Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, with the votes that have been cast today in the Senate, the Senate has begun to develop a powerful and bipartisan message that the trade policy of the 1990s will be unacceptable in 2015.

The Customs and Enforcement package passed this morning goes a long way toward breaking new ground. We will be talking about the final two elements of the overall trade package, trade promotion authority, and trade adjustment assistance. But until we are done with this debate, I will be referring to the chart next to me because what we will be outlining are all of the specific areas that demonstrate that this legislation is going to finally put the 1990s and NAFTA in the rearview mirror and fix many of its flaws.

For example, in the NAFTA era, American priorities, like rights for working families and environmental protection, were an afterthought, and they were stuck in unenforceable side agreements. With this legislation, they will be bedrock elements of future trade agreements. Back in those NAFTA days, the United States pretty much just asked our trading partners to enforce their own labor and environmental laws, and then we sort of hoped for the best.

The trade promotion act says that if a trading partner's laws fall short, they are going to be required to pass new laws to fix the problem, and for the first time, these labor and environmental protections will be fully enforceable, enforceable because they are backed by the threat of trade sanctions.

So the NAFTA-era policies, colleagues, had no teeth. In effect, this legislation raises the global bar on labor rights and environmental protection.

We are going to hear a lot about how somehow this is just more of the same, and it is going to promote a race to the bottom. What we intend to spell out in the days ahead is how this creates new momentum to push our standards up, rather than promote a race to the bottom.

For the first time, I wish to note--with the support of our colleagues, the outstanding work done by our colleague from Maryland, Ben Cardin--now human rights will be a negotiating objective for our future trade agreements.

Back in the NAFTA era, the United States fought for intellectual property protection for drugmakers, but nobody was trying to do much of anything to look for people stuck in hardship around the world who needed access to affordable medicine. That also will change with this legislation.

The old NAFTA playbook was written in a time when cell phones were about as big as bricks and Internet commerce was still a dream. Today, it is right at the heart of our economy.

So our new approach to trade is going to help cement American leadership in the digital economy. Even now, in 2015, you have repressive governments in China, Russia, and elsewhere building digital walls that block the free flow of information and commerce online. If that trend continues, it would chop the Internet up into small, country-sized pieces. In my view, the Internet is the shipping lane of the 21st century, and products sent around the world in bits and bytes are just as important as products packaged into shipping containers and sent across the oceans. I strongly believe this is the best chance to fix what NAFTA got wrong and introduce a new day in American trade policy.

The only way for our country to defend an open Internet, promote access to affordable medicine, protect our values on labor standards, environmental protections, and human rights is to fight for them as part of our trade negotiations. Certainly nobody else is going to pick up the American banner and fight for those kinds of progressive American values in the way we can. In fact, it is my view that if our country fails to lead the way, it will be China that steps in to write rules, rules that very likely could hurt American workers and our exporters. So we have to engage with modern, progressive trade policies and with a higher bar for trade agreements.

I recognize there are skeptics with doubts about trade deals and the process of moving them through Congress. I think we can still take steps to try to reach out to those who have been critical about past trade policy, find common ground, and lock those new policies into the future way in which we make a trade law.

I have indicated for many months that I think those who are skeptical about our trade policies have a valid point when they talk about the excessive secrecy that has so often accompanied much of the trade discussion. My view has been, if you believe strongly in the benefits of trade--and particularly those high-skilled, high-wage export jobs, and you want more of them--why in the world would you want to have all of this secrecy that just makes Americans so aware of the fact that something isn't coming to light? They are wondering whether there is a reason something has been hidden.

Now, it has been too common that Oregonians and other Americans have no way of knowing what is on the table in trade talks or how they would be affected. That was a problem with NAFTA, and it has been a problem that has continued over the years.

There is no question about the need for protecting some of the details in our trade negotiations. I often say at a townhall meeting that nobody is talking about giving out the secret sauce in some particular product. But today Americans have reasonable expectations to be able to fire up their computer, click open their browser, and learn about the public policies that affect them and their families.

It is time to close the book on those days when Americans were kept in the dark on trade. The reality is, under the old playbook, that NAFTA playbook, the President could be handed an agreement for signature and put pen to paper right away.

So nothing illustrates better than the changes that Chairman Hatch, I, and Chairman Ryan have worked on to put in place a fresh set of policies to ensure that the American people are no longer in the dark with respect to trade.

Under this legislation, the President, by law, will have to make the full text of trade deals public for 60 days before a President can sign them. When you factor in the Congress, agreements would be public for as many as 100 days before they are voted on and often more.

So what that means is, if you live in West Virginia, Utah, Oregon or Alaska, you will be able to come to one of our community meetings and have in your hands the trade agreement, starting with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for more than 3 months before your Senator or your Member of the House has cast a vote on them. For more than 3 months, the American people will have the actual text, starting with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. I think that is a long overdue change. I will say, that is a very dramatic change. That is part of the reason why I note that this TPA is certainly not one that resembles the NAFTA era on transparency.

Finally, on the transparency front, long before the deals are finalized, our trade officials would be required to give detailed and public updates on what is at stake in the negotiations. Every Member of Congress will have access to the full text, from beginning to end, and the doors will be open for Members to attend negotiating sessions and briefings.

Perhaps the most important new tool in this legislation is a new procedure for hitting the brakes on bad trade deals before they reach the Senate or House floor. If a trade deal doesn't meet the high bar the Congress sets under this progressive, modern approach, it will be a whole lot easier to shut it down. It is my view that protecting that ability makes the process more democratic, and all of those upgrades will close the door on the 1990s and NAFTA once and for all.

The second matter at hand now is the support system for American workers known as trade adjustment assistance, and paired with that program is the health coverage tax credit.

When times are tough for workers and industries affected by trade, the health coverage credit guarantees that those persons and their families will still be able to see their doctors. And trade adjustment assistance is there to help with job training and financial support. It is a lifeline for more than 100,000 Americans today, including 3,000 in Oregon, and it helps to guarantee that those workers and their families have a springboard to a new set of opportunities where they can have for themselves and their families a new opportunity for good-paying jobs and a chance to get ahead.

The Trade Adjustment Assistance Program has spent the last few years working at reduced capacity. That would change with this legislation. Trade adjustment assistance would be back at full strength in the year 2021 with a level of funding the administration says will cover everybody who qualifies. Once again the program would bring service workers into the mix because it is not just manufacturing employees who face competition from abroad. Trade adjustment assistance takes into account competition that comes from anywhere, including China and India, instead of just a select list of countries.

I want to be clear that the Senate is not voting today to give the green light to the Trans-Pacific Partnership or any other trade agreement. As I see it, this is legislation which raises the bar for trade deals and challenges our negotiators to meet it. It will go further than ever before in stripping the secrecy out of trade policy and will provide new accountability by protecting our ability to slam the brakes on trade deals that don't work for our hard-working middle class.

When you put these vast improvements together with a next-level enforcement system, it is my view that you have a long-overdue progressive, modern approach that sets aside the NAFTA playbook. This is a plan which will help get trade done right so that it works better for all Americans, whether they are a service professional, a business owner, or a worker who punches the time clock at the end of the day.

I will close with just a short statement about why this is especially timely right now. All the evidence suggests that in 2025 there are going to be 1 billion middle-class workers in the developing world. These are going to be workers with money to spend. They are going to buy computers and helicopters and bicycles, their companies will buy planes, and the list goes on and on. It is my hope and I think the hope of every Member of the Senate that we have a trade policy that ensures our workers can have the opportunity to export what we make here and what we grow here--the products of the United States--to this 1-billion-person middle-class market.

Let's take this opportunity--a bipartisan opportunity--to have a fresh new trade policy that increases the prospect of having American workers, who are the best and most competitive workers on the planet, sell the goods and services they make and deliver them to that enormous market that wants to buy American, wants to buy Oregon. It just seems to me to be obvious that we should take the opportunity to tap the potential of that market.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

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