[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9425-9427]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               FAST TRACK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bost). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am going to address the issues that we 
will be voting on tomorrow: trade adjustment assistance and the trade 
promotion authority, or fast track.
  I know that a number of my colleagues are within the sound of my 
voice, and I hope that if they share my views on these issues they will 
come down to the floor and invite me to yield them time. Until then, I 
am going to first focus on the trade adjustment assistance bill that 
will be before us tomorrow.
  There are so many reasons to vote against trade adjustment assistance 
in this form, even if it was a freestanding bill. First, it is 
inadequate. It has got roughly $450 million, and there is no assurance 
that that money will be available next year or the year after that.
  We know that the majority of this House is actually opposed to 
funding this program at all. They are doing it in an effort to pass 
fast track. Once fast track is passed, every effort will be made on 
this floor to cut this program to zero. Bait and switch, you have been 
warned.
  Second, this amount of money, who is supposed to be eligible? The 
proponents of fast track have said, well, we have expanded those who 
are eligible, not just those who lose their jobs because of the Trans-
Pacific Partnership trade deal we are planning, not just those who lost 
their job because of NAFTA, but everybody who has lost their job 
because of globalization in any of its forms. Well, that is also a bait 
and switch.
  They are able to tell tens of millions of Americans you are going to 
be eligible for this program, but the program has only $450 million in 
it nationwide. So it is like you win because we give you a lottery 
ticket, and then we determine whether you will be one of the very small 
percentage of those who have lost their job due to globalization who 
benefit from the program.
  This program is inadequate. It also explicitly contains language 
excluding any public sector employee from a benefit. Imagine that great 
unfairness. If you are at a public university and somehow grading of 
tests is offshored, you can't benefit. But if you are at a private 
university, same job, same offshoring, whether it be a call center or 
any of the other services that can be offshored in today's modern age, 
you could possibly--you are probably not going to get anything--but you 
can, at least, apply for a benefit.
  The exclusion of the public sector may have made sense 40 or 50 years 
ago when only manufacturing jobs were subject to foreign competition. 
Today, anything that is done on the Internet,

[[Page 9426]]

anything that is done on the phone, anything that is part of the 
information economy is a job that can be taken offshore. It is going to 
be very difficult for Members of this House to explain that they voted 
for a program that slapped in the face those who lose their jobs 
because it is a public sector job.
  The biggest problem with TAA is that it cuts Medicare two different 
ways. One way we are told is an acceptable way to cut Medicare, and the 
other we are told isn't going to really happen. It is actually two cuts 
to Medicare.
  The first that they say they have ironed out is the $700 million cut 
to Medicare that will, under the rule just passed in this House by a 
small majority, graft itself onto the Trade Adjustment Assistance bill 
if that bill unfortunately passes. So you will be in a position to 
explain why you voted for a bill, knowing full well that as soon as it 
passed, a $700 million cut to Medicare was grafted on it and that the 
President would have on his desk and intended to sign a bill that cut 
Medicare by $700 million.
  Now, you can present a complicated chart showing how you voted for 
Trade Adjustment Assistance but you didn't vote for the rule, and the 
cut for Medicare was supposed to be undone by the other bill that you 
voted for before you voted against it. And if you are able to make that 
explanation, more power to you.
  But if you are a Democrat, you will be in a particularly weak 
position to make that explanation, because the AFL-CIO issued a letter 
today that said a vote for Trade Adjustment Assistance in this form 
with this rule in this ``here you see it, now you don't; we will take 
it away, don't worry about it'' Medicare cut is a cut to Medicare. So 
you are going to be explaining why your opponent's attack on you is 
unfair when you are a Democrat and you say it is unfair, but the AFL-
CIO says it is not only fair, it is absolutely true. A special problem 
for Democrats. Republicans will not have the difficulty in explaining 
why they disagree with the AFL-CIO.
  Then there is a Medicare cut that is supposed to become law. This is 
the dialysis cut, and here is the thinking: Medicare will be more 
efficient in dealing with dialysis. We pass a statute that allows them 
to make use of clinics instead of hospitals. So through new procedures 
and new technology, Medicare will save roughly $250 million.
  Okay. Does Medicare keep that savings? No. It is used to buy votes 
for fast track.
  Now, how is Medicare going to be sustained if every time new 
technology allows Medicare to save money, we take the savings and use 
it for something else, but every time new technology creates new 
medical costs, new things for Medicare to pay for, well, Medicare has 
to pay for them?
  If we establish a principle that every new technology that saves 
Medicare money is money to be spent on something else and every change 
in medical technology that increases Medicare's cost has to come out of 
Medicare, Medicare will be bankrupt and will go bankrupt more quickly 
as we change medicine.

                              {time}  1715

  That cut is supposed to become law if you vote for TAA, but TAA is on 
this floor for only one reason. It is a way to put a bandaid on a giant 
decapitation of the American middle class, a tiny program designed to 
facilitate the passage of a trade bill which will govern 40 percent of 
the world's GDP.
  Don't be in enabler. Do not go back home and say you opposed fast 
track, but that you voted for the bill that will enable fast track. If 
you are against fast track, then you have got to vote ``no'' on TAA.
  Well, what about fast track? What about this new Asia deal that is 
being negotiated? In the past, the proponents of these trade deals have 
come forward and said that they were going to reduce our trade deficit 
and create more jobs than will be lost.
  For this deal, they don't even make that assertion. Their bait and 
switch is to say it will create some jobs in exports, but they are so 
arithmetically challenged, they don't then subtract out the jobs that 
will be lost to imports.
  The fact is that time and again the proponents of our current trade 
policy have wildly misestimated the job effect of each action. For 
example, on this floor, we were told that the trade agreement with 
South Korea would reduce our trade deficit. That deficit has 
skyrocketed. We were told that permanent most favored nation status for 
China would increase our trade deficit by only $1 billion. The 
proponents were off by 30,000 percent.
  Now, they don't even say that we are going to get more jobs than we 
will lose; they simply say the jobs we lose don't count because that 
involves subtraction. The fact is that this is bad for the American 
middle class, as has our policy over the years.
  Since NAFTA, we have hollowed out the middle class; we have hollowed 
out American manufacturing. Since NAFTA, we have had a stagnation of 
wages in this country. Now, as we begin to recover from the catastrophe 
of 2008, now, as there begins to be the possibility that employers are 
going to have to pay more in wages to compete for employees, we have a 
giant trade deal that guarantees that wages will decline or stagnate 
for another decade or longer.
  The economics are against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the fast 
track that is designed to carry it, so there is a shift. The argument 
now is, well, it may be bad for our economy, but it is a great anti-
China alliance, great geopolitics, disguised as a bad trade deal.
  I have been on the Foreign Affairs Committee for 19 years. I am the 
ranking member on the Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee. I am here to 
tell you this deal is not only bad economic policy; it is bad 
geopolitics as well.
  Let's look at how China benefits from this deal. First and foremost, 
we are told that this deal is going to set the terms of trade in Asia. 
Then you go to the basement, and you look at this deal, and, as 
reported in the press, there is a statement that there will not be 
anything in this trade deal about currency manipulation.
  China, if this deal goes forward, wins without even having to sign 
it. China gets a new approach to world trade, which is currency 
manipulation, go to it, it will be applauded, it will not be counted; 
but China gets something even more. Go deeper into the basement and 
look at the rule of origin provisions. Now, what are these rules of 
origin provisions?
  You would think that under this deal, goods made in Vietnam, goods 
made in Japan, goods made in the other countries that are part of the 
deal come into our country duty free, that this deal benefits goods 
made in Japan, Vietnam, et cetera, but only to the countries that sign 
the deal.
  Then you get down to the details, and you see that goods that are 50 
or 60 percent made outside the countries that are parties to this deal, 
goods that are 50 or 60 percent made in China, are eligible to be fast-
tracked into the United States with no tariffs and no limits, and goods 
where the manufacturer admits that it is 50 or 60 percent made in China 
may actually be 70 or 80 percent made in China.
  Goods that are chiefly Chinese-made get the benefit of this 
agreement, with China not even having to sign it. Our trade deficit 
will balloon not only from goods that are really made in Japan and 
really made in Vietnam--and those are the two countries added to the 
free trade regime by this agreement; we already have free trade 
agreements with the others that are part of these Trans-Pacific 
Partnership; those are the two main countries--not only goods made in 
those countries, but goods that are just kind of polished in Vietnam, 
finished in Japan, but made in China.
  We are told that this is part of some clever system to contain China 
when in reality, we established the international principle, the 
currency manipulation, the number one tactic of China to run up the 
largest trade deficit in history. We have the largest trade deficit; 
they have the largest trade surplus in history. That becomes the norm.

[[Page 9427]]

  Then second, goods chiefly made in China, finished in Japan, get duty 
free into the United States.
  But finally, think of what an insult it is to our men and women in 
uniform to be told that our allies in Asia are so disdainful of our 
help as they fight China over the islets that are in question, that we 
have to give away our jobs and enter into a bad trade deal just to have 
the honor of deploying our troops and our Navy to defend the islets 
claimed by Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
  You would think that the willingness of America to put its blood and 
treasure on the line to defend not only our allies, but even Vietnam, 
would be enough, not that we would be told that in order to have that 
honor, we have to enter into this trade agreement.
  Finally--and, Mr. Speaker, I will end with this, there is the issue 
of admitting Vietnam into this deal. We are told that the purpose of 
this deal, the upside, is that we get free access to Vietnam's markets, 
free access to their markets. The only problem is Vietnam doesn't have 
freedom and it does not have markets.
  This deal is great for Nike. They can manufacture shoes in Vietnam 
and pay 30-40 cents an hour. They can then add a few jobs in Oregon as 
they hire the marketing skill necessary to push off the shelves the 
last remnant of American-made shoes.
  They can add some jobs in Oregon where they can find the tax lawyers 
to make sure that they don't pay any U.S. taxes on the enormous profit 
that you can get by making a shoe for 40 cents an hour and selling it 
for $140. A few jobs, which will lead to pushing off the shelves all 
the American-made shoes. That is what we get on the import side.
  The jobs we get are tax lawyers making sure that the importers don't 
pay any taxes. By the way, it has already been revealed that Nike will 
save several hundred million dollars in taxes on this, chiefly tariffs.
  What access do we get for our exporters? Well, right now, Vietnam 
does have some tariffs. The tariffs go to the government. The entity 
paying the tariff is whoever is doing the exporting. Those importers 
are all owned and controlled--or at least controlled--by the 
government.
  Right now, if Vietnam imports anything from the United States, the 
Vietnamese Government pays itself a tariff. If this deal goes forward, 
that tariff will be lower, so they will pay themselves less. Paying 
themselves money is an irrelevancy.
  We don't have access to the Vietnamese market just because Vietnamese 
Government-controlled or Vietnamese Government-owned enterprises will 
be paying a smaller tariff to the Vietnamese Government of which they 
are part to begin with.
  Tariffs are not the limit on what we export to Vietnam. Vietnam makes 
a political decision, a nationwide economic planning decision which 
products to import to the United States. They are importing what they 
choose to import; they are not importing what they choose not to 
import, and they are going to keep doing it.
  To assume that just because lowering tariffs means you sell more 
goods in the United States, means lowering tariffs, means you sell more 
goods in Vietnam, we are required to imagine that the Vietnamese 
economy, a communist economy, is just like ours. That is an absurd 
assumption.
  The Vietnamese centrally planned economy will or will not import from 
the United States whatever they choose to. Their published tariffs are 
an irrelevancy. Their promise to change those tariffs is a promise to 
change an irrelevancy. We are a nation of free markets. When we change 
our public tariffs, that opens up our markets to all the tennis shoes 
that can be made for 40 cents an hour.
  This is a terrible deal for the American people. It is part of a 
continued policy of what they call free trade. What America needs is 
fair trade. What America needs is to say that those who want access to 
the U.S. market must be willing to buy U.S. goods and services. What 
America needs is an understanding that we need results-oriented trade 
agreements.
  We are in the deepest hole ever. We are the largest debtor nation in 
the world. We have the largest trade deficit in the world. We would 
expect that the dollar will crash not this decade, but next decade. The 
first thing you do when you are in a hole that deep is to stop digging.
  The first step is to stop this fast track. Then the next step is to 
deploy our trade negotiators with the power to say--the issue isn't 
whether we are going to lower our tariffs; we are a sovereign nation; 
we can increase our tariffs--if you want access to the U.S. market, 
everything is on the table, and a fair, balanced trade result is the 
requirement, if you want access to the one thing that the entire world 
wants, and that is access to the U.S. market.
  I see no one seeking time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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