[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1452-1453]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TAA AND HCTC EXTENSION

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, I thank the majority leader for 
his support on our upcoming efforts. I am joined on the Senate floor by 
Senator Casey, the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, who has been a 
leader for workers in this body.
  I want to make some brief comments about something very important for 
workers and businesses and international trade. Then Senator Casey will 
make a couple of unanimous-consent requests. He will make one that I 
hope is agreed to. If it is, then he will not need to make a second, 
and I will not need to make a third.
  In December, just before the 111th Congress adjourned, it extended 
two critical trade programs which Senator Casey and I were on the 
Senate floor working on. First, we extended the Andean Trade 
Preferences Act, thanks in part to Senator McCain of Arizona. It 
provides assistance to Latin American countries and also helps American 
businesses and workers by granting access to new inputs and products.
  Second, critically important to our two States, Pennsylvania and 
Ohio, and I know to the Presiding Officer's State of Minnesota, we 
extended trade adjustment assistance. That is the least we can do when 
this Congress passes wrong-headed trade agreements.
  We extended the health coverage tax credit so that together workers 
who lose their jobs because of bad trade agreements, such as NAFTA and 
CAFTA, and bad trade positioning such as PNTR for China, can at least 
get some help for retraining so they can get back to work in comparably 
paying jobs, we hope, and get some assistance, some tax credits to buy 
health insurance for them and their families.
  As a result, thousands of workers and retirees who depend on TAA and 
the HCTC made it through the holidays, when we did this in late 
December, at the last minute--it should not have been that long, but in 
the last minute--with these critical sources of support.
  The Andean Trade Preferences Act has brought benefits for our 
businesses and workers. It is nice that sunflowers from Colombia will 
be in florist shops for Valentines Day next week because of this act. 
But the difficult reality faced by too many workers reliant on TAA, 
reliant on the health care tax credit, reminds us of the effects of 
trade and globalization, the downside of trade and globalization.
  It reminds us that our actions bring consequences. We hear Presidents 
and Congresses trumped the advantages of free trade. Yet they forget 
about fair trade, what happens to too many workers. Good for investors, 
good for some companies, good for some countries, not always good for 
our workers--they forget about that.
  By this weekend, if we fail to act, crucial improvements to TAA and 
the health care tax credit will expire. Workers again will be hurt not 
just by loss of jobs but loss of these benefits. It will expire at the 
expense of workers who played by the rules, who lost their jobs, most 
of their pensions, and their health care--or all three.
  Just last month I visited the Mahoning Valley on the Pennsylvania 
border in Northeast Ohio--the Mahoning Valley One Stop to visit with 
workers who are using TAA to develop new skills and training to find 
new secure jobs. One industrial manufacture worker, I believe, in her 
forties has a child, a daughter, I believe, in her late teens. She and 
her daughter both were in the same school studying to be health care 
workers, both becoming professionals, both getting their lives and 
their futures in order--the mother able to do it because of trade 
adjustment assistance.
  I was there with a simple message: We cannot keep passing trade 
agreements that undermine Ohio workers and then turn our backs on those 
workers when their jobs are offshored.
  The TAA and HCTC enhancements are not expensive; they are not 
complicated. They are modest improvements that Congress passed to 
programs that help tens of thousands of Americans either get back to 
work or regain some measure of the financial security that had been 
stripped unceremoniously from them.
  Last week, 12 Senators and I, including the majority leader, sent 
House leadership a request for a long-term extension of trade 
adjustment assistance, the health care tax credit, and the Andean Trade 
Preferences Act. TAA is a critical part of our Nation's competitiveness 
strategy.
  In the last 2 years, more than 155,000 additional trade-affected 
workers across the country who might not have been certified under the 
former TAA program became eligible for TAA benefits because a year and 
a half, almost 2 years ago, in the Recovery Act, we added expanded 
trade adjustment to help those workers who had lost their jobs because 
of trade.
  These Americans are rubber workers from Johnson Rubber Company in 
Wood County. They are furniture makers from Masco in Jackson County or 
aluminum castings workers from Mansfield Brass and Aluminum in my home 
county of Richland. In addition, workers in the service industry are 
eligible for TAA because of these changes. Those workers include 
engineers at Belcan Engineering in Cincinnati and computer programers 
at Electronic Data Systems in Fairborn, a suburb of Dayton. It includes 
researchers at the Transportation Research Center in Moraine.
  In total, 360,000-plus workers nationwide have been certified 
eligible for TAA since 2009. These workers use TAA to acquire new 
skills to return to work as quickly as possible. This is not theory; 
this is not some game. This is workers who have lost their jobs because 
of decisions in this body and in the White House that cost people those 
jobs. And it is helping those workers so they can get back on their 
feet.
  It is not a game; it is not a happy time. It is the least we can do 
for those workers. Health coverage tax credit programs also help those 
same trade-affected workers and retirees who lose their benefits. I 
could go on about this. I will stop.
  I hope Republicans do not object. The combination of TAA and HCTC, 
trade adjustment and health care tax credit, is a winner for business. 
The combination is a winner for workers; it is a winner for our 
economy. It will boost the economy. It is too important for the 
country. For decades there has been bipartisan support for the TAA 
program.
  In 1962, President Kennedy, when this was conceived, said: Those 
injured by

[[Page 1453]]

foreign competition should not be required to bear the brunt of it.
  When there are no replacements for good-paying, secure jobs, TAA and 
HCTC are there. They help workers acquire new skills. They help 
businesses compete. They are keys to our Nation's economic recovery. 
They are keys to our competitiveness. They are, simply put, the right 
thing to do.
  I yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania, I believe, for a unanimous 
consent request.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Pennsylvania is 
recognized.

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