Continuing Appropriations Act, and Health Extenders Act of

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, exactly 1 year ago, the administration announced the most significant trade deal in a generation--a landmark agreement with Mexico and Canada to strengthen two of our Nation's key trading relationships.

The USMCA is the most consequential update of trade policy on this continent in a quarter century. It is a huge opportunity to notch new pro-American policy victories and keep our North American neighbors close while we tackle other challenges, such as China.

Here we are, months after all three countries' leaders signed the agreement, and we are still waiting on the House Democrats to let it move forward. Mexico has already passed it, and Canada is waiting on our move. The Senate is ready and eager to ratify it, but the Senate can't go first. The clock is ticking.

Month after month, even as the House Democrats have continually made vague statements that they support the USMCA and want to see it passed, we have yet to see any real progress. Canada, Mexico, and millions of Americans are waiting for Speaker Pelosi to remember that serving the public interest requires more than just picking fights with the President; it actually entails addressing the people's business.

Mexico and Canada are vital partners at every level of the U.S. economy. They provide enormous, growing markets for American-made products. They, together, buy more than $500 billion in U.S. goods and services every single year. It is a half-a-trillion-dollar export market. Every State, every industry, every corner of our country is involved.

For 90 percent of America's manufacturing sectors, Mexico or Canada ranks as the No. 1 or No. 2 export destination. For American farmers and producers, our two neighbors buy almost two-thirds of all the agricultural exports we sell to all of our free-trade partners combined. We aren't just talking about Big Business. Tens of thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses count on their Mexican or Canadian customers to succeed.

These realities affect Americans' real lives. In the last 25 years, as trade with Mexico and Canada has quadrupled, 12 million U.S. jobs have come to depend on cross-border commerce. Many of those jobs belong to workers in Kentucky, where our biggest industries, from auto manufacturing to bourbon production, depend on this export economy.

With so much at stake, the American people deserve to have an excellent trade deal in place, one that levels the playing field for American workers and reduces the incentives to ship American jobs to Mexico and one that expands American farmers' and manufacturers' access to these neighboring markets.

This is exactly what the USMCA delivers. It upgrades the playing field for American workers, farmers, ranchers, and job creators. It builds on the pro-growth, pro-innovation policies that encourage their success here at home with an upgraded, modern runway to markets beyond our borders.

The USMCA looks specifically at key sectors where outdated rules or exploitive practices threaten Americans' job security and hurt homegrown industries. It strengthens intellectual property rights to protect American innovation; it upgrades our digital trade policy; and the USMCA wins greater market access for U.S. exporters, with there being opportunities to sell more dairy and poultry into Canada, a better playing field for auto parts and investment, and enforceable labor standards so hard-working Americans aren't unfairly priced out of their jobs.

What does all of this add up to? I will tell you. According to the independent U.S. International Trade Commission, the USMCA would generate more than $68 billion in GDP growth and create 176,000 jobs right here in the United States.

Frankly, there is very little else we could do in Congress that would deliver this kind of boost to American prosperity and brighten prospects for so many American families. It is also a bipartisan deal. It includes changes that the Democrats have themselves clamored for and for which the administration has bent over backward to accommodate their concerns.

Here we are, a year after all three countries announced the deal, and the Democrats' heel-dragging continues. Speaker Pelosi keeps saying she supports the agreement in the abstract, but the drip, drip, drip of small objections and stalling tactics keeps on coming. Even as Speaker Pelosi's moderate Members publicly beg her to pass this deal, it is almost as though she is looking for reasons to duck it.

Well, I certainly hope not, for 176,000 American jobs hang in the balance, tens of billions of dollars of new prosperity, and our relationships with two of our closest allies that have already taken difficult steps to get to yes on this agreement and whose support we need to preserve a system of free and fair trade from China's aggressive efforts to rewrite the rules on its own terms.

The United States of America needs this deal. American workers and small businesses need this deal. The time for excuses is over. The USMCA needs to move this fall, and that can't happen until the House Democrats stop blocking an enormous win for our country. Tribute to Ileana Garcia

Mr. President, on a totally different matter, as majority leader, I am especially grateful for opportunities to offer the Senate's thanks to the remarkable men and women who work tirelessly to preserve and protect this great institution.

On Monday, we will be saying a bittersweet goodbye to a particularly irreplaceable member of the Senate's family who has worked alongside us for 22 years.

Ileana Garcia was born in Cuba and raised in Puerto Rico. She started working for the Secretary of the Senate in September 1997 as a project accountant.

Since then she has built a remarkable success story here in this institution, rising through the ranks of financial management and becoming financial clerk of the Senate in 2014.

But with Ileana, it is not just about the impressive milestones. It is about the outsized impact she has had on this place and so many people--from the heavy lifting of getting a new financial system online in the late 1990s to helping offices navigate healthcare transitions and government shutdowns, to the everyday challenges that come with a big complicated payroll like the U.S. Senate's.

She did it all with professionalism and attention to detail. At times, my own staff observed that she was so attentive and so quick to respond to their questions that they wondered if she was detailed exclusively to handle our office. Of course she wasn't. That is just the job she does.

But professionalism and excellence aren't the only things Ileana brought into the office every day. Everyone observes that she also brought a very big heart. Patience, discretion, compassion, and an unflagging smile have been her calling cards. That was the case when she arrived 22 years ago, and it remains the case today as she prepares to depart as one of the Senate's senior-most administrative staffers.

So we are really sorry to lose somebody of Ileana's caliber, but we know she is excited to spend more time on Planet Garcia, which I understand is what she and her beloved husband Ariel of 30 years call their clan, including their three sons. And I understand there might be some more time for competitive domino tournaments--not that she apparently needs any more practice.

So I know that all of my colleagues will join me today in wishing Ileana Garcia the very best and thanking her for a job so well done.

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