(Remarked as Delivered)
I often say that militaries are always fighting the last war instead of the one they’re in. And that’s exactly what today’s markup feels like.
The Republicans seem to be stuck in the past, reopening debates that were raging before I got here and I thought were settled long ago in a bipartisan way.
As a result, this mock-mark up is a mess. And it didn’t have to be this way.
In the 21st century, our trade agreements have to accomplish three things. They have to help businesses. They have to help workers. And they have to help promote U.S. interests and values.
Instead, the Republicans have turned their backs on realities of globalization and the workers of this country. They’re running as fast as possible back to the failed policies of the past.
They’re making the same old failed theological arguments about the perfect beauty of free markets, as if we’d learned nothing about the world economy in the last 30 years.
When they’re done right, trade agreements can foster economic growth and prosperity. But there are some negative consequences to trade, and all the Republican political red meat talking points in the world won’t make them go away.
In exchange for growth in trade, growth that I believe must be shared by all, some workers lose their jobs in the face of increased competition.
Trade Adjustment Assistance is specifically designed to get these folks back on their feet and into new good paying jobs in sectors of the economy that are growing.
Two years ago there was consensus on this economic reality and good policy.
Democrats and Republicans, working together, hammered out the 2009 TAA program reforms, which overhauled the program and brought it into the 21st century.
Republicans and Democrats alike touted the bipartisan accomplishment.
Chairman Camp said, “This important package provides a coherent, rational, accountable, and cost-effective system for training trade-affected workers and putting them back to work quickly and at better jobs."
What happened to that reality-based policy? What happened to the shared recognition of the importance of retraining trade-impacted workers?
It’s been high jacked - high jacked by the Republicans’ radical anti-jobs, anti middle-class philosophy that has poisoned this Congress.
The Republican party is so overtaken by the fringe of its base that the Chairman of this committee is unwilling to put up for consideration a TAA extension that he himself negotiated this year.
TAA expired last February and workers are being methodically pushed out onto the streets. I think we need to put ordinary workers and jobs first.
Without TAA, it will be impossible for me to support any of the FTAs. I hope it does not come to this.
Republicans shouldn’t be opposing efforts to improve working conditions in FTA partner countries either.
Not only is it the right thing to do for workers in those countries and here in the U.S., it also helps to create growing middle classes who can buy U.S. goods and services.
Including the Colombia Action Plan language that Democrats proposed in the Colombia FTA is a normal practice and would have cost the Republicans nothing.
Instead, like on TAA, Republicans have chosen to throw away any chance for bipartisanship - again - and squandered a big opportunity to build a more broadly supported approach to trade.
At some point I hope we’ll act like we actually learned something in the last 30 years and make progress on an economic agenda that isn’t entirely about a dead economic philosophy that’s failed the American people again and again. I am not optimistic, but I am hoping that it begins soon.
