Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I have great admiration for Mr. Sessions. We truly are good friends, and I know that he is absolutely sincere when he says that every Member of Congress is going to have input now into this bill that has not even begun. If there is no bill, then why is everybody talking about going to read something? For goodness sake, when you passed the TPA, we have passed fast track. You can't say we are not operating under fast track. I hear that all the time, and it really grates on me because fast track is what was passed here and in the Senate that gives to the administration the ability to negotiate that. It will come in here, and we may be reading all of it--if we have the ability to do that--before we vote; I am not even clear about that. But I do know that they negotiate it; it is brought over here, and we get to vote ``yes'' or ``no.'' We don't amend it. There will be nothing that we can say about it, and we are stuck with it. Not only do we have fast track, but it is not just until the expiration of President Obama's term; it is for years beyond, so a future President can do whatever they please because the Congress gave that authority to the executive department. Why? I don't know. It doesn't just apply to this one trade bill. I hope everybody understands that. When they passed TPA here the other day, they were doing it for years to come. I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, what we have heard this morning must certainly cause great confusion in the minds of America. Let me restate what has happened here. The Congress has passed fast-track authority, TPA, for 6 years. It goes beyond this President's term and covers 4 years of another. Why that happened, I am not really clear, but it certainly is something we have given away our right to negotiate trade agreements, which, by the way, the Constitution gives us the ability to do. Second, there will be no input. The Congress of the United States will not be writing that trade bill. That is purely in the hands of the Trade Representative and the Executive Department of the United States. Our next role, and the only one we have, is to vote up or down on whatever they present us. What a sad day it is. And I want to agree with Mr. Lynch. The very fact of passing this bill is an admission and knowing that we are going to lose jobs. My part of the district in western New York is just now starting to regain its footing after NAFTA. You have heard me say it a million times. Eastman Kodak, one of the iconic companies in the country--in the world, actually--went from 62,000 employees down to foreign bankruptcy. What we have got, also NAFTA has put us, the losses there, as the fifth city that is under the poverty line in the United States. For heaven's sake, it breaks my heart to think that my constituents are going to have to be facing this again, because people who have voted for all this don't seem to understand what it is that they have done. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the House bring up H.R. 1031--a bill to protect thousands of American jobs by preventing the Export-Import Bank from shutting down. It is most important in my district.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend from New Jersey, Congresswoman Watson Coleman, for organizing this very important special order. Mr. Speaker, we have a right to safety and to reasonably expect that we will be free from gun violence in our homes, schools, places of worship, workplaces, and communities. Unfortunately, we are not safe. As I said on the House floor the morning after the devastating murders in Charleston, ``there are no more sanctuaries in the United States from gun violence.'' There is no question that we are not doing enough. We see the evidence in the news every day. Across the country, guns are the number two killer of children under 19 years of age. After Charleston, Newtown, the DC Navy Yard, Aurora, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech--the list goes on--it is clear that we need a comprehensive approach to preventing gun violence. Just like my colleagues, I have heard from hundreds of my constituents urging me to support commonsense policies that would help save lives from this senseless violence. I have cosponsored legislation to strengthen background checks, improve mental health services, ensure criminals and dangerous individuals cannot purchase guns or ammunition, ban military-style assault weapons, and prohibit large capacity magazines, and yet, none of these commonsense policies have even received a vote on the House floor. I refuse to stop fighting for this cause as long as 30,000 Americans needlessly die because of guns every year. In 2013, West Webster firefighter Ted Scardino came to Washington to give testimony on gun trafficking prevention. On the previous Christmas Eve, when Ted responded to a fire in the early morning hours along the shores of Lake Ontario, he had no way of knowing that a gunman had set the fire as part of a murderous plot that would leave him as well as fellow firefighter Joseph Hofstetter injured, and take the lives of two more firefighters, Mike Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka. The gunman in this case was already a convicted killer. He was not able to legally purchase a gun himself, but was able to easily obtain one after recruiting a young woman who lived nearby. He took her to a sporting goods store where he picked out a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle and a shotgun, and just like that a convicted killer had armed himself with military-style guns that he would use to murder two innocent public servants, wound two more, and upend the close-knit community of Webster, NY. I am deeply embarrassed that this body cannot manage to pass--or even vote on--legislation that would protect our families, friends, and fellow citizens Tragedy after tragedy happens, and yet we do not act. I am terrified at the thought of what it will take to finally bring this body to action.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I need to inquire from you, if my colleague was reading from the trade bill, what he had read and is forbidden to speak about. It is classified, you know. Did he reveal classified information?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. My concern is that he is reading from a classified document. I need to know if that is the case.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 426 of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, I make a point of order against consideration of the rule, House Resolution 321. Section 426 of the Budget Act specifically states that the Rules Committee may not waive the point of order prescribed by section 425 of that same Act. House Resolution 321 states that it ``shall be in order . . . to consider in the House, without intervention of any point of order, a motion . . . that the House concur in the Senate amendment with the amendment printed in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying the resolution.'' Therefore, I make a point of order pursuant to section 426 that this resolution may not be considered.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to take a moment, if I may, to mourn the horrific loss of life in Charleston, South Carolina. Places of worship used to be places of sanctuary, but there are no more sanctuaries in the United States from gun violence. Whether it is an elementary school, a college, a hospital--anywhere in the world--gun violence is there among us. We want to all give our condolences to our colleague Jim Clyburn, who represents that area in Charleston. I have a personal interest in it as a very good friend of mine, who had been pastor of Baber AME Church for decades in Rochester, left us to go to pastor that church and is still an elder there. So our hearts go out to all of them for all of the grief. We hope that we will see brighter days when people can go to a sanctuary place of worship in peace. Now to the matter before Congress today, Mr. Speaker, our Chamber and our Nation are off balance. There is something drastically wrong when Members of the people's House are asked to vote on greasing the skids for a trade deal they are discouraged from reading and, even if they do read, cannot discuss with their constituents, the people who sent them here. That is what we are being asked to do today regarding a massive trade deal: abdicate our authority by approving fast track and to give the simple vote of ``yea'' or ``nay'' on an issue that is not simple at all. In fact, it could not be more complex or more far-reaching. Unlike the Senate action on this measure, Members of the House were totally unable to have any amendment or very much discussion of what is going on here. Mr. Speaker, fast track is an anachronism that needs to die. There is no longer any need for it at all. It came as a matter of convenience in the seventies when the United States was the biggest manufacturer on the face of the Earth and when we were pretty sure we always would be. So it was decided by the powers that were in place then that the Congress would just hand it over to the administration to go ahead and negotiate whole trade agreements despite the fact that the Constitution of the United States gives us that power. We allowed the administration to do it. One committee, Ways and Means, got to see it. There was no amendment, and the only vote we can take on a trade bill is ``yea'' or ``nay.'' Mr. Speaker, it is not just we who are forbidden, basically, to see what is in this bill and to talk about it. It is also the countries of Australia and New Zealand. Let me read from a report on that. They are very much concerned there with the fact that this TPP--what they had found leaked out, that what PhRMA is doing here is to extend all of their patents for 12 years so that they can not only raise those prices here in this country but for all of those countries involved in the trade agreement. Jane Kelsey, who is on the faculty of law of the University of Auckland, described what was happening here as one of the most controversial parts--that is, the pharmaceutical part--because the U.S. pharmaceutical industry used a trade agreement to target New Zealand's Pharmaceutical Management Agency, PHARMAC, which is their health system. This transparency act will erode the process and decisions of agencies that decide which medicines and medical devices to subsidize with public money and by how much. The leaked test shows that TPP will severely erode PHARMAC's ability to continue to deliver affordable medicines and medical devices as it has for two decades. The parliamentarians in Australia and New Zealand are under the same restriction as we are, only theirs is even worse. A member of that Parliament who goes to read the trade agreement has to sign a paper that he will not discuss it for 4 years. I make this point because two of the great democracies on this planet--the United States of America and Australia--have given over the right of the people's elected Representatives to know what is in these trade deals that will have such devastating effects on all of the people they represent. How in the world can this continue, and how can we let it go on? If we don't do anything in this Congress--and we may not--I would really like to see us do away with the whole idea of fast track. We can't afford it any longer. At least I am sure, when it began, there was no problem with certain corporations deciding that they were going to make the main decisions as we have had made known by leaks here. I have not gone to read the bill. I do not want to be hamstrung by anything that I can discuss and concerns that I have with the people whom I serve. This is one of many reasons, I think, this trade bill is bad. Let me say I have a few more here that I would like to go over, and I need to make sure that everybody understands this. When you vote for TPA today, you are voting for things that were in that Customs bill. Again, hardly any of us knew anything about it. Let me just tell you what they are: Preventing action on climate change. This is going to be written in this bill. Nobody anywhere can even bring up climate change. It is a great step backward, and they managed to get this in, and the Pope is in sync, too. That is very interesting. Secondly and most grievous to many of us who have worked so hard on human trafficking, including Members on both sides of this House with whom I have worked, it weakens the language on human trafficking. They had to do that because the nation with the worst standards on human rights and human trafficking is Malaysia, which is one of the countries with whom we want to be allied. Third, they ignore currency manipulation, which we have been told for a decade or more is one of the most serious acts against the United States from countries that trade with us, which is changing their currency. As one of my colleagues has pointed out, Mrs. Dingell, one automobile company made more money from its trade manipulation than it did by selling its cars. We don't want to expand that. We don't want that to go on. There is also a strong anti-immigration provision that we are being asked to vote on today, and we won't do that--giving up our rights as the elected Representatives of the people of the United States. It says that trade agreements do nothing to address the immigration. They may not. Then Democratic priorities, such as ensuring that Dodd-Frank would not be affected by the trade agreement, because we have heard that financial services is very heavily involved here, were rejected in the Senate and were not included in this bill. We are very much concerned about that. We are very much concerned about where we are going, but the fast- track deal will be an absolute rubber stamp to disaster. As I mentioned before, it has been negotiated in a cloud of secrecy by multinational conglomerates and the financial services industry and pharmaceutical companies that have one priority, and that is the bottom line. What we know, again, is all we have heard from leaks. Not a lot has made its way to the light of day, but what has has been appalling, and it does certainly give anyone who wants to vote pause to think about what that vote means before he gives it, because we don't know what is in that bill. One of the things that some of us are very much concerned about is food safety and prescription drugs, the erosion of environmental protections, and the degradation of the financial sector. This deal is headed down the wrong path. Not only would the TPP certainly ship good- paying American jobs overseas, but it would endanger the food on our tables by weakening the safety standards. Ninety percent of the seafood consumed in America is imported, but only 1 to 2 percent is inspected, much of it from countries with little controls on sanitation and water quality that American consumers expect. One of the biggest threats comes from shrimp imported from Vietnam, a TPP partner. The dangerous bacteria in Vietnamese shrimp is really ubiquitous and has included shrimp contaminated with MRSA, which is fatal, and drug-resistant salmonella. What is more, the TPP report includes due deferential preference to rules negotiated by drug companies extending their patents, as I have said, in an unfair way for 12 years. They are rigging the system in a way that would make it harder for people in TPP countries to have access to life-saving drugs. Now, we have got a history to warn us about this. This thing has been modeled after NAFTA, which cost us over 5 million jobs. My part of the country is just now recovering from NAFTA a little bit, and we don't want to see this happen again. All over this country, there are factories that are closed and cities that are gone--places where there, literally, is no work. Even doing TAA, which is very important to us, would be training people for jobs, in most cases, that don't even exist; but this has been hidden away from the American people and certainly has been hidden away from the Congress, the people who represent them. It is causing a stir all the way around the world. As I pointed out, other countries are looking at this with great interest. Let's follow what our minority leader said last week. Let's put this thing to rest and negotiate openly a trade agreement that we can be proud of. We all believe in trade. Everybody talks about free trade. I want to change that now to fair trade that will be enforceable and that will benefit everybody involved. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), who has been so effective on this bill.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means. (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume and thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary time. Mr. Speaker, shortly after midnight Tuesday night, the Rules Committee learned we would consider the Senate's package of three sweeping trade bills. We convened mere hours later and considered hundreds of pages of new text rewriting our trade laws and the rules of the House. Part of that package includes what is called fast track, a procedure that has outlived its purpose and circumvents congressional authority because it does not allow for committee debate or for the Members to be able to amend it or change it, just to vote up or down--at least that is what happened over here in the House. It silences the debates of the Members of the Chamber, and by doing that, the Americans who send us here don't have a voice. We are being asked to push this Trans-Pacific Partnership through by using fast track, and what is more, we are being asked to push fast track through with a closed rule. Now, we have been very concerned about what is in this fast track. As you know, we really aren't allowed to know. We are only allowed to vote up or down on the trade bill itself, once fast track is passed. I realized how awful it was for us here; if we wanted to go see it, we had to take someone with us with a security clearance, but we would not be allowed to talk about it. I learned of something this morning that is even worse, an article of The New York Times about the Australian Government and the members of Parliament there who say that, if they go down and read the trade bill, they have to sign an oath that they will not speak of it for 4 years. Now, that asks the question: Who runs these democracies, the Representatives of the people of the United States or the corporate giants who write the trade bills that we are not able to see? It is pretty clear who runs it here because, from what we have heard, that was leaked out through WikiLeaks, is that major parts of this bill have been negotiated by Big Pharma, the pharmaceutical industries of America, and the financial system. Neither one of those have shown any aptitude to try to put the members of the public first. Australia is so concerned about the fact that pharma is asking for 12 more years' extension on their patents that they are very much afraid it will destroy their healthcare system. More and more people are finding out simply by the leaks of what is in this bill, and so far, according to the polls, nobody much likes it. Instead of the weeks that we could have had a transparent debate about a bill we had seen and a bill that we know, all we do is roll what happened in the Rules Committee yesterday. Yesterday, no Member of the Rules Committee or any Member of the House who came before it was allowed to have amendments approved. Now, the Senate did; the Senate allowed amendments to change the bills considerably, but not us. Amendments were offered in the Rules Committee to provide for transparency so that we will know what these things are all about. To change the investor's state, what we need to really bear down on-- and the Australians are also aware of--is that disputes from any of the 12 countries in this trade agreement, if they do not approve of or believe they are losing money because of our Clean Air Act or our Clean Water Act, they can go to the three-person tribunal of corporate lawyers and act against us. We know that that is a concern in this Congress because just yesterday, they voted away the country of origin labeling because they were concerned about the WTO. As I pointed out, we had those amendments. We also had one amendment on currency manipulation, which is a major concern. We lose lots of jobs and lots of money because of currency manipulation, and we simply allow it to happen. We will not do anything--everybody says, if that should be in this bill at all, that the President would veto it--so the American public, once again, those of us standing here trying to take care of them, are not going to be able to do it because we only know by word of mouth or what we have been able to read in the newspapers what is in there. Let me tell you what is in the rule. That is a very important piece. Most of the discussion in the House has been around what we call the pay-for part of the trade bill, which is called trade adjustment allowance. That is supposed to take care of all the people who are laid off, who lose their jobs. The fact that we have asked for such a large number indicates to me that they expect an awful lot of jobs lost in this country. So how the TAA was paid for, as it came from the Senate, was with a $700 million cut in Medicare. Nancy Pelosi has driven mightily, along with John Boehner, to change those cuts that will be paid for with the TAA. I need to make it very clear, and I want everybody to understand that the bill we voted on this morning, the African growth bill, which contains the new pay-fors other than Medicare, are not valid until after the Senate acts on that bill. If tomorrow on the floor, the trade adjustment allowance and the fast track authority pass, they will go to the Senate, with the pay-fors coming from Medicare. I think it is very important that we make that point because many of the people that serve with us here are confused about exactly where that is coming from. Let me repeat that. The pay-fors that substitute from the use of Medicare to pay for trade adjustment allowance will not be valid until after there is Senate action, if or when that takes place. We were told that the Speaker said over in the Senate that he would do this under unanimous consent, but we have also been told that unanimous consent will not be given. Anyway, Mr. Speaker, the advocates of the fast track and TPP are telling us that this is going to be a wonderful trade deal. We know that it is not going to create jobs because none of them have. Those of us in upstate New York, after NAFTA, we were told we were going to get at least 250,000 new jobs; instead, as the Speaker probably knows, we lost a great deal. If we, as Members of Congress, wanted to view the deal, we could not talk about it; and that, by itself, should be enough to have us not do it. In a seminal sociological and political discussion of our early American democracy, ``Democracy in America,'' Alexis de Tocqueville said of our Nation in 1835: ``The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint. But from time to time, one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.'' This is one of those times, Mr. Speaker, because this bill, this trade bill that affects every person in the United States--and will for maybe a generation to come--is not being written by the Members of the House of Representatives or of the Senate, but in a closed, backroom deal and, as we are told, by major corporations in the United States to benefit themselves. That certainly appears to be what we are going to get. By giving away the role of Congress in setting the trade policies, we give away our ability to safeguard America's jobs and, most importantly again, as I pointed out, the American laws meant to protect the citizens we represent, such as the Clean Water Act. I have never seen in my years of Congress a trade bill come out of this Congress that benefited either the American manufacturer or the American worker. This one is the same. Any lawmaker thinking about voting for another job-killing trade agreement should take a serious look at NAFTA and at our growing trade deficit with South Korea and think about whether they want to be responsible for shipping their constituents' jobs overseas. Now, we know this bill has been modeled after the failed policies that have shuttered store windows and closed factories all across the Nation. That is the legacy, ladies and gentlemen, of free trade. What we ought to demand in our trading bills is fair trade. America should not be the supplier of jobs to bolster the rest of world and improve their economies at the cost of ours. From food safety, clean air, and labor standards to environmental protections, this trade deal would impact every facet of our daily lives. Ninety percent of the seafood now that is consumed by Americans is imported. Less than 3 percent of it is inspected. Tons of it have been sent back just from that small amount being inspected. We will not be able to interfere with them coming in here under the investor-state dispute settlement or under this free trade act. I urge my colleague to vote ``no'' on the rule and carefully, carefully consider the trade package before us. I reserve the balance of my time

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute because I do so appreciate my friend, Mr. Sessions, giving us a good Kentucky story. I need to change that story just a little bit. That factory has been in Georgetown for at least three decades. It is Toyota, which is Japanese. All of South Korea has only 26 car dealers in the country that will sell an American car. Of course, we buy Japanese cars that are made here, but they don't buy ours in Japan. I think about 2 years ago we had only sold 8,000 American cars in Japan for that entire year, and I would imagine we sell that many Japanese cars in the United States on a daily basis. So I appreciate the story. Georgetown, I know, would love to be mentioned, but we have got to get it right. Now I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).