Stimulus Package

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we have seen a whirlwind of activity on this so-called economic stimulus package.

We began by watching the partisanship in the House prevail, where the
House passed a package strictly along party lines. No House Republican voted for it. And 11 Democrats joined the Republicans in voting no.

Then we had a mark-up in the Senate Finance Committee, the committee that I am ranking member on. Over 200 amendments were filed. Some amendments were agreed to, like the amendment I filed for a 1-year alternative minimum tax ``AMT'' patch.

But many others, specifically Republican amendments, failed or were never brought to a vote.

Unfortunately, there was a tacit agreement among the Democratic members of my committee to vote no on any Republican amendment, regardless of the merits. Those on my side of the aisle did not find that very bipartisan.

Then a floor debate in the Senate ensued. It lasted a full week. I am happy that the debate gave many Members on my side of the aisle an opportunity to discuss how this legislation could be improved. I was dismayed, however, on the process. For example, there were a number of amendments that I filed that were never given a fair vote.

Bottom line, they were blocked. I was not the only Republican Senator that got locked out of the process.

And speaking of process, let me briefly discuss how this conference committee process worked. Or shall I say did not work. It was not a conference that permitted bipartisan negotiations.

I have often used the following analogy to define bipartisanship. It is an analogy that married couples can understand. That analogy comes from the example of Barbara and Chuck Grassley going to buy a car. If I buy the car and take it to Barbara that is not a truly marital decision. If we both go to the dealership and agree on the car, then that is truly a joint marital decision.

The same logic applies to bipartisan legislating. If Senator Reid shows me a deal that has been done by Democratic conferees, which he was courteous enough to do Wednesday morning, without my participation as the leading Republican tax writer, that's not bipartisan. There is no ``bi'' in that partisan.

So let no one be mistaken that this conference agreement is the result of bipartisan negotiations. While Republicans were courteously consulted at the member and staff level, we were never at the negotiating table. Speaker PELOSI best described the bottom line on the process.

She said: ``Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.'' That quote comes right out of the front page of the Washington Post, dated Friday, January 23, 2009.

Now, one can argue that all that I have just described is water under the bridge. We now have a conference agreement that both Houses of Congress are on the verge of approving. I will be voting against the package.

But before I cast my vote I wanted to take this time to applaud the inclusion of specific proposals in this conference agreement that I advocated for. While being locked out of the process, I am happy to see that my commonsense proposals were ultimately included in this final bill.

The first commonsense proposal is placing income limits on the subsidy for COBRA benefits. As the provision was originally drafted, which provided involuntarily terminated workers a subsidy to help pay for their health insurance, there were no income limits on the eligibility for the subsidy.

I want to remind my friends in the media that the House passed this provision with no income limits. The Senate Finance Committee approved this provision with no income limits. And the Nelson-Collins substitute, which garnered 61 votes in the Senate, was passed with no income limits.

That means if the original provision that cleared so many legislative hurdles made it into law, Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers, who made millions of dollars while running our economy into the ground, would have received a taxpayer-funded subsidy to pay for their health insurance.

In my opinion, this is outrageous. Just last week the Obama administration released guidelines for capping compensation paid to executives whose financial institution receives taxpayer dollars through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The COBRA subsidy provision was in clear contradiction to our President's policy.

During the Senate Finance Committee mark-up, however, I offered an amendment that would have placed income limits on the eligibility for the COBRA subsidy. When I offered my amendment, some Democratic committee members rebuffed my efforts with trumped up charges that the IRS would not be able to administer income limits. It appeared that my Democratic friends on the committee, who voted in favor of the chairman's mark, wanted to give the taxpayer-funded subsidy to Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers. But in the end, Chairman BAUCUS gave me a commitment to at least look at an income cap.

So I filed an amendment during the floor debate. And I continued pressing the point both publicly and privately. I was disappointed that my amendment was never given a fair vote.

Simply put, my amendment provided that if a worker who was involuntarily terminated from their job earned income in excess of $125,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families during 2008, this worker would not be eligible to receive the subsidy.

Some Members of this body asked me why I set these limits at $125,000 and $250,000. It is simple. When candidate Obama was campaigning to be President Obama, he continually said that he wanted to raise taxes on families making over $250,000 a year. Why? Because then, candidate Obama felt that these people are too ``rich'' to pay lower taxes.

So it logically followed that if these families are too ``rich'' to receive a tax benefit in the form of lower taxes, are these people not too ``rich'' to receive a taxpayer-funded subsidy for health insurance?

I applaud the inclusion of income limits for the COBRA subsidy. Although, the income limits are set at $145,000 and $290,000, I am happy that my work was the reason it was added during the conference committee.

The second proposal included in this final conference agreement is something that is of vital importance to workers who have been displaced by trade. I am talking about the temporary reauthorization of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, or TAA.

At the beginning of this year, I engaged with Chairman BAUCUS and our counterparts on the Ways and Means Committee, Chairman RANGEL and Ranking Member CAMP, to see if we could work out a compromise to reauthorize the trade adjustment assistance programs that we could all support.

That engagement led to weeks of intensive negotiations. They were not easy negotiations. But they were truly bipartisan and bicameral negotiations. And they resulted in a compromise that I am proud to support.

That is the way the process should work. I wish the rest of the provisions in the conference report had been developed in such a bipartisan way. If they had, we would have seen more Republican support for this conference report.

Hopefully, the majority will not repeat the partisan process that produced this conference report.

I want to highlight some of the reasons why I support our compromise on trade adjustment assistance.

The fact is, the current trade adjustment assistance program is not doing enough to help American workers. It is outdated, overly rigid, and fails to incorporate appropriate oversight and accountability at the State and Federal level.

Our compromise addresses each of those concerns.

First, it extends the benefits of the program to service workers. Services now account for almost 80 percent of our economy. It doesn't make sense to exclude service workers from eligibility for trade adjustment assistance if they lose their job due to trade.

If a call center in the United States is closed and the operation moved to India, for example, those workers are not currently eligible for trade adjustment assistance. Our compromise changes that.

But it does so in a way that preserves the requirement that there be a causal link between trade and the loss of a job. Our compromise treats manufacturing workers and service workers the same, if trade contributed importantly to the workers' job loss, then they may be eligible for adjustment assistance.

We also improved the program by interjecting much more flexibility, so
that individual workers are empowered to decide for themselves how best to respond if they lose their jobs.

Workers can choose between full-time and part-time training, or full-time work with limited wage insurance. Trade-impacted workers can even take advantage of training and case management services before they lose their jobs.

Our compromise increases the funding for worker retraining to accommodate these expansions in the pool of potentially eligible workers and the array of benefits that are made available to eligible workers.

But it does so in a way that protects against inefficient spending of taxpayer dollars. For example, for the first time, we have capped funding for administrative expenses at an amount equal to 10 percent of training funds. I insisted on that.

In addition, our compromise requires changes in the way the Secretary of Labor allocates and distributes funds, so that States that do not need additional funds are not building up their kitties at the expense of States that need those funds now.

We also require States to implement control measures to ensure that the data they collect and report is accurate and timely. The Department of Labor needs accurate data in order to administer the trade adjustment assistance program efficiently.

And we require the Department of Labor to collect and post the data on the Department's Web site, to increase transparency and make the information more readily accessible to the public.

I am confident that the compromise legislation that it have helped to craft will provide immediate and long-term benefits for workers in Iowa and across the United States.

Separately, our compromise reauthorizes the trade adjustment assistance for firms program, and it improves and reauthorizes the trade adjustment assistance for farmers program.

The farmers program was enacted as part of the Trade Act of 2002, and it has not operated as planned.

We have made it easier for farmers to demonstrate that they are eligible for benefits under the program, and we have redirected those benefits to focus on developing and implementing business plans to better adjust to imports.

We also established a trade adjustment assistance for communities program to help entire communities respond to the pressures of globalization. One component of that program is a new community college and career training grant program which I have been working to develop over the past few years.

This is a timely, targeted, and temporary grant program to help educational institutions develop and offer the most appropriate courses to retrain trade-impacted workers.

The program will improve and expand the educational opportunities available to eligible workers. It is an investment in the long-term competitiveness of the American workforce.

Mr. President, I have already noted that our compromise is the result of a bipartisan effort that reflects the work of four offices.

There are portions of the amendment that I might have done differently if it were solely up to me.

But that is the nature of compromise. And the overall policy embodied in this amendment is a good one that will do a lot of good for a lot of Americans, in Iowa and across the United States.

Equally important, if we enact this amendment into law, it will help unlock the trade agenda so we can progress with other important priorities.

Chief among those is implementation of the Colombia trade agreement, which is my top trade priority.

And then we need to turn to our other trade agreements with Panama and South Korea as well.

We need to level the playing field so that our exporters, service suppliers, and farmers can increase their sales to foreign countries.

It is more important than ever.

We have had a social compact on trade for over 45 years.

One side of that compact is to address them of trade-displaced workers, and we are doing that with the compromise I have helped to negotiate on trade adjustment assistance.

The other side is to open up new markets for U.S. exports. That was a driving principle when President Kennedy established the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.

President Obama should hold true to that principle by doing everything he can to create new export opportunities, starting with implementation of our pending trade agreements.

A pro-growth trade agenda should be integral to our economic recovery strategy. I stand ready to work with the President and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to accomplish that.

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