Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, women who give birth to a child conceived through rape can often face intimidation from attackers who--believe it or not--pursue parental rights. I was first moved to introduce this bill following the case of Ariel Castro in Cleveland. He was on trial for kidnapping, raping, and holding prisoner three women for a decade and then he asked the judge for parental rights to visit the 6-year-old daughter who was conceived through his rape. Madam President, the Brown-Ayotte-Shaheen-Gillibrand-Baldwin amendment helps protect rape survivors by encouraging States to pass laws allowing women to petition for the termination of their attacker's parental rights if there is clear and convincing evidence that the child was conceived through the rape. Madam President, I yield 1 minute to my colleague from New Hampshire.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I support the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Act. Each year, tax payers across the country utilize accountants, tax software, and lawyers as they prepare their returns. For millions of low-income families, high-cost, high-tech tax assistance is not an option. As a result, the families most in need of tax preparation assistance--low- and moderate-income families, including elderly and disabled taxpayers--will fail to file their taxes or miss out on valuable tax credits. The IRS created the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, VITA program in 1969 to assist individuals and families in submitting their Federal tax returns. For decades, this program operated predominantly with the resources and facilities of community partners. In 2007, Congress created a demonstration program awarding matching grants to VITA sites to serve additional low-income individuals and families. Since 2008, the VITA grant program has grown to over 200 grant recipients but is still only able to fund about two-thirds of grant applicants. During the 2014 Federal income tax filing season, VITA programs filed approximately 1.7 million tax returns. Of those 1.7 million returns, more than 551,000 claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit as part of nearly $2.5 billion in tax refunds that went to VITA tax filers. In addition, VITA programs improve accuracy in the return process and reduce IRS costs by e-filing. In 2014, VITA program tax returns were e- filed 96 percent of the time, compared to 86 percent for the rest of the population. Funding for the VITA program remains insufficient to meet demand and has not been made permanent. The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Act would ensure that volunteers and nonprofits across the country can continue to provide essential tax preparation services each spring by creating a permanent matching grant program for VITA sites. The act would also build on the success of the VITA program by creating a National Center to Promote Quality, Excellence, and Evaluation in Volunteer Income Tax Assistance. Through the center, VITA's many sites would have a mechanism to share best practices and create a more efficient and sustainable program to serve a large number of low- and middle-income families. I ask that my colleagues join me in supporting working families by cosponsoring the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Act.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, this body--the Senate--continues to rush through one of the most consequential changes to U.S. economic policy this decade with little media attention, little scrutiny by committees, and little discussion from leadership of this Senate. Last week, we were called into a rushed legislative hearing on fast-track and a trade package with little notice and no bill to see. We had less than 13 hours' notice for a committee meeting--the standard here is 1 week, and I believe that is the Senate rule--on one of the most secretive documents we have seen in front of us. Senators and their staffs, Congress men and women and their staffs, have limited access to this document--the Trans-Pacific Partnership--and no access to legislation upon which we had a hearing on Thursday. It was only after the hearing that they finally decided to introduce the bill. Yet, this affects more than 50 percent of the world's GDP. Fifty percent of the world's GDP could be affected by this package. Millions of American jobs are on the line. Yet, Congress is rushing this bill through. We cannot fast-track fast-track legislation. We know what so-called free trade has done to this country. It may not affect too many people who dress like this in this town, people who wear expensive suits, but for those in the heartland and in places such as Des Moines and Iowa City and Columbus and Cleveland, we know bad trade deals have devastated towns. I grew up in Mansfield, OH. When I was a kid, we had thousands of jobs at Westinghouse, Ohio Brass, Mansfield Tire, Fisher Body, Goreman- Rupp, and so many other companies. Almost all of those companies have shut down--not just because of globalization and bad trade deals, but certainly that contributed to it. Every one of those companies that hasn't shut down has laid off, in most cases, thousands of its workers. On Friday, I was in Dayton, where I spoke with Jimmy Allen. Jimmy worked at Appleton Paper for 45 years. He was a union officer for 43 of those years. He was one of 400 workers laid off due to unfair trade in 2012 when China cheated on currency, undermining the U.S. paper industry. I hear all the time from workers like Jimmy. George Rossi of Warren, OH--at the other end of the State--wrote to me to share his story. He wrote: My wife lost her job of 15 years at GE in Ravenna, OH because of foreign trade. The plant that once employed 600 is now closed. My brother-in-law lost his [job] at Ohio Lamp in Warren, which is now closed. My plant, WCI Steel, is now closed. At one time the plant employed 1,800 people. George wrote: I could go on and on. There have been many friends and family, so many who have worked in numerous plants that are now closed--in large part because of bad foreign trade deals. Jamie Vaughan wrote to me saying that Jamie's father and Jamie's grandfather worked at Ford in Canton, OH, until it shut down. Jamie's father was able to transfer to Indianapolis, where Jamie and Jamie's brother also worked, until that Ford plant shut down too. Jamie wrote: They built a plant exactly like Indy's in Brazil. My brother and I transferred to California. A few years later, that plant shut down. I got a letter from Gary Ordway of Continental, OH, about how factory closures have ripple effects across entire communities. He wrote: In 1995 I was employed with General Motors Powertrain Foundry in Defiance, OH, where we were working 12 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week, and then along came the North American Free Trade Agreement. There were over 5,000 employees working at that time, and after NAFTA there was a constant loss of jobs, so today, there are about 1,000 employees left. We are looking at a weekly loss of $4.8 million in wages to the local economy and around $1.2 million in weekly taxes lost due to the 4,000 jobs exported because of NAFTA. Within the next couple of years the foundry will be losing all of its iron castings and another 350 jobs will be eliminated, and Plant One is scheduled to be torn town. So NAFTA wasn't good for our community and foundry because our iron casting business went to Mexico. That was Gary Ordway of northwest Ohio. We have seen it in the northwest and we have seen it in the southwest. Joseph Hicks from Elyria, OH, wrote: I am a member of Local 1104 in Lorain. I work at U.S. Steel tubular division. As of the 22nd of March, me and 600 of my brothers and sisters have been placed on indefinite layoff, some departments idled, due to lack of work. This is mainly [because of] the illegal dumping of cheaply-made steel. I would add, subsidized steel. Foreign countries cut corners on safety, pay workers next to nothing, and don't care about quality. With these ingredients, they are able to sell their steel products for a lot less than we at U.S. steel can. There used to be a time when ``Made in America'' meant something. I long to see that be the attitude again. Joseph goes on: I am suffering greatly now because of the trickle-down effect. I am laid off, I have lost my job, my career, my way of life to support my growing and deserving family. I have a wife, Megan, [who] cannot work because she has to care for our 2-year-old disabled daughter. I ask, beg, our public officials . . . do what needs to be done to get American workers back to work. That is Joseph from U.S. Steel in Lorain. We owe these workers more than rushed hearings. We owe them more than to rubberstamp a deal we have barely been able to read. Keep in mind that we didn't see this bill until Thursday night. We have still not had one hearing on this bill to discuss the bill. The chairman of the committee wants to do the markup the day after tomorrow, and this bill will govern potentially 60 percent of the world's GDP. So they want to fast-track this fast-track legislation so they can pass more trade agreements that outsource jobs. Trade done right can create jobs, but our current trade deals amount to corporate handouts and worker sellouts. The Economic Policy Institute found that the wage loss to workers on the wrong end of expanded trade is almost certainly larger than the estimated net national gains from the TPP. They write that there is no such thing as an all-gain, no-pain treaty. We know that is true because workers such as Joseph and Jamie and George and Gary and Jimmy feel that pain. I urge my colleagues over the next couple of days to ask the tough questions and demand answers from the U.S. Trade Representative, who has told us little and who has given us even less access to these trade agreements, and to say no to a trade deal that will end up fast- tracking more jobs overseas. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont and also the senior Senator from Wyoming for their work. Motion to Instruct Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending motion be set aside and that my motion be sent to the desk.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, this amendment, about which I asked to instruct the conferees, passed by a voice vote, and I appreciate the acceptance of it by Senator Enzi and Senator Sanders during the vote 2 weeks ago. We know too big to fail is still with us. We know that it is really all about those megabanks that are over $500 billion in total assets. That is what my amendment speaks to. In the 6\1/2\ years since Wall Street pushed our economy to the brink of collapse, the biggest banks have gotten, as we know, bigger. Think about this statistic. Just 18 years ago, the 6 largest banks in the United States had assets equal to 18 percent of our Nation's gross domestic product. Today, the 6 largest banks have assets equal to 63 percent of our GDP, with an average of more than 5,000 legal entities operating in 57 countries. These institutions are not just massive, too big to fail in terms of size. They are risky and complex. In many ways they are too big to fail, they are too big to manage, as we have seen from the mistakes they have made, and they are too big in many ways to regulate. If a financial institution is too big to understand, then it is probably too complex to manage and too opaque to regulate. Dodd-Frank requires large banks to produce an annual living will explaining the bank's plan for its own rapid and orderly resolution through the bankruptcy process in the event of material financial distress or failure. Last year, the largest 11 banks--all 11 of them--were informed that their living wills were insufficient. In other words, it was not clear to the regulators that these 11 banks would know how to go through resolution. That means they failed to show that their collapse would not cause devastating harm to our economy as a whole. It raises this question: What happens if one of these banks fails? Today, I urge the Senate to instruct budget negotiators to create a deficit-neutral reserve fund to ensure that the largest Wall Street megabanks can be put through bankruptcy or resolution without a taxpayer bailout. This is the amendment that Senator Vitter, my Republican colleague from Louisiana, and I spoke out about, and it was passed unanimously in the Senate a couple of weeks ago. Congress should act on the remedies provided in the law for any bank that cannot produce a credible living will this year. We need to end the cycle that enables large, unsafe banks to enjoy government bailouts. The public is cynical about these too-big-to-fail banks. The public does not believe they are not too big to fail, if you will. The cycle that allows Wall Street to pile up private profits while forcing American taxpayers to be ready and willing to pick up the tab for their losses and failures is outrageously bad public policy. The American people don't want Congress to wait until we are faced with another crisis. Congress needs to take action now to prevent future economic collapse and future taxpayer-funded bailouts. As Senator Shelby, the senior Republican who sits on the banking committee with me, told the Senate banking committee last month, if a bank is too big to fail, it is it probably too big to exist. This motion to instruct will put the Senate on record that the American taxpayer should never ever again be on the hook for risks taken by megabanks. I ask my colleagues to vote yes. Paid Sick Leave Mr. President, for too many Americans, a sick day means a day without pay. Each day workers across the country face impossible dilemmas. Do they go into work knowing the risks to their own health and to others around them or do they stay home and lose a paycheck? Do they send a sick child to school, knowing they are risking the health of their daughter and her entire classroom or do they jeopardize their job by taking a day off? This is a choice too many families face, and it needs to end. Guaranteeing paid sick and family leave to all Americans would protect public health and increase economic security for millions of families. In the 20th century, unions fought for workers' rights to collectively bargain--and often one of the protections they were bargaining for was paid sick leave. But after decades of attacks on our labor movement and on our middle class, most Americans are not protected by unions. Too often they have no protection if they have to miss work because of their own illness or that of their child. 43 million workers--including 2 million Ohioans--currently have no paid sick leave. Workers earning the lowest wages are the least likely to have paid sick days and are often unable to afford to take a day off when they or their children get sick. Not only does this affect their own health, but these workers are often working in service jobs where they risk infecting others. They are often caring for seniors or children or working in stores, hotels, or restaurants where they risk food contamination. Adults without paid sick days are 1\1/2\ times more likely than adults with paid sick days to report going to work with a contagious illness, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. That's why the National Partnership for Women and Families and more than 100 employers support this legislation. And so do many business owners, who realize that healthy workers are often more productive workers. But too many do not, and that is why I urge my colleagues to pass the Healthy Families Act. This legislation would end the agonizing choice faced by families by allowing workers to earn up to 7 days per year in paid sick time. This plan is good for both workers and businesses. Employers already providing sick time would not have to change their policies as long as they meet the minimum requirements and businesses with fewer than 15 employees would be exempt. We know that when workers are healthy, they are more productive, and providing sick days decreases turnover and gives employers safer, healthier, and more stable workplaces. Paid sick leave will also save precious health care resources. When workers go in sick, they can spread illnesses like the flu, and they increase the risk of workplace injury. The American Journal of Public Health found that the lack of paid sick days contributed to an additional 5 million cases of H1N1 during the 2009 pandemic. The Institute for Women's Policy Research found that paid sick days could decrease emergency room visits by 1.3 million each year, saving the country $1 billion in health costs. And most importantly, guaranteeing paid sick leave will give families the peace of mind that they can protect their jobs, their families, and their health. That is why it is far past time for us to finally guarantee paid sick leave for all of our workers. My colleagues have all seen and heard me talk about my canary pin. Our duty to protect our workers continues and our work is not yet finished. To truly embody the spirit of this pin, we must extend paid sick leave to all Americans--not just those lucky enough to be represented by a union or wealthy enough to have a high-wage job with protections. No parent in America today should have to choose between a paycheck and a sick child. No worker should have to choose between his job and his health. I urge my colleagues to join me in passing the Healthy Families Act without delay.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, my home of Cleveland, OH, is one of our Nation's historic great centers of industry. Our manufacturing base helped to build our country's infrastructure to win World War II and to spur our economy to new heights in the 21st century. We are not only home to great makers, we are home to great creators as well. We are the home of rock and roll--the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in downtown Cleveland--great athletes and authors, people such as Jesse Owens and Toni Morrison, and we are home to great art. Cleveland is the home to world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra, Playhouse Square, Karamu House, the NASA-designated Great Lakes Science Center, and one of the largest and best art museums not just in the United States but in the world, the Cleveland Museum of Art. In the early 1900s, Midwest cities saw a cultural explosion. Cities were prospering. Government and business leaders alike sought to harness that new wealth to build livable, world-class cities. Museums were established across the Midwest. That is why cities such as Youngstown, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland--cities that may not have been the Nation's largest, especially when you look at Dayton, Youngstown, and Toledo, but cities that were prosperous--created great products, created great wealth, and made huge contributions to start these cultural centers. Ohio is one of the leading States in the Nation as far as locations of good art museums in pretty much all of our major cities. Art museums were status symbols. In many ways, they were the sports arenas of the early 20th century. It was in this climate that the Cleveland Museum of Art was established 99 years ago, opening in June 1916. We mark, last year and the next couple of years, the 100th anniversary of the Cleveland City Club and the 100th anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra also. So much happened in that decade in Cleveland, OH, and cities like it across the country. The original marble neoclassic building was an instant icon, a signal to the world that Cleveland would take its place as a world-class city and a center for the arts. And 100 years later, the Cleveland Museum of Art is thriving. It has a permanent collection that is world-renowned and possesses a deep commitment to the local community. Under the leadership of Director William Griswold and Steven Kestner, chair of the board of trustees, the museum is expanding in every direction, working to engage the community and using new technology to educate visitors. I had the privilege of visiting the art museum just in the last week or so, talking with Dr. Griswold, and looking at the new Africa exhibit that is on tour that has been collected for Cleveland, and I got a chance to see a good bit of this beautiful museum. I have been many times. Each time I go, I come away with an even greater appreciation for the institution, the art, the curators, the collectors, and the people who work there. Dr. Griswold shared with me that day he was appointed as director, he was with some European friends who told him the Cleveland Museum of Art was their favorite art museum in the entire world. The museum recently completed a $350 million expansion and renovation that will better integrate the museum with the surrounding community. It has transformed the museum's spaces and has prepared this institution to inspire and educate Ohioans for the next 100 years. It beckons young people and students--many low-income students in the immediate area, within a few square miles around the museum--to come visit and learn about our cultural heritage and look to the future. When I met with Dr. Griswold--let me back up for a moment. This capital improvement was the largest capital improvement of any museum in Ohio history and supported some 1,100 local jobs. The project injected more than $360 million directly into our State's economy. The impact will be felt for years to come. As it approaches its centennial celebration next year, the Cleveland Museum of Art will continue to attract visitors from Cuyahoga County, from northeast Ohio, and from around the world. In 2013, 600,000 people visited that museum. More than one-third of them were from outside of Ohio. More than half a million visitors were responsible for $80 million in consumer spending in the city. The museum's first director, Frederick Allen Whiting, believed the museum should serve not as an ivory tower but as an educational institution engaged in the community. He wanted to bring art to people, not just people into the museum. The museum established its first education department. In 1919, they held the first annual exhibition of Cleveland artists and craftsmen. It became known as the May Show and showcased local artists for the next 73 years. Dr. Griswold continues that tradition of community engagement. When I met with him, he told me that leaders of cultural institutions have a responsibility to participate in my city's transformation. He is committed and the museum's staff is committed to making our city a better place. They have elevated the museum's education and interpretation department and are committed to the value of interpretive excellence. Education in the museum is aimed at a general audience, not just art buffs and historians. Parenthetically, my sister-in-law teaches in the art history department at Case Western Reserve University. Catherine talks to me about how integrated Case is in the art history department with that museum. It is a classroom for students. It is a classroom for the whole community beyond Case. Studies show that a high concentration of the arts in communities leads to higher civic engagement. Students who take art classes, play musical instruments, take dance lessons generally do better in school. Dr. Griswold and his team are in the forefront of the use of technology to educate and to connect visitors with the museum's collections. The Cleveland Art Museum is also home to the country's largest multitouch screen, a collection wall. This huge, interactive wall stands at 40 square feet and features more than 4,100 works of art from the museum's collection. To get a feel for the reach and the breadth of a museum of this stature in one of our Nation's great cities, the museum has 20 curators on staff. It recruits for these positions around the world. In Cleveland, we have the Cleveland Institute of Art, and we have great universities. However, when it comes time to look for a new curator, the Cleveland Art Museum looks worldwide. The museum's collection includes 45,000 objects and spans nearly 6,000 years of history. This February, the museum's ``Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa'' special exhibit opened after 5 years of work by curators. It features 170 objects from more than 60 collections around the world. We know that strong communities require strong cultural institutions. From the Cleveland Institute of Music, to the Fine Arts Garden, to the Botanical Garden, to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland continues to cultivate the vibrant arts community that enriches our city and enriches our State. Thanks to the art museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Dr. Griswold, who is relatively still new on the job, for their contributions to our community.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, let me start with a story. More than 15 years ago, a friend and I--I met with friends, and I flew to South Texas at my own expense. I wanted to see how the North American Free Trade Agreement was working. During my first year in Congress 20-plus years ago, in the House of Representatives, I helped to lead the opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. I stood up to a President of my own party, President Clinton, who I think was wrong on the North American Free Trade Agreement. Since then, I disagreed with President Bush--a President not of my party--on his trade policy. I wanted to see, 4, 5 years after NAFTA was implemented, what it looked like, what went on along the U.S.-Mexican border. As I said, at my own expense I rented a car with a couple friends and went to Mexico. Here is what I found. I walked into a neighborhood where thousands of workers lived, workers who were working in formerly U.S. plants that, because of NAFTA, had crossed the river and were relocated in Mexico in some areas called maquiladoras. These were American plants that relocated to Mexico, producing with very low-income workers, no environmental labor standards, and selling those products back into the United States. It is a 20th-century, 21st-century way of doing business for far too many companies. Unknown in human history, to my knowledge, have so many companies, as they have in the United States, incorporated their business plans where they shut down production in Sandusky or Mansfield, OH, and move production to Wuhan or Shiyan, China, and sell those products back into the United States. I wanted to see what it looked like. I walked through this neighborhood where thousands of workers lived in very abject, poor conditions. These were workers working for in most cases American companies south of the border in Mexico, for very low wages. I walked through these neighborhoods. I saw people living in shacks. These shacks were often made of packing materials, maybe wooden crates from products that had been shipped in for assembly at these plants, cardboard boxes often with the names of the companies on them. They were living in conditions like that. I walked through the neighborhood, and I saw kind of meandering through the neighborhood these ditches filled with industrial and human waste. Who knows what was in those ditches. Children were playing nearby, walking across and jumping across the ditches, sometimes playing far too close to these ditches filled with toxic waste. The American Medical Association in those days called that area in Mexico across from the United States, across from the Rio Grande River, the most toxic place in North America. Then I went to an auto plant. Nearby was an auto plant. It was a new auto plant. It looked a lot like a U.S. auto plant. It was new and modern. In fact, it was newer than many auto plants in the United States. The workers were working hard. The machines were new. The workers were productive. The floors were clean. There was one difference between a U.S. auto plant--a plant in Avon Lake or Lorain, OH--there was one difference between a U.S. auto plant and a Mexican auto plant. Do you know what the difference was? The difference was the Mexican auto plant had no parking lot because the workers in Mexico weren't paid enough to buy the cars they make. Go halfway around the world. Go to China and go to an Apple plant-- actually, it is a Foxconn plant. Apple has hired a Chinese contractor. Go to an Apple plant in China. The workers don't make enough in those plants to buy the iPhone they make. Go to Bangladesh and go to a designer clothing factory, an apparel factory, and the workers don't make enough to buy the apparel they make. Go back to this side of the globe and go to Colombia and go to a farm where they are growing cut flowers. The workers don't make enough to buy flowers for their girlfriends and wives for Valentine's Day. They don't make enough to buy the cut flowers they are growing for Americans. That is what has happened around the world with these trade agreements. You see the same things--a race to the bottom. Almost anywhere the United States passes trade agreements, we see workers overseas making products they cannot afford for themselves. These trade agreements would be different if workers were paid enough that they began to make products made in Dayton, OH, or Gallipolis, OH, or Troy, OH. Instead, these workers cannot afford to buy the products they are making. That is what our trade deals force American workers to compete with-- jobs that pay pennies an hour. They lead to a downward wage spiral across the globe. Why do most people sitting in this gallery, why do most people in this country, unless they are in the top 5 or 10 percent, why have they not gotten a raise in the last 10 years? The middle class in this country has not seen their incomes go up even though the wealthy get wealthier, even though companies are more profitable, even though executives pay themselves higher bonuses. The middle-class wages have been stagnant, partly because of these trade agreements and partly because my friends on the other side of the aisle won't let us fix the Tax Code, where if you shut down production in Lima or in Ravenna, OH, and move it to Wuhan or Shiyan, China, and sell it back into the United States, you get a tax break. American companies get a tax break for shutting down production in this country and moving it overseas and partly because of trade policy. The reason people don't get raises in this country--a big reason--is because of a trade policy and a tax policy that far too many politicians in this body have allowed to happen. That is why we can't afford another agreement like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We can't allow a fast track of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The last thing we need is another NAFTA, another Northern American Freed Trade Agreement. We do not need a deal negotiated in secret and rushed--hence the term ``fast track''--rushed with no amendments, with no real oversight, with no access even to reading the text. It would intrigue people if they knew that it is harder for a Senator or a Senator's staff to get the opportunity to read the Trans-Pacific Partnership--this newly negotiated trade deal--it is harder for us to get access to read that than it is to read about the Iran sanctions or to read a CIA report or to read a classified document from the Department of Defense. It is actually harder to get access to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to this trade agreement, to study it, than it is to national defense, national security concerns. What are they trying to hide? Why would that be? I have spent much of the last couple of weeks talking with workers and businesses around Ohio. I met with workers like Darryl Parker, a former worker at R.G. Steel's Warren, OH, plant and former president of the Steelworkers Local 1375. The plant has a proud history dating back to 1912. Close to 3 years ago, it was the fourth largest flat-rolled steel maker in America. It didn't close because of poor performance. These are some of the most productive workers in the world. There is one reason 1,300 workers like Darryl lost their jobs: unfair trade. I met with Vinny Gaietto in Toledo, a former American Standard worker--actually, in Tiffin. I met him in Toledo. Vinny lost his job in 2007 when the plant closed down and moved to Mexico. We cannot allow this to continue. We have no business passing fast track to fast track jobs out of this country, to fast track weaker environmental rules and worker safety rules. Trade policy should ensure a level playing field for all companies competing in a global economy. Instead, our trade policy is unfair to small businesses, to workers, and to those communities where plants shut down one after another. The communities then have to lay off teachers, firefighters, police officers, and municipal garbage collection workers because their tax base has shrunk because their jobs have gone overseas. Although worker productivity is higher, they face stagnating wages, increased middle-class insecurity, and rising inequality at home. Yet corporate profits are up and CEO pay has reached record levels. Fundamentally the workers are not sharing in the wealth they have created for their employers. The reason our economy worked so well after World War II is because productivity went up, profits went up, wages went up, but since the assault on organized labor and trade unions and the decline of unionization in this country, productivity continues to go up, profits continue to go up, and executives' compensation and bonuses continue to skyrocket, yet wages have stayed flat and most Americans have not had a wage increase. Last year Wall Street bonuses--just the bonuses on Wall Street--were double what all minimum-wage workers earned in the country combined. I will say that again. Wall Street bonuses--mostly their Christmas bonuses, or whenever they are given--were double what all the minimum- wage workers in the country made combined. We need to invest in supporting workers with a living wage, paid sick and family leave, and equal pay for equal work. We need to invest in infrastructure. When the State government is cut, we know what happens--particularly in my State. When the State government is cut, it cuts support for local communities. We know what happens to our highways, our streets, and our bridges. We fundamentally know that trade, done right, creates prosperity. I want trade, and I want more of it. I think Ohioans want trade, but we want trade that builds an on-ramp to the middle class here at home and lifts workers from poverty in America and around the world. We do not want another NAFTA. Earlier this month, I visited the Ford plant near Cleveland in Brook Park, OH. Ford brought its manufacturing of EcoBoost engines back from Valencia, Spain. They invested $200 million and brought 450 new jobs to Cleveland. Some companies, such as Ford, are beginning to reshore manufacturing jobs because they know our workers are skilled and efficient. But auto companies need protections from foreign governments' unfair trade practices. While I disagree with President Obama on the trade promotion authority fast track and on the Trans-Pacific partnership agreement, I give him credit for being more aggressive than President Bush or President Clinton on enforcing trade rules and trade laws. It makes a difference in helping to create jobs. Trade agreements must include provisions protecting our workers and our companies from foreign governments that artificially manipulate their currency. For example, Japan has a history of shutting out American auto companies and manipulating their currency to benefit their own manufacturers. That policy has worked for Japan, but it has not worked for us. In 2013, for every 1 car the United States sold to Japan, we imported 99 cars from Japan. That doesn't sound like a level playing field, where cars that were made by American workers get an opportunity to sell in Japan. It is not much different with Korea. Too much is at stake. Our capacity to outcompete and outinnovate our competitors depends on our capacity to outmanufacture them. That means we need trade policies that will create opportunities for workers and small businesses so they can earn a living wage and join the middle class. I urge my colleagues to demand increased transparency in this process. I urge everyone to say no to a deal that shortchanges our workers and companies and does not ensure a level playing field. We cannot allow another trade deal--we had NAFTA, PNTR with China, CAFTA, South Korea, and Colombia, one after another--that sells out our workers and ships jobs overseas. It is time for a very different trade policy. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, Senator Sessions wants to speak in a moment, and I will be brief. I would like to thank Senator Booker for his always stirring words and for his sense of justice and fair play and leadership in so many ways. I met Jim about 1 year ago and had a brief meeting, not too long after the court decision by Judge Black in the Cincinnati Southern District Court in Ohio. I just spent a half an hour with him in my office. He never wanted and never expected to be famous. He never expected to come to Washington to meet with Senators. He never expected to travel the country giving speeches. He was once a high school teacher. He joked that more people have been with him as he traveled across the country, joked that when he spoke to crowds of hundreds or even 1,000 about his experience with his beloved John and what has happened, he wished that his students had listened to him so closely. You could hear a pin drop when he spoke to hundreds, which is not always the case when speaking as a high school teacher. But he wanted to live his life in a normal way as most Americans do. He never expected to have his story or his marriage litigated before the U.S. Supreme Court. But that is really the mark of character, that Jim has taken his grief and his pain and hoped to change the world, and that is what he is doing. His marriage is still not equal in my State of Ohio. I am embarrassed by that. I was, frankly, embarrassed when Ohio, 10 years ago, passed a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage. I thought it was a terrible public policy mistake. I think it left too many people behind and too many people heartbroken. Jim and his late husband John Arthur's story is one of love and sacrifice. It could happen to anyone. It could happen to any of us. Frankly, it happens to too many families. So as Senator Booker pointed out, they flew to Maryland where John's aunt, Paulette Roberts, officiated their marriage on the tarmac in a medical plane. Paulette remarked, ``If marriage vows mean anything, then those two were more married than anyone I have ever known.'' That speaks to their commitment, it speaks to their love, to the seriousness with which they took their wedding vows, and the seriousness of the relationship for 20 years prior to that. Just 3 months and 11 days later John passed away. Jim has been fighting for his marriage ever since. The question is, why should he have to do that? No one ever voted to allow my wife Connie and me to stand before our families and acknowledge our love and commitment. When we were married, we were benefitting from a right not--get this--a right not extended to the minister who officiated our wedding. The woman who officiated our wedding, Kate Huey, had had a marriage-- she had had a commitment ceremony 18 years earlier. It was not until late last year that she traveled to New York with the woman she loved and was officially married, legally married in New York. You still cannot do that in Ohio. It is outrageous that she cannot do that in Ohio. I am hopeful after Jim's case is argued a couple of weeks from now and the Court hands down that decision, it will stop that bigotry and inequality that has hidden under the banner of tradition for far too long. Keep in mind--and Senator Booker, I thought, laid out a lot of this history very well--Ohio once passed laws to keep Black people and White people from marrying. Ohioans came together, as we always do, we rallied, we repealed that unjust and hateful antimiscegenation law. We have a long history of fighting for justice and equality. We will not rest until we achieve that justice for Jim and for John. I look at the pages who sit before us who are mostly 16 and 17-years- old. This is something that makes no sense to most of them. When I was talking to Jim earlier in my office, he had made a speech in Athens, OH, to Ohio University students. He told me most of them could not understand why State laws would prohibit somebody from marrying the person whom they love. They could not understand why the State government, the Ohio State government, would spend my tax dollars and Jim's tax dollars, the tax dollars of Hazel's parents--mother of the page from Ohio--the tax dollars of all of us to fight this court battle so that Jim's marriage would be denied. If the Supreme Court rules in Jim's favor, and I think it will, Jim's name will go down in the history books, along with Roe, from Roe v. Wade; and Brown, in Brown v. Board of Education. It is not what Jim was after. It would be fitting for a love that spanned decades and was strong enough to carry Jim here to Washington. The moment has come for our Supreme Court to stand on the right side of history and join Americans who support marriage equality. As Senator Booker said, 37 States and the District of Columbia now allow marriage equality. I do not like it that we have to rely on the Supreme Court to get my State to change its laws. We have politicians who look backward rather than forward. That is too bad. We have politicians who are willing to deny human beings basic rights, basic civil rights, basic rights of decency and fairness. I am hopeful that Jim's courage and Jim's outspokenness and Jim's willingness to join on behalf of John in his fight and make this fight will help change my State and help change our Nation. I know I cannot look to the gallery and thank somebody so I will not look to the gallery, but I will still thank Jim from here. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I thank the Senator from Illinois as well as the Senator from New Jersey and the Senator from California. We are united in our goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon; we all know that here. I commend the President for trying to resolve the nuclear dispute diplomatically. I urge my colleagues to support the Kirk-Brown-Boxer-Menendez amendment.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask to call up amendment No. 994.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, 18 years ago, the 6 biggest U.S. banks had assets equal to 18 percent of the GDP. Today, those six banks' combined assets are about 63 percent of GDP, with an average of more than 5,000 legal entities operating in 57 different countries. Dodd-Frank requires large banks to produce an annual living will explaining the bank's plan for its own rapid and orderly resolution through the bankruptcy process in the event of material financial distress or failure. The Brown-Vitter amendment says that if banks cannot credibly explain how they can fail safely, then they are considered too big to fail and they need to have more capital or be restructured until they can go bankrupt without a government bailout. As Chairman Shelby told the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, if a bank is too big to fail, it is probably too big to exist. I ask support for the Brown-Vitter amendment.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, yesterday, I, along with a number of my colleagues, filed an amendment to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. This amendment, based on the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act which we filed as a stand-alone bill last Congress, would provide grants to States that have laws on the books that allow women to petition for the termination of parental rights based on clear and convincing evidence that a child was conceived through rape. The goal is to encourage more States to adopt such laws. The amendment as drafted gives broad discretion to the Attorney General to determine which States are eligible for grants and which are not. For that reason, I would like to say a few words regarding our intention in drafting this amendment. Under the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, the Attorney General is empowered to make grants to ``States that have in place a law that allows the mother of any child that was conceived through rape to seek court-order termination of the parental rights of her rapist with regard to that child, which the court is authorized to grant upon clear and convincing evidence of rape.'' Termination is defined as ``a complete and final termination of the parent's right to custody of, guardianship of, visitation with, access to, and inheritance from a child.'' There are a number of States that have such a law on the books but which also state that parental rights can be reinstated if extenuating circumstances occur. And while the bill states that a determination must be final, the bill was drafted with the idea that there is a difference between a ``final'' determination and an ``unmodifiable'' one. And States with such laws on the books should still qualify because the amendment does not say the determination has to be unmodifiable, just final. The intention as currently drafted is that 10 States would be eligible under their current laws. These 10 States are Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Once this amendment is hopefully adopted as part of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking and passed into law, I am confident that the Department of Justice will concur in this assessment. In addition to this amendment, I have two other amendments which I filed yesterday. The first amendment would provide help support local law enforcement in their efforts to track down homeless and runaway youth by providing funding for retired Federal agents who assist the local law enforcement in these investigations. In September of 2013, a group of retired FBI agents in Northwest Ohio came to my office and asked for help in creating a pilot program that would allow retired agents to assist local law enforcement in finding runaway children and teens. Generally, Northwest Ohio children who become involved in trafficking do so within about 2 weeks of running away from home, so finding them quickly is critical. Overall, about one-third of runaways become victims of trafficking. Toledo has just one detective working on missing person's cases, both adults and children. These retired FBI agents want to help law- enforcement officials investigate the 18,000 runaways in Ohio every year, but they need resources. Police don't have the manpower to track these children, but every city has retired agents who could assist the ``overworked'' departments. The second amendment mirrors Congressman Maloney's Human Trafficking Prevention Act. This legislation comes in response to a State Department inspector general report recommended the changes made by this amendment. It would train Foreign Service officers working at U.S. Embassies overseas to help stem the demand for trafficking and spot victims before they are trafficked into the United States. It passed the House in January on a voice vote, and I am confident that it would find similar broad support in the Senate.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, time is running out for us to extend the Children's Health Insurance Program, a program that began almost 20 years ago in this body and the other body and that right now is taking care of 10 million children--the children of parents who in most cases have full-time jobs that don't offer insurance and full-time jobs that don't pay enough so these families can buy insurance for their children. We know that CHIP works. It works for parents, and it works for children. We know that if we don't act now, States will start rolling back the CHIP programs. Legislatures are adjourning almost as we speak. We need to provide States with certainty so they can budget for CHIP now and 4 years into the future. Unfortunately, the deal currently being floated in the House would not fund CHIP for a full 4 years. Instead, if reports are true, it would permanently repeal the sustainable growth rate--the so-called doctors fix--while failing to provide much needed certainty to children's health care. I want to take care of doctors. I want to make sure this is done right because it affects doctors. It affects doctors' ability to deliver care. It affects those patients whom doctors serve. But how do we leave here taking care of the doctors permanently and shortchanging children, only giving them 2 years of health insurance? It is past time we fix SGR. In 2001, when I was a member of the House, Congressman Bilirakis as the Republican chair of the Health Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee and I as the Democratic ranking member wrote the first SGR fix, so I have been fixing the SGR for a long time. But we shouldn't be focused in this body and that body on paying doctors at the cost of shortchanging our children. Our priority must be passing a full 4-year, clean extension of the current CHIP program, on which 130,000 children in my State depend--again, sons and daughters of working Oklahoma families and working Ohio families who are working in jobs where they simply don't get insurance and don't get paid enough that they can buy insurance. These 10 million children in our Nation depend on this. A 4-year extension of CHIP will provide Congress, the administration, and our States with the necessary time to collect relevant data and information to fully analyze and prepare for the future of kids covered. Doing only 2 years is not just shortchanging these children and creating anxiety in their families, it is also truncating our ability, compromising our ability to really understand how to fully integrate CHIP into a health care system overall in the future. We should be providing certainty and stability for these families, not the cliche of kicking the can down the road in favor of a short-term fix. A 4-year extension provides that certainty and will make a difference into the next decade on how, in fact, we take care of low-income children. In Ohio alone, CHIP provides insurance to 130,000 children. Enrollment is expected to grow over the next couple of years. I have traveled across Ohio in the last few weeks and have met with parents and children, doctors and nurses, to discuss CHIP. I have been to Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Toledo Children's Hospital, Columbus's Nationwide Children's Hospital and Cleveland's Rainbow Children's Hospital. This morning, I was in Mahoning Valley in Boardman, a suburb of Youngstown, at the Akron Children's Hospital. More than 6,000 children in Mahoning Valley rely on CHIP for care. I met with Ericka Flaherty, a Youngstown parent whose children could lose comprehensive coverage if we don't extend CHIP now. Her son Chase was born prematurely, born at 27 weeks. He was immediately diagnosed with a number of chronic conditions, including a heart defect, chronic lung disease, and asthma. Chase spent more than 4 months in neonatal care, and, thanks to outstanding doctors at Akron Children's Hospital, he is alive and growing today. But he needs many routine medical visits--visits his family simply can't afford. His parents work, but they simply can't afford to treat his conditions, including visits to lung specialists, neurologists, an eye specialist, and the regular hospital checkup every 2 months. Without CHIP, Ericka would face significant financial hurdles in getting Chase the care he needs. I also met with Jessica Miller of Lisbon, a community just south of Mahoning County, during this roundtable. Her youngest son, Payton, was diagnosed with a serious respiratory condition. He had to be life- flighted to Akron Children's Hospital to receive care when he couldn't breathe. He has been diagnosed with type 1 juvenile diabetes. His grandmother joined us. Jessica told me that she is so thankful for CHIP, that she gets Payton all the care he needs to treat these conditions--care she and her husband Justin would have a hard time affording otherwise. Justin is working as a paramedic. He was called out and couldn't be at our meeting today. Justin is full time in nursing school. They are making something of their lives. I don't want them to be anxious about the health care of their children. Throughout Ohio, I hear the same thing: Providing health insurance to children like Chase and Payton isn't just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. It means children do better in school. They feel better when they are in school. They miss fewer days in school because they get preventive care because their health care needs are taken care of. CHIP has been around 18, almost 20 years. It has always been bipartisan. If we follow these children later in life, we see they have higher rates of going to college and higher earnings than non-CHIP kids who don't have insurance. By all kinds of very quantifiable measurements, CHIP is not just good for those families, it is not just the right thing to do to continue to fund CHIP over 4 years, it is also the smart thing to do for our country. Together with more than 40 of my colleagues, I introduced the Protecting & Retaining Our Children's Health Insurance Program--PRO- CHIP--Act, which is a clean 4-year extension of funding for CHIP. PRO- CHIP would protect the Pediatric Quality Measures Program and provide funding to sustain this program through 2019. It would also extend the Performance Incentive Program, which provides bonus payments to States that help increase Medicaid enrollment among children, because if we provide insurance for low- income children, they are going to do better, and society is going to do better. They are less likely to end up in the emergency room for something much more serious. For instance, for a child without insurance who has an earache, the mother and father think that it is going to cost a lot of money to go to the doctor and that maybe it will just get better, they wait a week. Into the second week, the pain is worse. The child can't sleep. The child cries. They eventually go to the emergency room, which costs a lot more money than going to the doctor's office, with the possibility that the child has had hearing loss. That is just one example of why we want to provide insurance and get them into the doctor early rather than waiting until later. PRO-CHIP has been endorsed by every children's hospital in Ohio, the Association of Children's Hospitals, virtually every children's hospital, I believe, in the country, and other national groups--the March of Dimes, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Children's Hospital Association, and Families USA, all of which want a clean CHIP. All of them want a 4-year extension for all the reasons we talked about. More than 1,500 organizations from across the country--including more than 75 groups from Ohio and a number from Oklahoma, the Presiding Officer's State--have written to Congress asking us to ``take action as soon as possible to provide a four-year funding extension for CHIP.'' Groups, including the Urban Institute, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, and the Bipartisan Policy Center, have all noted the importance of the current CHIP program. The Urban Institute estimated that an additional 1.1 million children will become uninsured if separate CHIP coverage were eliminated. Again, these are sons and daughters of parents who have jobs--jobs that don't provide insurance and jobs that don't pay enough that they can afford insurance. This would be a 40-percent increase, if this were to happen, in the number of uninsured children in the United States relative to the number projected under the ACA with the continuation of CHIP. The Bipartisan Policy Center has called for extending CHIP for more than just the 2 years, but note what they say when calling for a CHIP extension: ``Two years does not provide sufficient time for state and federal elected officials and agencies to address major programmatic changes sought by policymakers on both sides of the aisle and at both levels of government.'' Support for CHIP has always been bipartisan. Senator Hatch, Republican from Utah; Senator Kennedy, Democrat from Massachusetts; a number of us on the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives back in 1997, Republicans and Democrats alike; and Chairman Bilirakis and I and others helped to write this legislation which has been successful at bringing the uninsured rate for children down by more than 50 percent. I am encouraged that Members of both parties have shown a willingness to come together. Senate Democrats will have a hard time supporting any plan that doesn't extend CHIP for a full 4 years. I want to support the sustainable growth rate. I helped write the original one. I have supported it for 20 years. We shouldn't be doing it like this on a temporary 1- or 2-year basis. This is finally going to get done right, but we don't do that and then leave out the children by only providing 2 years. Parents like Ericka and Jessica face enough uncertainty with their children's health. Most of us in this body are parents, and a number of us are grandparents. Most of us, because we dress like this and we are Senators and have good insurance provided by taxpayers--we may have anxiety about our children and our grandchildren's health, but we don't have anxiety about their insurance and their ability to go to hospitals and doctors and specialists to get care. Certainly, we are anxious about our children and all the things that could happen, but our anxiety doesn't reach into the whole sphere of worrying about how to provide insurance for children. Ericka and Jessica can't be anything but anxious when they hear that CHIP could end, and they understand that it should be 4 years. CHIP gives parents like them peace of mind that they will be able to get their children the care they need without bankrupting those families. We need to make sure these parents continue to have that peace of mind with a 4-year extension. The PRO-CHIP legislation we have introduced in the Senate with almost four dozen cosponsors makes sure those kids don't lose critical coverage by saying no to any deal that doesn't fund CHIP for the full 4 years.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I am joined on the floor this evening by Senator Casey. Just 2 weeks ago, he and I and a half dozen other Senators came to the floor in an unusual configuration. It is not something Senators do all that often. We came as a group, but each spoke individually about our concerns with trade promotion authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both the so-called fast track and the trade agreement that is being negotiated among the United States, Canada, Mexico, some Pacific nations, and Peru, I believe, too, as well as nations in Asia. The concerns we have and the concerns an increasing number of Senators have about trade promotion authority, about fast track--they changed the name because they knew the public did not like fast track, so they tried to obscure it by coming up with some technical-sounding name--trade promotion authority. We have increasingly seen the public rising up against these trade agreements because we have watched them for some 20 years, and we have seen the damage the North American Free Trade Agreement did to the United States, to our economy, and to workers around the world. We have seen that has been sort of a prototype for the next generation of CAFTA and other agreements in Colombia and Peru and now the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I want to discuss this, in part, because we know so little about the U.S. Trade Representative's upcoming trade agenda and specifically the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The way we pass trade agreements, and it is important for colleagues to understand this, stands in a class by itself. No other legislation we do is as hidden not only from public view but even those in this body whose constitutional duty it is to approve or reject them. Senator Casey and I stood here in the well of the Senate, we raised our right hands--Senator Casey and I were honored to come in at the same time, as of January 2007 and then again in January 2013. We raised our right hands and took an oath understanding our constitutional duty to approve or reject trade agreements. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution entrusts in Congress the authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations, but the current TPP language is being guarded as though it were a State secret. Members of this body were permitted to view the language only with U.S. Trade Representative staff there, not with their personal staff. Nora Todd, in my office, who has great skills and expertise and has worked on trade issues for years, because she is not committee staff is not able to view this. The USTR refuses to put down in writing their policy for restricting access. So the access is restricted, but we can't even find out from the U.S. Trade Rep what this actually means, except we know access is restricted. It means few Senators and fewer of our staff--and damn the public who have worked on this issue--have ever seen the text at all. Trade agreements such as this affect our entire economy. Forty percent of world GDP is included in this Trans-Pacific Partnership, with countries as big as Japan, the United States, and economies as big as Canada's and Mexico's. This will affect the entire economy and cause ripple effects for decades. We know what CAFTA did, and that was only three countries--the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This is four times that many countries. They should be debated in a transparent process. The public should know, Senators and Members of Congress should know. We don't know enough. Yet the Finance Committee fairly soon is going to push this trade agreement out of fast track and the agreement out onto the Senate Floor, when we simply don't have access to information. Let me give an example. Last year, the U.S. Trade Rep developed a proposal on something called the rules of origin for automobiles. That really matters in my State. It matters in Senator Casey's State because they are such a major part of the steel and other supply chain items for autos. I have been trying to work with the USTR to better understand this proposal since last October. I personally spoke again last week with Ambassador Froman to understand it better. Rules of origin are very important provisions in a trade agreement. They determine how much of a product's components need to come from TPP countries in order to qualify under the agreement. What that means is we know as American consumers it is hard to find a suit, it is hard to find much of anything made in the U.S.A., but we also know many American consumers would like to buy products that are 40 or 50 or 80 percent from the United States--made by workers in Kansas or workers in Pennsylvania or workers in Ohio. But we aren't able to tell under the rules of origin what that number is and where those components come from. So if there is going to be a trade advantage to Japan--and they have had plenty of trade advantages when it comes to autos--we don't know if those automobile components come 70 or 80 percent from Japan and maybe 20 percent from China or 60 percent from China. We don't know that because the U.S. Trade Rep will not tell us. So what we are concerned about--and China is not in TPP--is that the People's Republic of China will manufacture so much of the supply chain, so many of these components, backdoor it into China, so people in China are hired instead of people in the United States or the people in these countries we are trading with. These provisions are critical for the auto supply chain in our country because they are already facing fierce competition with China. We need to make sure we have strong rules of origin so cars are made and assembled in TPP countries, not China. The auto supply chain employs 120,000 people in Ohio. It will be affected by the auto rules of origin in TPP. To understand how important that is, our country, from 2000 to 2010, the end of the Clinton administration until 2 years into the Obama administration--mostly the 8 Bush years--we lost 5 million manufacturing jobs, 60,000 plants in places such as Pennsylvania and Ohio. We know that. Our economy has been growing, however, since two things: the Recovery Act of 2009 and the auto rescue of 2010. We have seen 58, 59, 60 months of economic growth, consecutive months, since then. That underscores how important auto is in my State, where, as I said, 120,000 people are in the auto supply chain. But we continue to face roadblocks just to getting the basic information on a plan that would have a major effect on Ohio's auto supply chain. What I don't understand is why would this body, why would the 100 people who took that oath, as Senator Casey and I did in 2013 and 2007 in this Chamber, vote for something we can't get information about? Why would anybody who took an oath of office do that? We worked with the administration to rescue the auto manufacturing sector, and it helped save our auto industry--tens of thousands of jobs in that supply chain--so I want to make sure the TPP rules of origin for autos will not benefit China. I want it to benefit American companies, and I want it to benefit American workers. I grew up in Mansfield, OH. I have seen what globalization has done for jobs, and I have seen what globalization has done to wages. Mansfield, OH, is a city of 50,000. We have a lot of Mansfields in my State: Zanesville, Chillicothe, Ravenna, Lima, Springfield. These are cities that used to be prosperous manufacturing hubs that have lost so many jobs. Not all jobs were lost due to globalization, but a big part of that is globalization. That is why, when USTR will not share the information we need to understand this proposal, it is particularly troubling. We can see what has happened. This trade agreement--corporate handout, worker sellout--look what has happened since 1980. These are the average salaries, the blue line, of the richest 1 percent in America. Look what has happened to the richest 1 percent starting in the early days of the Reagan administration. Look what has happened to everyone else. We have the richest 1 percent who have seen their incomes go up about 130 percent. We have everybody else's incomes that have gone up around 10, 12 or 15 percent--and that is not for here, that is for overall. Again, globalization is not the entire reason, but when they will not share, when USTR will not tell us what is going on, it is particularly troubling when we look at this chart. We know our workers--we know Ohio workers and manufacturers can compete with anyone in the world, but they need fair rules and they need a level playing field. They do not have that here. It is clear. The rules of origin aren't the only part of the deal being developed in the dark. News reports yesterday revealed the USTR may be negotiating side letters on intellectual property provisions. The same report indicates the side letters might cover other issues as well. We remember the NAFTA side letters on labor and the environment and we know how effective they were. They weren't. Clearly, they were sort of the Bush administration, the first, negotiating and then the Clinton administration, trying to get support in the Senate and the House, adding these side agreements that amounted to nothing. It was to placate workers and to placate the environmentalists, but it did very little. We can't make the same mistake with the TPP. Will the side letters be covered by the agreement's dispute settlement? When will Members of Congress be able to see these letters? What impact will they have on the overall agreement? These are questions Members of Congress are asking and we are not getting answers from Ambassador Froman or the U.S. Trade Rep's office. It is time the USTR provided some real answers. It is our job to scrutinize every trade proposal to ensure it creates a level playing field. It isn't just another corporate handout that shifts jobs overseas. This lack of transparency isn't limited to TPP. I have asked the USTR to make the United States-European Union--the so-called TTIP agreement--proposal public. Once again, these requests for more transparency have been met with nothing but secrecy. Meanwhile, the EU makes their proposals public. This isn't about protecting the privileges of Senator Casey and me-- the privilege of Senators, this is about protecting our small companies, our manufacturing companies that get obliterated when large companies move offshore. This is about protecting the workers in places such as Toledo and Akron, OH. This is about protecting these communities. When plants close in Jackson, OH, and plants close in Waverly and Portsmouth and St. Clairsville and Lisbon, school districts lay off teachers, police departments lay off cops, and cities lay off firefighters. We have been down this road too many times in this country. It has been more than 20 years since NAFTA. Too many plants shut down in Ohio, too many shut down in Pennsylvania, and too many shut down in the State of Louisiana--the State of the Presiding Officer. Too many good jobs were shipped abroad, and if they were replaced at all it is with low- wage jobs with little benefits. Bad trade deals exacerbate the rise in inequality, corporate profits go up, and middle-class families struggle to get by. These trade agreements are all about corporate handouts and worker sellouts. Over the past four decades, worker productivity rose 75 percent, wages rose 9 percent. What that says, since 1946 into the Reagan years, productivity went like this, workers were this much more productive, and wages stayed parallel to that. But since the Reagan years, as productivity went up workers wages have been flat, except for the richest 1 percent, who saw their salaries explode. Everybody else has lived in an economy where things just don't get better. The report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity, cochaired by Larry Summers, concluded that ``powerful forces of globalization . . . must be navigated or inequalities will continue to widen, and for many, precarious low-skill work will increasingly become the norm.'' Fast-tracking--that is what TPA is--fast-tracking proposals such as TPP, without congressional input, without congressional knowledge, let alone public knowledge of this--without congressional input, without oversight, even the bare facts of the deal--reduces our ability to navigate the forces of globalization and to advocate for the workers, which is what Senator Casey and I spend most of our time doing here. It perpetuates the USTR's approach to trade negotiations. I am in the middle of reading a book, ``The House of Morgan,'' about J.P. Morgan, Sr., and J.P. Morgan, Jr. I can't help thinking, that attitude, the public be damned, is what the USTR is doing to us right now. They don't care to share information with Senator Casey and me and the rest of this body, supporters of the USTR and opponents of the USTR, and they sure don't care about the public learning more about this. All of this will only lead to more inequality. I want trade; I support trade; I want more trade. Ohio workers want access to new markets for our products. But we need trade that works. The way we get trade that works is not by rushing into more corporate- sponsored trade agreements without even knowing what we are signing. The USTR needs to open up the process; otherwise, the public is convinced they are going to see more corporate handouts and more worker sellouts. I yield the floor to my friend, Senator Casey.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate the good work of the Senator from Kansas. We have worked on, in the Banking Committee, a number of issues together, and I appreciate the work we have been able to do across party lines. So I thank the Senator for that.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN. I object on behalf of a number of Members on this side.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the Senate is presently considering a series of human trafficking bills that will help law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations to take swift aggressive action to protect our most vulnerable populations and work to ensure justice, restitution, and healing for victims of these most horrific crimes. Human trafficking--modern-day slavery--is not a vestige of the past. It is an evil presence here and now. Children and young adults are being bought and sold in our back yard. This problem knows no borders. It is happening in communities across Ohio. It is a particular problem in Toledo--northwest Ohio--where several north-south and east-west highways come together. It is difficult even to obtain accurate information on this depraved crime that happens in the shadows. But we know that as many as 17,000 individuals may be trafficked into our Nation each year, and some estimate that as many as 100,000 American children may be victims of trafficking within the United States each year. The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act will give the Department of Justice additional tools to help victims and to crack down on this crime. It would enhance services for victims of human trafficking, and it would expand victim restitution, as well as provide additional resources to law enforcement to help improve human trafficking reporting and investigation. There is bipartisan and bicameral support for the tracking provisions of this bill. This is a bill about human trafficking. We should not let it become a fight about abortion. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will agree with this and strip out the Hyde language that has become such a point of controversy. I know reasonable people can disagree about the Hyde amendment, but now is not the time or place to debate it. There is agreement--broad, wide, deep agreement--on the need to address trafficking. Americans from all walks of life have come to us asking that we do something. We can and we should. These new tools would be essential in assisting the Department of Justice, which has made combating trafficking a priority. I would like to commend Attorney General Holder for his leadership on this issue. Under his management, DOJ's commitment to preventing human trafficking and bringing these criminals to justice has never been stronger. The Attorney General has really stepped up on this. This bill will give our next Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, the tools she needs to build upon Holder's efforts. Another area where we can do more to prevent human trafficking is giving law enforcement in our communities the resources to find kids before they fall prey to traffickers. That is why I plan to introduce an amendment that would provide grants to local law enforcement for tracking down homeless and runaway youth, and that will include assistance for retired Federal agents to assist local law enforcement in these investigations. We must find these at-risk children and teens and bring them home before their youthful rebellion becomes something so much worse. A group of retired FBI agents in northwest Ohio came to my office and asked for our help in the creation of a pilot program that would allow retired agents to assist local law enforcement in finding runaway kids and teens. Generally, northwest Ohio children who become involved in trafficking do so within about 2 weeks of running away from home. So finding them quickly is essential. About one-third of runaways become victims of trafficking. Think of that. One-third of runaways become victims of trafficking. Toledo has just one detective working on cases of missing children, both adult and children. These retired FBI agents want to help local law enforcement investigate the 18,000 runaways in Ohio every year, but they need help. Police don't have the manpower to track these children, but every city has retired agents who could assist the overworked departments. I will also be introducing a series of amendments, which I hope will be bipartisan, including the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, a bill I introduced in the last Congress with Senator Ayotte. We know that human trafficking victims are especially vulnerable to sexual assault. Women who give birth to a child conceived through rape can often face intimidation from attackers who pursue, amazingly enough, parental rights. My amendment would help protect these survivors by encouraging States to pass laws allowing women to petition for the termination of their attacker's parental rights, if there is clear and convincing evidence the child was conceived through rape. These women have already been subjected to horrific crimes. They should not have to suffer a life of intrusion by the man who raped them. I was first moved to introduce this bill because of the case of Ariel Castro in Cleveland. He was on trial in Ohio for kidnapping, raping, and holding prisoner three women for nearly a decade. He asked the judge for parental rights to visit his 6-year-old daughter he conceived through rape. While the judge denied his request, Ohio has no law that prevents rapists such as Castro from claiming parental rights and forcing their victims to let these criminals into their children's lives. I hope this law encourages Ohio and other States to pass laws making it clear that anyone who commits such a terrible act forfeits any right to parent a child he forced on his victim. This amendment will help protect rape survivors, ensuring their right to care for their children free from fear. Senators Klobuchar, Corker, and Leahy also have their own bill, which they plan to offer as amendments, and which will help us to work to stamp out this terrible crime. Finally, I want to commend those in my State who have helped lead the way on this issue. There is a history of strong bipartisanship on this issue that cuts across all ideological lines. State Representative Teresa Fedor helped to lead a successful fight for passage of the safe harbor bill in the Ohio legislature 3 years ago. Dr. Celia Williamson, a professor of social work at the University of Toledo, is recognized nationally, and even internationally, as a leader in human trafficking research and activism. She has been a tremendous force on this issue. With her help and leadership, the University of Toledo just established the Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute. The university has hosted annual human trafficking conferences, and the formation of this institute is a terrific next step in its commitment to addressing a problem that plagues Toledo and too often goes unacknowledged and unaddressed. Finally, I want to commend the members of the Lucas County Human Trafficking Coalition, which has had some very diverse membership and has worked for several years to better coordinate and provide services to victims. Human trafficking is a problem that knows no borders and, of course, knows no political party. I hope we can continue to work together to combat this awful epidemic. I hope we will be able to work through our issues to resolve the issue with the Hyde amendment language. We must take swift and aggressive language to prevent these crimes and work to ensure justice and restitution and healing for its victims.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to S.J. Res. 8 which was passed by this body earlier last week but without a veto-proof majority. It would protect corporations looking to rig union elections, always at the expense of working families. Our labor movement helped build the middle class and fought for protections so many Americans take for granted: overtime pay brought about because of collective bargaining, child labor laws, collective bargaining, and talking to Members of Congress. Child labor laws, safer workplaces, unemployment insurance, workers compensation were all brought about because people came together in unions to organize and bargain collectively and came together in unions to talk to State legislators and Members of Congress in support of unemployment insurance and in support of safer work laws, child labor laws, and workers' compensation. I am wearing my lapel with a picture of a canary in a birdcage. It was given to me 20 years ago at a workers' Memorial Day rally in Lorain, OH, a city on Lake Erie, about 25 miles west of Cleveland. This picture illustrates what the mine workers used to do 100 years ago. They took a canary down to the mines. If the canary died from lack of oxygen or toxic gas, the mine worker got out of the mines. He was on his own. He did not have a union in those days strong enough to protect him. He did not have a government in those days that cared enough to protect him. Since the days of the canary in the birdcage down in the mines, we have seen Congress move forward on workers' compensation, on minimum wage, on unemployment insurance, on prohibition of child labor. Much of that progress, many of those advancements were because of the labor movement. The growing voice of workers at the table was critical to all of these advances made especially in the early part of the 20th century. Then it was Social Security, then it was Medicare and Medicaid, and then it was all of the other things that helped us together, from Head Start to Pell grants, that helped create a middle class. The labor movement got children out of the sweatshops and into the classrooms. We expanded the rights of workers, we expanded the rights of women, we expanded the rights of people of color, and prosperity followed, shared by a growing portion of the country. This week I led a delegation with Senator Scott--a Republican from South Carolina--to Selma, AL, and also to Montgomery and Birmingham to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, where the young--mostly students--were nonviolently walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, and they were attacked by State troopers and local police and local deputized citizens of Alabama who participated in the melee and beat up a number of those students. That got the Nation's attention, and the Nation pushed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Labor unions were there. Labor unions were there to ensure if we work hard and we take responsibility, we can work in a safe environment, with decent wages and benefits that allow us to take care of our family. But over the last decade that has changed. Workers in working families have paid the price. It used to be as profits went up, wages went up with those profits because the workers who helped those companies be profitable shared in the wealth they created. That is not socialism. That is what happened in American capitalism for decades after World War II. When profits went up, wages went up, in large part because unions at the bargaining table--through the process of collective bargaining--made sure that as their workers were increasingly productive and companies did better and better and executive salaries went up, workers got a piece of the pie. But since the 1970s, profits have gone up, but wages have been pretty stagnant. American workers, our workers, continue to be the most profitable and most productive and talented in the world, but the rewards for productivity gains go to an ever-dwindling number of the richest Americans. So as companies do better and better and stockholders do better and better, as profits go up and up, workers simply have not shared in the wealth they have created. They have not gotten their piece of the pie that they have earned. A big part of that is the decline of the labor movement. Today the middle class accounts for the smallest share of our national income since World War II. I will say that again. The middle class accounts for the smallest share of our national income since World War II. It is not a coincidence that workers are reaping fewer of the rewards of their work while union membership has declined. That is why the National Labor Relations Board proposed the rule change which is so important and why it is critical that Republican efforts--Republicans, again, doing it on behalf of the largest corporations in America--are not successful. This change would make modest, commonsense reforms to modernize and streamline the election process by which workers form unions. Right now companies seeking to block workers' rights to form a union can delay elections sometimes up to 2 years, and they can drag out anti-union campaigns, they can intimidate workers, and they can find reasons to fire organizers. Delay works in the corporations' favor, as workers leave the jobs, as workers who wanted the union get discouraged from the union, and delay almost always works on the side of the employer. Workers have a right to timely elections, the right to make up their own minds free of intimidation. Choosing one's representation is a right we cherish as Americans, and the National Labor Relations Board rule preserves it for our workers. The NLRB rule would cut back on the frivolous court cases these corporations file over and over, these frivolous court cases that companies use to stall elections. It would allow NLRB hearing officers to move forward with an election despite pending litigation, the stalling tactics of frivolous lawsuits to ensure workers aren't silenced by expensive legal battles. These reforms will not only help workers but also help businesses that act in good faith by streamlining the election process. This isn't an antibusiness move the workers and unions want to engage in, it is a cooperative move because moving quickly will bring everybody to the table more quickly. Right now the election process varies widely from State to State. It relies on outdated forms of communication. This change will provide certainty to workers and businesses alike and will allow both to file electronically instead of only by mail, saving everyone time and money. The lobbying effort by corporations on this is opposed to filing electronically. Imagine that. It is 2015. Why do they want to do that? Because they want to slow down the process. We know the consequences. Stalling tactics have real consequences for workers. We have seen that over and over again. In Massillon, OH--a city near Canton, south of Akron, in Northeast Ohio--nurses at Affinity Medical Center elected to form a union in August 2012. Ann Wyat, who was awarded Nurse of the Year, was fired for leading the activities for unionization. The company did everything it could to crush the unionizing efforts. I have been to that hospital. I have met with those nurses. I have talked to them about this. The NLRB found in favor of the workers, ruling that Affinity Medical refused to bargain and used illegal coercion and intimidation tactics, but still the company refused to comply with Federal labor law. The matter went to Federal court, which ruled in favor of the nurses and filed an injunction against Affinity Medical for failing to follow NLRB rulings, for breaking Federal law. Last month a jury in a civil court ruled unanimously and awarded the wrongfully terminated nurse $2 million in damages. It was serious enough what they did to this nurse that the jury ruled this nurse was due $2 million, not just because of the inconvenience to the nurse and the denial of her rights but the punishment for a company that breaks the law. Two and a half years later Affinity Medical is still stalling, and no contract has been agreed to. The nurses in Massillon deserve better. All workers deserve better. That is the importance of this NLRB ruling, to make it a more level playing field. That is what the American labor movement and our commitment to our workers is about--to speak out on behalf of honest pay for an honest day's work. It is a story of a nation--and a government--respecting the dignity of work and reflecting the decency and dedication of workers. It has been nearly 80 years since American workers' right to collective bargaining has been confirmed. We have been doing this experiment for 80 years. Rather than ending that right--and, with it, squeezing the middle class--we should be working to preserve and expand the rights of workers. We need equal pay for women, and we need a minimum wage that supports families. The minimum wage is worth 30 percent less today in real purchasing dollars than it was 30 years ago. Rather than eroding that, we need to strengthen and grow the middle class, and we need paid family leave and paid sick leave. We need to be able to make it a little bit easier for a union, for workers to stand up to corporate interests when workers' interests are not respected. That should be on the Senate's agenda, but sadly it is not. Instead, we have wasted our time on a resolution that we know will fail--all to pay back political scoring points for those corporations that fund campaigns and continue to dissolve organized labor. Without a veto- proof majority--and the resolution wasn't even close to that last Tuesday--we know it is nothing more than an empty gesture. Just as importantly, we know that if this resolution succeeded, it would do real damage to working Americans by impeding their ability to come together to organize and to build the power they have in numbers to be able to get their fair share of the American dream.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, it has been 1 month since I took to the floor of this body to urge my colleagues to work together to extend funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. Just this past month, I have held roundtables at almost every major city in Ohio to hear more about what CHIP means to people in Ohio. At each of these roundtables, I spoke with families who depend on CHIP to get their kids the care they need. Please understand that there are 130,000 Ohio children who are eligible for CHIP and who have benefited from CHIP, and in almost every case they are the sons and daughters of parents who work. These are parents who don't make enough money and don't work at a place where the employer provides insurance. They may be $9, $10, $11 or $12 an hour jobs. They are working, and the income they are making simply isn't enough to buy insurance for their kids and for their families. So that is the importance of rewarding work. These 130,000 children now have insurance because of a bipartisan bill, the Children's Health Insurance Program. They have had it for 20 years. It is in jeopardy now. Last week I was at the John R. Maloney Health Center in Columbus, where more kids rely on CHIP than anywhere else in the State. Some 13,000 children in Franklin County alone have health coverage because of CHIP. I spoke with Meredith Mendoza, a mother living in Gahanna, OH. She works full time as a medical interpreter and makes too much to qualify for Medicaid but not quite enough to afford health insurance, and her employer doesn't provide it. Three of her four children have affordable, comprehensive coverage because of CHIP. CHIP provides a sigh of relief for parents such as Meredith because CHIP means better access to comprehensive care for their children. Providing health insurance to low-income children isn't just the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do. This is why it is the smart thing to do. It allays the anxiety that so many families have about one of their children getting sick. It helps families feel more secure that they won't be wiped out financially and in other ways by a sick child. It helps that child do better in school because the child will miss fewer days and the child will feel better. It gives that child preventive care. It means vaccines, preventive health care, getting physicals, and it means dental care. It means better performance in school. CHIP means all of that. But the problem is that the CHIP law is until 2019. We authorized it a couple years ago. The funding runs out in September. My Governor, the Republican Governor of Ohio, wants to see us fund CHIP through 2019 so we can continue to provide this insurance to all 130,000 children in my State. If we don't act now, States will have to assume that CHIP is expiring, as they go through their budget process. In other words, CHIP funding runs out in September, but States--through their legislative process, where fiscal years often end during the early or mid-summer-- need to begin to work this through their budgets right now. The Utah legislature adjourns this week, March 12; New Mexico, March 21; Idaho, April 3; Tennessee, April 17; Alaska, April 19; Iowa, April 21; and Montana, April 27. All but seven State legislatures adjourn before September. That makes the need to act even more dire. That is why I was proud to introduce legislation last month called the Protecting And Retaining Our Children's Health Insurance Program Act, or PRO-CHIP. It has been endorsed by every children's hospital in Ohio, almost all of them around the country, several national groups-- the March of Dimes, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Children's Hospital Association, Families USA--all kinds of people, and all kinds of groups. CHIP just makes sense. Protecting health coverage, protecting health insurance, and providing health insurance to low-income children isn't just the smart thing to do; it is the right thing to do. I call on my colleagues to pass the CHIP refunding bill so that it doesn't run out in September. Then States can plan so we can provide the health insurance to 10 million children--almost all of whose parents work for a living and who simply don't make enough money to provide insurance for their families. I yield the floor.