Providing for Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2146, Defending Employees' Retirement Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I, too, rise with a sad heart regarding the occurrences and the things which happened in South Carolina last night. I know, I join the gentlewoman as well as all the Members of this body to express our condolences and our sorrow with the things that have happened. I know that later in the day we will take time to offer those formally by the members of the South Carolina delegation.

Mr. Speaker, the question before us is, should the House now consider House Resolution 321. That is what we are here for. While the resolution waives all points of order against consideration of the motion to concur with the amendment, the committee is not aware of any violations of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. This is simply a dilatory tactic that the gentlewoman wants to use to talk further about the issue at hand. I get that.

We have spent weeks talking about this. The United States Senate spent weeks talking about this issue. The gentlewoman wanted to use her time to talk about all the things that she believes are wrong with the bill, and that is okay. That really doesn't bother me.

But the bottom line to the entire matter is that we are using our responsibility under the Constitution for the Congress of the United States to establish the laws and to direct the President of the United States that we believe is very constitutional to say to the President of the United States, we want you to go engage the world in a trade deal, and we are going to tell you the parameters, some 160 different parameters about how we believe you should engage the foreign countries in these trade deals.

The gentlewoman is right, there are some difficult piece parts in there, as the gentlewoman mentions about immigration. Yes, I made sure that was in there because I don't believe this should be about immigration or visas. I believe this should be about trade. And, yes, there is language that is in there about climate change because I don't believe this should be about the United States in a political circumstance trying to push our ideas on a trade deal about global warming or these considerations that might be related to that issue.

Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman is right, there are piece parts of this agreement, the trade promotion authority, that not everybody likes, but let's not act like you didn't have an opportunity to read the bill or understand the bill. But much like any contract--and that is what we are engaging here in. We are engaging in saying to the President, we want you to go sign a contract, an agreement with these foreign countries that are in the Far East who have not only large populations, but growing economic circumstances to buy our products, and us to make sure that we lower tariffs or taxes on those products to where they are available to us.

Yes, we understand currency manipulation is a problem, and primarily that is a problem with perhaps two countries. Neither of those countries do we have a free trade agreement with, and one of them we want to have a free trade agreement with. Another country simply, I don't believe, understands rule of law or intellectual property, and I think they are thugs and don't care. They are a country that steals openly hundreds of billions of dollars from the United States, and they do not respect any rule of law or international agreements. So we probably won't sign an agreement with them.

But this is a good deal. It is a good deal. The last 10, 20 countries that America has had a trade agreement with, we have a $10 billion surplus with those countries because those countries want American products, because the American worker does a great job, and we have the best engineering and manufacturing and pricing, but the product is worthy in the world market and will sell.

The State of Texas, which I am from, sells $289 billion of Texas-made products overseas every year. That is an example of how important trade is.

This trade deal contract that we are wanting to empower the President--whoever that may be for the next 7 years--is to say let's go cut a deal that is good to that country and to America. In the process, Mr. Speaker, we added some language for those of our friends that are watching along with you, Mr. Speaker, as I address my comments to you.

Section 8, subsection A on page 101 says:

United States law to prevail in event of conflict.

Mr. Speaker, it lays it out right here:

No provision of any trade agreement entered into under section 3(b) nor the application of any such provision to any person or circumstance that is inconsistent with any law of the United States, any State of the United States, or any locality in the United States shall have effect.

Mr. Speaker, what I am trying to suggest to you is, there are a lot of things about this bill; some that some people like, some things that others don't like. But we had a chance to read it; we had a chance to understand it. This is a contract that we have not even agreed to yet. Why would someone go and publicly talk about a deal that they haven't made?

So, Mr. Speaker, I believe that what is happening right now is that we should say that this point of order should not prevail. I think that what we should do is move to the direct discussion that we are going to have to allow the House to continue its business, and I urge Members to vote ``yes'' on the question under consideration.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of confusion down here. Everybody thinks we are now talking about ObamaCare, and we are not.

The gentlewoman talked about diminishing wages, diminishing job opportunities for the future, diminishing opportunities for American workers to have higher wages. There is no bill that I have ever seen that diminished wages or people's opportunity to work the hours that they would like to work more than ObamaCare. But we are not debating that today.

Mr. Speaker, we are here--and I want to be clear--about trade promotion authority, TPA--not TPP, not any of the other bills. We are here for TPA today, exactly the same bill that this House passed last week. That is what we are here for.

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Once again, I have to remind my colleagues we have got to follow some understanding about what we are trying to do here. This is TPA.

TAA was up last week, and my colleagues that are Democrats turned down the same things they are now talking about were provisions to protect the American worker. The Democrat Party voted against the American worker last week.

They are the ones that turned down exactly what the gentleman is talking about needs to be a part of this deal. The Democrat Party turned their back on the American worker. That was last week.

This week, now, they are trying to talk about things that are in TPP. Mr. Speaker, we are not here today for TPP. We are here today for trade promotion authority. That is it, TPA.

The gentleman, Mr. Kelly, was very right to say let's talk about the real facts of the case and the truth. This is about TPA. It is exactly the same bill that was here last week.

There were other considerations last week. The Democrat Party turned their back last week on the worker. We are not trying to do that today--trade promotion authority.

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this debate today has been most interesting about the differences between the speakers who showed up today. One group of speakers is for America, for growth, for America leading, for America engaging the world, and for cutting deals with our friends against one other huge country that will overrun in every single economic circumstance the rest of the world because they do not respect intellectual property or rule of law.

Mr. Speaker, this is about gathering together the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate to where we gather together the best rules and regulations that we can, parameters by which the President would go negotiate. This isn't about abdicating our role and responsibility. It is trade promotion authority.

Mr. Speaker, please, we understand that some people haven't read the bill. We understand some people think this is about TPP or other agreements, but it is not. This is about a simple process: Are we going to exert our constitutional authority? Are we going to engage the President where the President can go engage the world on behalf of the American worker? Are we going to lead, or are we going to stick our head in the sand?

Mr. Speaker, America needs to lead, and the world wants us to lead. Mr. Speaker, the world wants American products, and American business wants to sell to others without high prices and without tariffs. What we want to do is to compete. That is why we are here today.

I urge adoption of this rule. I look forward to the debate that will follow, and I look forward to our young chairman, Paul Ryan, leading that effort, proving not only to the Members here today and to you, Mr. Speaker, but to the American people that we want more jobs. We have not created all the jobs that we need in this country. We need more, and this is a part of that effort.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the underlying bill.

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