Providing for Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2146, Defending Public Safety Employees' Retirement Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the ranking member, Ms. Slaughter, for yielding.
I wish to say that if the underlying Trans-Pacific Partnership were such a good deal, then why is the Rules Committee limiting our ability to read it and vet it fully and amend it?
By voting for the trade promotion authority, what we basically do is handcuff Members of Congress. So we should vote ``no.''
Why should we believe anything the executive branch sends up here? We have a right to read it fully and vet it fully.
Let's look at the history of these trade agreements. Over the last 25 years, every time we have signed a so-called free trade agreement that benefits the 1 percent--not the 99 percent--America has lost more jobs. Post-NAFTA, look what happened. We used to have trade balances with these countries. They have all gone into trade deficit, which means they send us more goods than we are able to get into their markets. Here is what happened after the WTO. Then we got into the China PNTR deal. Then the Colombia deal. Then with Korea.
There hasn't been a balanced trade account in this country for 30 years; 40 million lost jobs; $9.5 trillion of trade deficit, trading away one-fifth of our economic might to other places.
And what did the American people get? Lost jobs, outsourced jobs, stagnant wages. The average income in regions like mine--$7,000 less a year than 25 years ago. Not a good deal.
You can't create jobs in America and have free trade when you have closed markets abroad. Japan is closed. Korea is closed. China is closed. Europe limits 10 percent imports. We don't. We have an open market.
You can't create jobs and have free trade when you try to trade with countries where their people have no rights, no legal rights.
This Congress should vote ``no'' on this Trans-Pacific Partnership, the underlying bill, and the trade promotion authority because we have a right to read the agreement and openly debate it.
Right now we have to go down to a secret room. We have people who monitor us. And we can't even talk to the American people about what is in it. What is free about that?
The executive branch has totally overreached its power. Only four titles of the dozen in this TPP are actually about tariffs.
This bill is a treaty. It should be considered as a treaty, openly read by the Senate, and it should be able to be amended and fully vetted. This is so important. When you have gone through a quarter century of job loss and income loss by the American people, why can't we produce a bill that benefits the 100 percent--not just the 1 percent, the ones that were able to pay the plane tickets to go over to Asia and help to represent very important transnational interests? But there are not just the interests of those companies. We have to represent the interests of the American people.
Let's balance these trade accounts and develop a new trade model--not a NAFTA-based trade model, but a model that produces jobs in America, good wages, and balanced trade accounts for the first time in a quarter century.
I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
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Ms. KAPTUR. I would like to know, if Members vote in favor of the trade promotion authority currently before us, will Members be allowed to amend the underlying bill, the TPP?
Could the chairman of the Rules Committee address that, please.
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KAPTUR. Well, in what form could I ask the question that I could get a straight answer as to whether Members will be able to amend the underlying 1,000-page trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
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Ms. KAPTUR. So, in other words, the chairman of the Rules Committee cannot answer my question? He is my friend. I think it would be important for Members to know that because it is my understanding that we are not allowed to amend the agreement if, in fact, TPA passes.
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