[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 7382-7383]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, yesterday the White House announced 
it will not submit three pending free-trade agreements, FTAs, with 
South Korea, Colombia, and Panama until Congress reaches a deal on 
reauthorizing the trade adjustment assistance for workers programs, the 
so-called TAA. I applaud President Obama for putting the workers first 
before we do these trade agreements.
  The trade agreements are very controversial, as they always are. The 
promises are always that they will create jobs, and they rarely do. 
They usually result in a decrease in jobs. Yet too often Congress 
jettisons the safety net to protect those workers who lose their jobs 
because of these agreements. That is why I applaud President Obama for 
making this one clear. He will not send these trade agreements to 
Congress until Congress has sent to his desk--not talked about it, not 
debated it, not passed one committee or one House, but sent to his 
desk--trade adjustment assistance expansion.
  As my colleagues know, since we let this program expire in February 
because of Republican objections, Senator Casey and I went to the floor 
day after day in December and then again in February as Republicans 
continued to object just to continuing trade adjustment assistance as 
we had begun in the Recovery Act 2 years earlier.
  So what happened? Because of these Republican objections, we shut out 
service workers and we shut out manufacturing workers who had lost 
their jobs to countries with which we do not have a free-trade 
agreement. So when workers lost their jobs because of outsourcing of 
jobs to China or India, those workers couldn't get trade adjustment 
assistance until the Recovery Act, so they could get it in 2009 and in 
2010. Because of Republican objections to continuation of that, they 
can't get it now.
  Also, people who lost their jobs that were in the service industries 
experienced this same kind of deadline on their eligibility.
  Since Congress made reforms to TAA in 2009, more than 185,000 
additional trade-affected workers became eligible for training under 
the TAA for Workers Program.
  In 2010 alone, more than 227,000 workers participated in the TAA 
program, receiving training for jobs that employers are looking to 
fill. These are people who want to work. They lost their jobs because 
of a trade agreement. They can prove they lost their jobs because of a 
trade agreement. A company shuts down in Elery, OH, and goes to Mexico; 
a company shuts down in Steubenville, OH, and goes to New Delhi; a 
company shuts down in Lima, OH, and goes to Shanghai. When you can 
prove that, as you can in many cases, those workers should be eligible 
for assistance from the government to get trained to get back to work.
  The program also, of course, receives strong support from businesses 
that know a skilled workforce is critical to their economic 
competitiveness.

[[Page 7383]]

  But just 11 days ago--because of these Republican objections and 
because the TAA language was truncated--but just 11 days ago, the Labor 
Department denied the first three petitions filed by groups of workers 
seeking TAA assistance under pre-2009 TAA rules, including three 
workers in Uniontown, OH. The reason: They are service workers.
  In addition, the enhanced health coverage tax credit program also 
expired in February. HCTC helps trade-affected workers purchase private 
health insurance coverage to replace the employer-sponsored coverage 
they lost. It also helps those retirees who lose their benefits when 
the company for which they worked goes bankrupt.
  The HCTC prevents tens of thousands of Americans from falling into 
the ranks of the uninsured. But right now, if we do not act, we are 
simply giving these workers the cold shoulder.
  So I applaud the administration for saying, yesterday, we will pass 
no more free trade agreements without a deal on TAA. But this will 
require my Republican colleagues to come to the table and agree on a 
package. We have seen what unfair trade deals such as NAFTA and PNTR 
with China and CAFTA do to communities in Ohio and around the Nation. 
These are Americans who lost their jobs, lost their pensions, lost 
their health care--maybe all three--when the company they worked for 
moved operations overseas or went to bankruptcy court or faced a 
reduction in demand for their products due to unfair foreign 
competition.
  These Americans need TAA to get back on solid footing. These 
Americans need Congress to defend against unfair trade and to 
strengthen trade enforcement. There are several trade enforcement 
measures that Senator McCaskill and Senator Wyden and I and others have 
introduced, and I hope they will garner bipartisan support in this 
Chamber.
  Senator Blunt, Senator McCaskill, and I testified in front of the 
Trade Subcommittee that Senator Wyden chaired the other day and talked 
about some of these ideas and how to address them bipartisanly.
  TAA has been a core pillar of U.S. trade policy. It has long enjoyed 
bipartisan support because it helps American workers who lose their 
jobs and their financial security as a result of globalization.
  I thank Senator Casey, Senator Stabenow, Senator Baucus, and Senator 
Wyden for their leadership on trade adjustment assistance--language in 
getting this legislation put forward.
  Just the fairness of this: Again, put yourself--something we do not 
do enough here--in the shoes of a worker in Champaign, IL, or Boulder, 
CO, or Mansfield, OH, a worker who shows up for work for 15 years, who 
has been a productive worker, helped his company make money, was paid a 
middle-class, decent wage, and then all of a sudden their plant shuts 
down because the jobs are outsourced to China. They did not do anything 
wrong. Are we going to do nothing to help them? Are we going to do 
nothing to help their communities?
  It is pretty clear to me, the overwhelming consensus of the American 
people say: Give them the opportunity to get training for another job 
if we cannot save their jobs. Give them some assistance on health 
insurance so they can reach into their pocket, with some assistance 
through a significant tax credit, to continue the insurance for their 
families. It will mean many of them will not lose their homes. Far too 
many people who lose their jobs then lose their health insurance and 
then lose their homes.
  We have an opportunity actually to do something about this. So the 
President was exactly right. Do not bring these three free trade 
agreements--with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea--to the floor until 
we have first taken care of the workers who lose their jobs--not at the 
same time because we know what happens when we try to do that. All of a 
sudden, the assistance for workers gets jettisoned. But it must be done 
first to help these workers with their health insurance and with their 
retraining.
  It will matter for literally hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions 
of American families.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant majority leader.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, first, let me salute my colleague from 
Ohio for bringing up trade adjustment assistance. Because even if you 
are a proponent of expanding trade in the United States, you know the 
ebb and flow of the economy is going to take away some jobs in this 
country as other suppliers arrive.
  What the Senator from Ohio and the Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden, 
are trying to achieve is to make sure trade adjustment assistance is 
there to help these workers make a transition to another job in another 
area that is expanding in our economy. That is the thoughtful thing to 
do for their lives and the future of our economy. It is also a 
necessary part of any conversation about the future of trade in the 
United States.

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