Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3920, Trade and Globalization Assistance Act of 2007
Floor Speech
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 3920, TRADE AND GLOBALIZATION ASSISTANCE ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - October 31, 2007)
Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 781 and ask for its immediate consideration.
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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, H. Res. 781 provides for consideration of H.R. 3920, the Trade Globalization and Assistance Act of 2007, under a structured rule. The rule provides 1 hour of debate with 40 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means and 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and Labor. Finally, the rule makes in order a substitute amendment to be offered by Representative McCrery of Louisiana, or his designee.
Madam Speaker, let me begin by saying what we all know. Trade can be a very good thing for the economy of this country, and this Congress and this Member of Congress is committed to examining any trade agreement that is brought before this House in two ways: one, whether the terms and provisions will improve the economy of this country; and two, whether there is a capacity to share the benefits that that trade agreement will bring to this economy, across all sectors of it.
And what we have to acknowledge on trade agreements, and really is the underpinning of this legislation brought before the House, is that there is significant dislocation that can occur with trade. There can be winners and there can be losers, and in the adjustment to some of the consequences that have adverse impact on many of our workers across this country, we must have a substantial and vigorous and effective assistance program to help workers who are hurt regain jobs, regain employment, improve their incomes and be part of this economy and be part of the benefits, not just the downside of trade.
I want to thank Chairman Rangel, Chairman Miller, Congressman Levin and Congressman Smith for their diligence in putting together a very strong adjustment assistance package that we will vote for later today. Among many others, they have been working on this bill for nearly a decade.
Trade adjustment assistance hadn't been started in this country until 1962; even though trade has been a very difficult political issue for this country from its inception, where there were debates about tariffs. And in our days of our history, tariffs were used basically to protect our industries and allow them to get a foothold. And then trade barriers were gradually reduced, and what we're seeing as that happens is an increase in gross domestic product and wealth, but we're also seeing an increase in dislocation among many workers, and some of that is concentrated in many of the old industrial sectors of our country.
This legislation recognizes that impact and is attempting to substantially increase our ability to address the dislocation. That underpinning is essential for the consideration of any future trade packages that will be brought before this House.
The update is long overdue. H.R. 3920 expands trade assistance to the service sector. That was denied under the previous adjustment assistance legislation, even as more and more of our economy has become service-related and even as service sector jobs are being off-shored. So this change in trade adjustment assistance is long overdue and very necessary.
Too often workers are not provided with the training that they need under current training assistance bill. This bill doubles the current training fund cap to $440 million. Beyond expanding coverage to more workers, this TAA improves their training opportunities, as well as the all-important health care benefits.
Many of the folks who have been adversely affected by trade have come from older industries with strong unions where they had substantial and very important health care benefits. This trade adjustment assistance extends them.
It also creates new benefits for industries in communities that have been hardest hit by creating 24 manufacturing redevelopment zones to encourage the redevelopment of communities that have been hit the hardest by manufacturing decline.
What this legislation starts to understand is that one of the responses that we must have strategically to the acceleration of globalization is the intensification of localization. Our economies that have been hardest hit have to rebuild in part from the bottom up using the resources that we have in those communities, keeping dollars in those communities that can be reinvested and then create jobs and wealth in those communities.
Madam Speaker, one of the things that has been happening over the past generation is a widening gap between the highest and lowest paid among us. According to a 2006 survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal, the case right now is that the average CEO in the United States earns 262 times the pay of the average worker. It means that the CEO earned more in one work day than an average worker earned in the entire year.
And we have to look at this discrepancy because one of the actual facts that has to be recognized, whatever your position on trade, is that there has been this widening gap, and historically, this country has always been its best when we've had economic policies that have shared the wealth that is generated by people working hard in this country.
H.R. 3920 is an important bill for our economic stability and workforce growth. It's also a bill about fairness.
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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, I just want to read one section from the bill to allay the apprehensions about benefits going to illegal aliens: section 226, Restriction of Eligibility For Program Benefits, states very specifically that ``no benefit allowances, training or other employment services may be provided under this chapter to a worker who is an alien, unless the alien is an individual lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States.''
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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I thank the gentleman from California, my good friend and colleague on the Rules Committee, for his kind words and his usual vigorous argument for the point of view represented on his side.
A couple of things. One, this is a good opportunity for the House to have a full and fair debate on the substance of this legislation and on the substitute. We will have that debate, we will have the vote, and we'll see which side prevails. So I am delighted that all Members of the House are going to have a full and fair opportunity to make their case.
Second, before we get to the specific details on what is contained in this trade adjustment assistance, there is really a bottom line that has to be acknowledged and it's this: that the road to prosperity has to be built on a foundation of fairness. What has happened in this country, despite the economic growth of 3.9 percent most recently, the highest gross domestic product in the history of the world, over $13 trillion, is that average, everyday working people are falling farther behind.
We have had the greatest disparity in wealth in this country since the 1920s, and there is a fundamental question that we have to answer, and it's this: Are we going to include all Americans in the benefits of a rising economy, or are we going to pursue policies that allow for the intensification of that widening gap between the very wealthy and everyone else?
Our party has made a commitment to the basic proposition of democratic fairness that requires everyone to have an opportunity to participate in the benefits of a rising and strengthening economy. And that hasn't happened. But what we have done with the legislation we have brought before this House is essentially tried to build that foundation of fairness and provide a new direction on our economic agenda, one that includes all Americans.
Let me just give, Madam Speaker, a few examples. We raised the minimum wage, something that hadn't been done in over 10 years. We had people working harder, making less, many of them paying more in taxes because of the Social Security payroll tax increases than at any time in history. In the average families, they found themselves working two and three jobs in an effort to pay the light bill, in an effort to pay the fuel bill, losing health care.
We increased access to college education by taking a free ride away from the international banks that were literally getting a taxpayer guarantee in subsidized profits and gave that benefit to students so that their student loans were cut in half in the interest rate, from 6.8 to 3.4. We passed the child health care, which extends benefits to working families, basically, to 10 million children throughout this country, something our kids need.
And these are oftentimes the children of the working poor. These are folks working hard. They would rather not have to have any help, but they can't afford health care. We passed prescription drug price negotiation. Instead of giving away guaranteed legislated profits to the drug companies, we, in the House, it's languishing in the other body, required price negotiation so that we can get the benefit of lower prices that we're entitled to because of bulk purchasing.
We passed many provisions that are going to strengthen our small businesses across this country because we know the small business is a job creator. And we stood up to an administration, at a time when our veterans and our soldiers are doing more for this country than in recent memory, by passing the highest increase in the budget for veterans in the history of the Veterans Administration.
The bottom line here is that this Congress, this leadership has made a commitment to a new direction. And the new direction is the old-time values of making certain that workers, average families, and communities that are fully engaged as American citizens participate in the benefits of our economy.
Trade adjustment assistance is one more brick in that foundation of fairness. We can't have trade agreements that are tilted so that the benefits are not shared and the burdens of dislocation are not shared.
So, Madam Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question on the rule.
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