this.
In terms of China--and others will cover this more completely--just
in the past year, 2013, the latest complete year of data, our country
assumed $319 billion of trade deficit with the nation of China just in
that year, just in that year with that one country. Because of that
deficit, we have lost an additional 1,595,000 more American jobs, just
with this one country in 1 year.
The answer to balanced global growth is to pay workers a living wage
and to respect their work, not exploit it. The answer to balanced
growth is to stop the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and to pry open the
closed markets of the world, starting with Japan, China, and Korea. And
the answer to balanced growth and fair trade is to stop the hemorrhage
of more jobs from this country by defeating any more deals like NAFTA
and all of its offspring, and the Fast Tracking of more jobs that they
are trying to do in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It is time for America to stand up and for this Congress to stand up
with the American workers and communities.
Again, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me this evening.
Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative Kaptur, for all that you have
done. You have been an articulate spokesperson on behalf of jobs and
the effects of these bad trade deals on jobs. And I have to say, I am
really glad you brought up the textile industry, because when we talk
about the need to work together in this Congress, this is an issue
where Democrats and Republicans can absolutely unite.
About 12 years ago, I was on a delegation of the American Council of
Young Political Leaders. And one of the people on the delegation was a
very conservative judge from the State of Mississippi. She and I and
the group had met with some sweatshop workers in Indonesia to talk
about all the mills that have left, especially in the southern part of
the United States, and those jobs are pretty much gone forever.
I have been in business for 27 years, since I had hair. I have had a
small business. And in that role, we screen-print on T-shirts. And I
have watched over the years all of the mills that made T-shirts in the
United States pretty much leave. It is pretty hard to find clothes
still made in the USA. It is even harder to find them union-made in the
USA. And this is something that unites people of different political
ideologies because we see those jobs leaving. It doesn't matter. It is
not a Democratic job or a Republican job. These bad trade deals too
often just cost us jobs.
I appreciate you bringing that up, and thank you again for all that
you do.
Next I would like to yield to someone who has been an extraordinary
leader in this area. She has helped to coordinate Members of Congress
like no one else, not just on this issue but on many other issues. She
is an absolutely tireless advocate for the American public and for
making sure that Congress has the proper role when it comes to trade
agreements. She is someone whom I am extremely honored to have as a
colleague and a friend. I would like to
[[Page H146]]
yield to the great Representative Rosa DeLauro from the State of
Connecticut.
Ms. DeLAURO. Thank you so much to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
Again, it is reciprocal. It is just such an honor to serve with you. We
are simpatico in the views that we hold with regard to this and so many
others. I am honored to be able to serve with you and to be tied
together on this critically important issue.
Earlier today, my colleagues who are on the floor here tonight and
others who have spoken, we were all at a press conference. And I think
we can say with one voice that it was one of the broadest advocacy
coalitions that we have seen come together. It certainly is true for me
in my 24 years in the House. The advocacy groups and Members of
Congress came together to oppose Fast Track. It included faith groups,
human rights groups, labor unions, environmental groups, and consumer
protection groups. And the purpose, as I said, was to oppose the policy
known as Fast Track for trade deals.
Under this Fast Track umbrella, if you will, what happens? Members of
Congress are denied the opportunity to debate and vote in detail on the
text of these deals. We cannot have a serious debate, nor can we amend
the process.
Negotiations are going on right now between the United States and 11
other countries. If these negotiations are successful, it will create
the largest trade deal in history, something called the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Yet the details of this trade agreement remain a secret
from the American people, from the Representatives of the American
people in this body. The contours of the deal are being sketched out in
secret, as I have said, by a Who's Who of Wall Street firms, big
pharmaceutical companies, energy companies, and other corporate
interests.
They want to ram the agreement through the Congress, again, without
amendment and with little opportunity for debate. To me, that is the
very opposite of what we have been sent here to do.
I have always opposed Fast Track, no matter who was in the Oval
Office. I will oppose it again. We cannot, and we must not, really just
sign away our constitutional duties. We need to retain the ability to
scrutinize trade deals page by page, line by line, word by word. We
should do that for all legislation, let alone legislation with such
far-reaching implications for American workers.
Some of us remember the debate on this floor or going back home
during the debate on health care when our constituents and our
colleagues on the other side of the aisle would say to us, have you
read the bill? Have you read the bill? How can you vote on a bill that
you have not read?
The TPP is 1,000 pages, 1,000 pages. We want to read the bill. That
is what we are asking for.
Make no mistake: bad trade deals can have grave consequences for our
people.
And it used to be that the working-class families became middle class
by finding work that paid enough to save a little, buy a home in a safe
neighborhood, send their kids to college, and leave the next generation
better off. But today, the good jobs that used to lift people into the
middle class have been shipped overseas to places where labor is cheap.
Many of them have gone to countries that get ahead by abusing labor
rights, polluting the environment, risking public health, or
manipulating their currency.
A recent GAO report tells us of unpunished violence against trade
unionists in Colombia, of union suppression in Guatemala, of abuses
against foreign workers in Oman. These are all countries that we have
trade deals with, agreements under which they promised--they promised--
to improve their records. We haven't held them accountable on these
promises.
I am not against free trade. I am in favor of fair trade on a level
playing field. Hardworking Americans will win 9 times out of 10, but
the competition must be fair.
A recent Gallup Poll showed that in 2014, the issues Americans most
often identified as the biggest problem facing our country was ``poor
government leadership.'' Today, 80 percent of Americans disapprove of
the job that this institution is doing. Why? Because far too often, we
are seen as working not for all Americans but for a privileged few: tax
breaks for millionaires, benefit cuts for the poorest; unprecedented
paydays for those at the top, dwindling paychecks for everyone else.
The big economic problem today is that jobs that people have do not pay
enough to them so that they can live on it. Fast Tracking this trade
agreement will exacerbate that problem.
NAFTA-style trade deals are in the same category. For a narrow band
of wealthy individuals and big corporations with the means to invest
their money beyond our the borders, they do wonders. For the rest of
us, they spell disaster. They send our jobs overseas. They erode our
ability to protect our workers, consumers, and the environment. Worst
of all, they threaten to saw the legs off the ladder of opportunity
that leads to the middle class.
Fast Tracking these deals would be yet another insult to American
workers, yet another sign of how little their political leaders really
care about them.
{time} 1715
Instead of our abdicating our constitutional responsibility, let's
send a clear message: enough is enough. No more offshoring. No more
NAFTA-style trade deals, no more Fast Track. Let us focus on helping
American workers, not throwing their jobs away.
I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for all of his efforts, and it
is a privilege to work with you on this issue.
Mr. POCAN. Again, thank you so much, Representative DeLauro, for all
your leadership. You are helping to coordinate all of our voices in
this battle, and we really appreciate that and all your efforts. Thank
you so much.
When you brought up the public opinion of Congress, there is no
question. If you were actually to explain this process to anyone,
regardless of their political ideology, that for the last 2 years,
about 600 people in this country from America's biggest corporations
and Wall Street's biggest banks have been involved in trying to craft
this legislation that we haven't seen and the American public hasn't
seen and we are going to be asked to vote on something that would take
away our ability, sight unseen, to vote to limit our ability to debate
and to amend any kind of a trade agreement--that is exactly what is
wrong with Washington. That is why people, I think, get so disgusted
with Washington.
We need to stand up, Democrats and Republicans together, to make sure
that we have our ability to have our voices heard, which is the
public's voices through Members of Congress. So your efforts on Fast
Track, on TPP, food safety, and so many areas, thank you so much.
Again, I appreciate it.
Another one of our leaders of our caucus is here who has been an
articulate fighter on so many progressive issues.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the State of Maryland,
Representative Donna Edwards, my great colleague.
Ms. EDWARDS. I want to thank Mr. Pocan for yielding and for his
leadership for calling us together this evening to talk about what
trade means to American paychecks.
Thank you again because I was sitting in my office, and I was
listening to my colleagues speak so eloquently about the need for
Congress, for individual Members of Congress representing--those of us
representing 725,000 Americans, to have a voice in a process that is so
important to American paychecks.
As I sat there, I thought I owed it to my constituents in the Fourth
Congressional District of Maryland to come to this floor to stand on
their side for their paychecks, so I thank you for that.
As I listened to some of my colleagues, one of the things that I
heard Ms. Kaptur say was to talk about the job loss in the
manufacturing sector, in the clothing textile sector in the Carolinas.
I represent a district in Maryland, but my family is from North
Carolina.
A lot of my family members had those good-paying jobs in the mills.
They were making the sheets, pillowcases, T-shirts, and hats, and they
all lost their jobs. All of those jobs went someplace else, but they
didn't stay in North Carolina. That was a tragedy. It
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was a tragedy for my family, as it has been a tragedy for families all
across this country.
I remember the NAFTA debate, and so many Members of Congress--I
wasn't in Congress at the time, Mr. Pocan wasn't in Congress at the
time--but we remember the debate. We remember that they told us:
``Well, there would be other jobs that would be created, so don't worry
about any jobs that would be lost.'' They said the jobs in the service
sector would grow and they would stay.
Almost one of the first things to happen after NAFTA went into effect
was all those call centers closed. Those were service-sector jobs, and
they left, along with millions of manufacturing jobs.
In my home State of Maryland, we lost 70,000 jobs--and we are a small
State--but we lost those just to NAFTA, so when people tell me now as a
Member of Congress: ``We want you to just Fast Track this trade deal,
this Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, and just trust us that the process
is going to work, just trust us that all you have to do is rubberstamp
the trade deal''--I remember--and Mr. Pocan, you remember--and that is
what requires us for our constituents to say no way, that we cannot
just give Fast Track authority over, hand it over and, in effect, just
say that whatever the deal is that has been negotiated, we will just
take that deal for the American people.
Well, you and I know better. One of the things that has long
concerned me is getting wind that our Trade Representative, on behalf
of my constituents and your constituents, were negotiating away Buy
American provisions, negotiating them away without our even having a
voice in that conversation.
Let's look at those Buy American provisions. In 2012, 68 of our
colleagues joined us in saying to President Obama, ``Don't negotiate
away the Buy American provision.'' Then just last year, 120 Members of
Congress said, ``Mr. President, don't negotiate away the Buy American
provisions.''
So I see that the wind is really beneath our sails because the
American people understand that when you negotiate away Buy American,
what you do is negotiate away the buying power and the jobs of American
workers. You trade what is, in effect, billions of dollars of American
taxpayer buying power for very little buying power coming from the
other direction.
I am troubled that we have a Trade Representative that just wants to
say, ``Take the deal and run,'' and those of us who stand in the steps
of American workers, we are in their place. We are representing them.
We have their voice. We need to have their voice, and we have to have
their back and say ``no'' to Fast Track and say ``no'' to the TPP and
``no'' to provisions that would trade away what we know the statistics
are.
The U.S. procurement market is more than 10 times larger than all the
TPP procurement markets combined, and so that means that we would trade
away preferential access for U.S. firms to $556 billion in Federal
Government procurement. For what? $53 billion in return? We have to say
``no'' to this deal.
I want to thank Mr. Pocan for bringing us together. It is good that
we are doing this from day one in the United States House of
Representatives because what we are saying to American workers is:
``Not only will we stand with you on the first day of the Congress and
the next day of the Congress, but all the way to the end, to keep from
trading away millions of your jobs.''
Mr. POCAN. Thank you again so much, Representative Edwards. When you
talked about the job loss in Maryland, we lost nearly 75,000
manufacturing job through the NAFTA-WTO period in the last 20 years.
When I was a legislator in the State of Wisconsin, it was a Buy
American law that I got passed with a bipartisan vote in the Wisconsin
Legislature. The fact that we are going to give up our sovereignty to
have that law and some multinational corporation can sue any local unit
of government so that they can contest those laws and we can lose that
ability, I think the average person, if they knew that was something
even being discussed, would be opposed to that, much less the other 28
chapters in addition to procurement that are included in this Trans-
Pacific Partnership.
Thank you so much for all the work you have done on this and for
making people aware of all the little hidden gems that if we don't have
an ability to have a full and fair debate in this House, things that
could happen in the biggest and the baddest of the trade deals yet we
have seen in this country, so thank you so much.
Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Caucus is going to be doing everything
we can in the coming months to fight this, to make sure that Congress
has a say. We aren't against trade, we want fair trade, but the so-
called free trade that is out there right now that is being drafted by
corporate CEOs and Wall Street banks doesn't include the public and
doesn't include Congress, and it needs to have every single person
represented.
We are the voices of the American people. We need to be able to have
a full debate in this body, and we need to be able to amend any deal
that we don't like, the particular deals that have been decided by
others, by corporate leaders in this country. The American public has
to be included.
Before I ever came to this Congress, the last 27 years, I have run a
small business, a small specialty printing business. One of the things
we do is we source American-made and union-made products for people.
I watched, over that 27 years, companies leave this country over and
over and over, whether it be the mills that I mentioned from the South
that made T-shirts to things as simple as pens. Companies like Parker
Pen used to have up to 1,000 jobs in Rock County, Wisconsin, that now
have all gone out of this country. Those are the types of jobs that we
have seen leave over and over.
When you go back into these communities, they have not replaced the
same quality paying jobs. That is part of why we have got a problem.
While the economy has been coming back, unfortunately, many people are
being left behind, and they are not having the same family-supporting
wages that they need out there.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is 29 chapters, but only five of those
chapters actually relate to trade. So much of what we have talked about
has been about the job impacts and your income impacts of a trade deal,
but this also covers environmental law, currency law, intellectual
property law, food safety, and the ability for procurement, as we just
talked about on Buy American laws, and on and on and on.
This Congress, I think, can work together, Democrats and Republicans,
who have a concern about giving carte blanche authority to simply the
U.S. Trade Representative and the White House and leaving the people
out, leaving the Congress out of that conversation.
We are going to continue to fight this, to talk about this and to
make sure that people understand what Fast Track is and what it isn't
and to make sure that those myths that may be out there about how to
help create jobs may not be true, and there is a lot more ramifications
that are out there.
Mr. Speaker, we thank you so much for this time this evening. We
appreciate the ability to talk about this on the floor of Congress.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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