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

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, in this House, we have a duty to legislate based on truth, not fiction. We cannot afford to be uneducated, uninformed, or untruthful when it comes to PTA. Maybe the problem is we labeled it wrong. Maybe we should have called it ``Congressional Trade Authority Oversight.'' Maybe that is what we should have called it.

There is a great misunderstanding--and I hope it is a misunderstanding--about what this does for us. There is no way America can compete in the global economy without strong trade agreements. When Congress sets the parameters and very carefully constructs what the agreement has to contain, there is no mystery, there is no bogeyman, there is nobody hiding under the bed, there is nobody hiding in the closet. You don't have to have a secret decoder ring. You don't have to have some magical knock at the door to read all these different items. It is there for you to look at.

For crying out loud, will you stop pushing a false narrative if it is about growing our economy? The only way we can grow is protecting what we have and then going into the global economy and increasing our market penetration. It is that simple.

If you want America to grow, then you must allow America to grow. And you must allow America to lead, because when America leads, America wins. And when America wins, the rest of the world wins. It is just that simple.

Why in the world fast track? It is not fast track. If you want to call it slow track, that is fine, because you are going to have 60 days to read it. That is pretty slow, at least around here. You want to call it smart track? That is what it is. It is smart track. It is safe track, and it is sure track. The other thing, it puts America back on the track to economic prosperity.

Pass TPA today and put America back on the track to protect American jobs. Allow the economy to grow, and allow our workers not just to produce and distribute products at home, but around the world. That is how we win, and that is how the people who depend on us win. When America is strong, America leads.

When we are not strong, we create a vacuum at the top of the world that is going to be filled with bad actors.

Please stop using a false narrative. If you are not informed, get informed; if you are not educated, get educated, but for God's sake, don't be untruthful.

I urge passage of the TPA.

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