Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I appreciate greatly the kind remarks of my colleague from New Jersey about my role in all of this. I do not want to make this a bouquet-tossing contest, but I do want the Senate to know and I want the country to know how important it has been that Senator Menendez has led this charge.

As my colleague noted, human rights advocates, those who have been in the trenches in the fight against trafficking, have come together to work with us. Senator Menendez, since our debate in the committee, has led this fight. At that time, colleagues, the committee approved an important amendment to ensure that trade agreements with countries that drop the ball on trafficking get no special privileges here in the Congress.

The reason that my colleague has put all of this time and energy and passion into it is that he understands--everyone here, Democrats and Republicans--that human trafficking is a plague that must be fought at every opportunity. So what Senator Menendez and I have done over the last few weeks is to work together to try to find a practical way to further improve the language in this original amendment.

What these alterations--really improvements--are going to do is to create a new process by which the President will report to the Congress on the concrete, specific steps other countries are taking to crack down on trafficking. I think--and we just got their statement--the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, one of the leading groups that has been fighting this scourge the hardest, has just summed up--I just got this a few minutes ago--what the Menendez effort is all about. A test, the organization has called it, and I quote here, and describes it as a ``positive step forward'' in the fight to combat human trafficking.

When we take their statement with the fact that Senator Menendez has brought the State Department on board, I think with what we are showing--and this has been a major theme, frankly, of what I have sought to do over these many months, negotiating with Chairman Hatch and colleagues, is to try to make sure that we come up with policies that demonstrate that there is a new era of trade policy afoot, a new era when trade is done right.

Because of the good work of my colleague from New Jersey, the amendment that we will be offering here, under my colleague's leadership, is a demonstration that we can do trade right, that we can do everything possible to eradicate this plague that so many around the world have mobilized to address. I congratulate my colleague for his efforts. Colleagues should note that this would not have happened had it not been for Senator Menendez.

This was a matter that certainly colleagues felt very strongly about. People said: Oh, the whole debate is over. It cannot be resolved. Senator Menendez said: There is a way to bring people together. I congratulate my colleague for putting this together. I look forward to voting on it later tonight, I hope.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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Mr. WYDEN. Will the distinguished chairman yield for a question?

Mr. HATCH. Yes.

Mr. WYDEN. I appreciate that, and I appreciate the chairman's work. I want to ask a question about where, in effect, we are. The two of us worked together on the list----

Mr. HATCH. That is right. Forgive me, I did not mean to indicate I was the only one doing this. I had an excellent partner.

Mr. WYDEN. Not at all. The question is, Mr. Chairman, we worked together to put together this list, and it was based on the proposition that we were going to be fair to both sides.

Mr. HATCH. Right.

Mr. WYDEN. On my side of the aisle, my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle felt strongly about the currency issue. Senator Stabenow, for example, and many others felt very strongly about the amendment Senator Warren sought to offer. We were able, working together, to in effect get an equal number for each side.

My understanding is that we continue to be interested--and you just, I think, made another gracious offer. We are going to stay here tonight. You are still interested in putting together a list that gives all sides a fair chance at their major amendments. Is that a fair recitation of where we are now, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. HATCH. Yes. I think both of us literally have tried to be fair to both sides. There are some amendments that I wish we did not have to put up with, to be perfectly frank with you, but that is always the case. Why should we not be fair to both sides?

There comes a limit to what you can do in these matters. As I said, this is probably the most important bill in many respects, outside of ObamaCare, in this President's 8 years. It is an extremely important bill for our country. It is an extremely important bill for our economy. It is an extremely important bill for our allies over in those areas. It is an extremely important bill that helps to set the stage for TTIP, the 28 countries in Europe.

All this bill does basically is provide a procedural mechanism whereby Congress has some control, if not total control, over what agreements are negotiated. This is not the TPP. It is not TTIP. It is not the final decisions on that. That will be made pursuant to this bill, which will be a very important bill for the purpose of saying that the White House and the administration follow certain protocols and recognize that the Congress of the United States is important in these trade matters, too.

I want to thank my colleague from Oregon for the hard work he has done on this bill. He has been a wonderful partner to work with today, and I really appreciate him. I hope we can resolve these problems, but as of right now, I had to object to the unanimous consent request by the distinguished Senator from Ohio, for whom I have a lot of respect. I do not agree with him, but I know he is sincere, and I know he is working very hard for what he believes is proper.

With that, I do not know what else to do other than just say I object to that.

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