Pregnancy and Trauma Care Access Protection Act of 2004 - Motion to Proceed

PREGNANCY AND TRAUMA CARE ACCESS PROTECTION ACT OF 2004-MOTION TO PROCEED
EXTENDING TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, software programmers in Beaverton, OR, every day have to compete with those in Beijing. I think it is very important for the Senate to set in place bipartisan policies that are going to finally give a fair shake to our workers who are competing in tough global markets.

I come to the floor this afternoon because I have developed, with the support of Senator Coleman, our colleague from Minnesota, a bipartisan proposal that would give the Senate a chance to help hundreds of thousands of laid-off high tech workers and service employees by extending trade adjustment assistance benefits to them so they can receive job training, income support, and health insurance tax credits.

So often these workers have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and we know-especially the distinguished Presiding Officer of the Senate-these high tech workers have been the envy of our American workforce. There is extraordinary ingenuity among these hundreds of thousands of programmers and engineers and designers who have helped drive our economy in this century. Their creativity has generated an exceptional wave of economic prosperity, and trade agreements on services and intellectual property helped carry the fruits of the work of our workers around the globe.

Information technology developed by American workers transformed the world and the way business is done. Overseas cable costs have dropped by as much as 80 percent in the last 5 years which, as the distinguished Presiding Officer knows, has spread the Internet far and wide. The Internet has made it a lot cheaper to send work through a phone line than to ship a bulky package on an airplane.

Globalization of technology has globalized the technology workforce. So, in fact, the workers I am honored to represent in Beaverton, OR, do have to compete against workers in Beijing, and certainly geography is increasingly less important in determining where a job can be done.

But the transformation from an economy built on smokestacks to one built on packages of light has come at a heavy price. So often trade agreements in the past considered these high technology and service workers as an afterthought. The irony is now some of the very same workers who launched the technology revolution have actually become its victims. Hardly a day goes by without a front-page story in our country about an American programmer on his way out who is having to train a foreign worker who will replace him.

Senator Coleman and I have been working with a number of colleagues. Senator Baucus on this side of the aisle has been exceptionally helpful. We talked with a number of colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Senator Coleman and I have developed a bipartisan proposal to make sure these workers, who have not gotten a fair shake in the past, do have an opportunity to get back into our marketplace economy.

It is not a moment too soon. The American Electronics Association 2003 Cyberstates report found unemployment among computer programmers jumped from 4.5 percent in 2001 to 6.2 percent in 2003. High tech employment fell by 540,000 jobs to 6 million in 2002 and a further loss of 234,000 jobs was expected in 2003.

The average American may think the Federal Government is helping those technology workers and service workers whose jobs have been displaced by trade. But the reality is that assistance is not available because the trade assistance law, which was authored in 1962 for displaced manufacturing workers, did not contemplate the tremendous number of jobs we now have in the technology sector, with all of those software programmers and engineers and designers. The U.S. trade assistance laws were designed for the manufacturing era.

Since 1962, when workers lost their jobs in a manufacturing plant as a result of trade, they could get help through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act. The Trade Adjustment Assistance Act has, in fact, helped hundreds of thousands of those displaced workers. But workers in the technology and the services sector, which now accounts for four-fifths of the U.S. workforce, have not been eligible for trade adjustment assistance. Time after time when a displaced software developer, accountant, or someone who has worked in the telemedicine field has gone knocking on the doors of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, they have been turned away. The bipartisan amendment I have developed with Senator Coleman will open the doors of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act to the hundreds of thousands of displaced technology and service sector workers.

All of these workers who have been displaced by trade and by global marketplace forces deserve the same kinds of benefits. All of them have a chance to use these programs as a trampoline back into the private economy, so they can capture the jobs for which their skills have blessed them. Our amendment will establish equity in the program between manufacturing and service workers.

The Wyden-Coleman amendment will cover three categories of trade-impacted service workers: those who lose their jobs when their employer closes or lays off because of import competition; public and private sector service workers who lose their jobs when their facility moves overseas; and secondary service workers who provide services to a primary firm where workers are eligible for trade adjustment assistance and where a closure has caused a layoff or closure at a secondary firm.

This is an extraordinarily important statute because it provides retraining, income support, health insurance tax credits, and other benefits to workers who lose their jobs. It can also help secondary workers or individuals who supply parts or services and who may have lost their jobs because their facilities shut down due to import competition or they move overseas. This is exactly the type of trade-displaced service worker opportunity that our citizens need.

A self-described "newly employed software engineer" from Hillsboro, OR, wrote in December that "my job was moved to India where the company can pay Indians a fifth of what they pay Americans."

Another wrote:

[A]s a 50-year-old high-tech manufacturing engineer with 26 years' experience, I was laid off in December 2002. I am sure the new factory the company is building in China will prevent my ever returning. I can't even get hired into an entry level position anywhere because I am over-qualified.

These unemployed Oregonians and the hundreds of thousands of other information technology professionals who have lost their jobs deserve an opportunity to get the training, health care, and income assistance so they can get back on their feet and use their skills in the private marketplace. The Trade Adjustment Assistance Act would target these kinds of workers who have been hurt by unfair competition.

Globalization of information technology hardware production from 1995 through 2002 cut information technology hardware costs 10 to 30 percent, translating into higher productivity growth and adding $230 billion to our gross domestic product. Information technology became affordable to business sectors that were previously bypassed by the productivity boom.

We are now talking about the small and midsized companies in health care, construction, and a host of related fields. But as information technology hardware prices declined, the importance of information technology services and software increased to almost 70 percent of information technology spending in 2001. With the growth in software and services outpacing hardware spending by almost two to one, the demand for cheaper information technology services has lent strength to this whole trend to move these jobs offshore. No one appears to have anticipated the extraordinary speed in which all of this has taken place or the scale of jobs moving offshore.

The workers who lost their jobs and their livelihoods from jobs that have gone overseas cannot afford to wait for the higher skilled jobs that economists keep telling them is right around the corner. Higher value and higher paid systems integration jobs may come along, but in this period unemployed information technology professionals seem to feel they are more likely to see Elvis than a sudden proliferation of new highly skilled information technology jobs.

At the end of the day, what I am saying, along with the distinguished Senator from Minnesota, is it should be irrelevant whether an individual works in today's economy in the services and technology sector or whether they work in the manufacturing area. Each of our workers who has been displaced by trade should be eligible for the same benefits. That is what our bipartisan proposal would do. The hundreds of thousands of workers who have been laid off in every part of our country in the technology sector and in the service sector are looking to whether the Senate will modernize the trade adjustment laws so they finally can get a fair shake and so they can pick up the skills and the health care and the income support that is going to let them get back on their feet, use their ingenuity, and use their work ethic to have a chance for a high-skill, high-wage job once again.

I call on the Senate in a time of discussion about gridlock and the inability to move forward on important legislation. This is an example of two Senators who have worked with colleagues from both political parties to come up with a proposal that can help hundreds of thousands of workers in an economic crunch today that is sure to continue. We hope the Senate will move expeditiously on our legislation.

It seems to me, to put it in the context of my home State, that when a worker who is a software programmer in Beaverton, OR, works hard and plays by the rules, it ought to be the job of the Senate to say when that worker is up against a software programmer in Beijing and the Beijing worker works for a fraction of the wages of the worker in Beaverton we create policies which are going to make it possible for our workers to move ahead to have the kind of quality of life that will allow them to support a family and participate in the community.

I call on the Senate to pass our bipartisan proposal as soon as possible.
I yield the floor.