[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15315-15316]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FREE-TRADE AGREEMENTS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, later today the Senate will show that 
Democrats and Republicans can, in fact, work together to make it easier 
for American businesses to create jobs.
  By passing free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South 
Korea, we will help the economy, and we will put the lie to the 
ridiculous Obama campaign claim that Republicans are somehow rooting 
against the economy. Nothing could be more ridiculous and absurd as to 
suggest that Republicans are somehow rooting against our economy.
  In fact, if President Obama were willing to work with us on a more 
bipartisan piece of legislation, nobody would even be talking about a 
dysfunctional Congress. There would not be any reason to.
  But, as we all know, that does not fit in with the President's 
election strategy. The White House has made it clear that the President 
is praying for gridlock--he is actually hoping for gridlock--so he has 
somebody besides himself to point the finger at next November.
  That is a big mistake. The American people will not tolerate their 
own President putting politics ahead of working with Congress on the 
kind of bipartisan legislation that we know both parties could agree on 
right now.
  So this morning I would like to repeat my call to the President to 
put the political playbook aside and work with us instead on the kind 
of bipartisan, job-creating legislation the American people truly want.
  The trade bills we will be voting on tonight are a good start. There 
is no reason we should have had to wait nearly 3 years for this 
President to send them to Congress for a vote, but they are a good 
start nonetheless--3 years late but still very important to do.
  Now let's move on to some other things. We have pointed to areas such 
as regulatory reform, tax reform, and energy exploration where the 
parties could help create jobs without raising taxes or adding to the 
deficit.
  It is just the kind of bipartisan cooperation that the American 
people are actually demanding from us, and what I am saying this 
morning is that Republicans are eager and willing to join Democrats in 
making that happen.
  The Presidential election, for goodness' sake, is 13 months away; 13 
months from now is the Presidential election. There is plenty of time 
to campaign. Why don't we put that off for a while and do what we were 
sent here to do?
  But right now we have an opportunity to work together. Let's put 
aside the political playbook and focus on results. I know that does not 
come easy for some around here. The senior Senator from New York, for 
example, made it pretty clear yesterday that he is more interested in 
drawing a contrast with Republicans than he is in actually passing 
bipartisan legislation that we know will spur job growth. But I do not 
believe the 14 million Americans looking for work right now care more 
about contrast than about jobs. The jobs crisis we are in calls for 
lawmakers to rise above these games.
  Americans expect us to do something to help create jobs. That is what 
we should be doing. That is why Republicans will continue to seek to 
find Democrats who are more interested in jobs than in political 
posturing and work with them on bipartisan legislation such as the 
trade bills we will vote on tonight.
  What we will not do, though, is vote in favor of any more misguided 
stimulus bills because some bill writer slapped the word ``jobs'' on 
the cover page. The stimulus bill with the word ``jobs'' slapped on the 
cover page and wrapped around a talking-point tax hike is not our idea 
of what is good for America. We refuse to raise taxes on the very 
people Americans are depending on to create jobs. We need to be looking 
for ways to make it easier to create jobs, not harder.
  For nearly 3 years, Republicans have told Democrats again and again 
that we are willing and eager to work with the Democrats anywhere, 
anytime, on

[[Page 15316]]

real job-promoting legislation on which both sides could agree.
  I have been calling on the President to approve these three free-
trade agreements since the day he took the oath of office. All the 
President had to do was to follow through on these agreements and send 
them up to Congress, and we would have had an early bipartisan 
achievement that did not add a single dime to the deficit, that would 
have convinced people the two sides could work together, and that by 
the President's own assessment created tens of thousands of jobs right 
here at home. But he did not. The President chose to push a highly 
partisan stimulus bill instead that the administration said would keep 
unemployment below 8 percent. We all know how that turned out. Nearly 3 
years later, the only thing left is the nearly $1 trillion it added to 
the debt and the government programs it created. As for jobs, well, 
unemployment has been above 8 percent for 32 months straight, and 
according to the Labor Department, there are now 1.5 million fewer jobs 
than there were then.
  It is time to try something different. Republicans have proposed a 
number of ideas that would not only represent a change in direction but 
would also attract broad bipartisan support. There is no good reason 
whatsoever for the President and Democrats in Congress to prevent us 
from doing these things. As I see it, the President actually has a 
choice: He can spend the next 13 months trying to get Republicans to 
vote against legislation which will not create sustainable private 
sector jobs and which is designed to fail in Congress or he can work 
with us on legislation that will actually encourage small businesses to 
create jobs and is actually designed to pass.
  There is an entire menu of bipartisan job-promoting proposals the 
President could choose to pursue over the next year. Republicans hope 
he works with us to approve them. Americans are waiting. We are ready 
to act. The free-trade agreements we are voting on tonight are a good 
first step. They demonstrate the way Washington can actually help 
tackle the jobs crisis, not by spending borrowed money to create 
temporary jobs--spending borrowed money to create temporary jobs. We 
have tried that. This will lower barriers to private enterprise, 
unleashing the power of the private sector to make and sell products, 
expand market share, and in doing so create sustainable private sector 
jobs that will not disappear when the Federal cash spigot runs dry. But 
if we are going to tackle the enormous challenges we face, we need to 
do much more than that. With these trade agreements, we are showing we 
can work together to create jobs and help the economy. We can and must 
do more of this kind of thing.
  I yield the floor.

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