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“TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S3040-S3041 on May 17, 2011.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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.
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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