The Middle Class

Floor Speech

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I appreciate the leadership of Senator
Wyden on this, because if you leave out certain bills that help
workers, then what you are left with, essentially, is a package that
ignores their needs.

I do want to say that I hope we will not proceed to this debate on
this free-trade agreement. I stand here as someone who comes from
California, where I had voted for half of the trade agreements and I
voted against half. I think I am a fair voice for what we should be
doing.

If there is one unifying principle about the economics of today, it
is this: the middle class is having a very hard time in America today,
perhaps the worst time in modern history.

A new University of California study released last week makes it
clear how our middle class is being hollowed out. In my State, we have
a dynamic workforce. We have dynamic entrepreneurs. We are doing very
well. But this study found that the lowest paid 20 percent of
California workers have seen their real wages decline by 12 percent
since 1979.

Think about that. This is a great country. We always say we have to
be optimistic about tomorrow. You do everything right, you play by the
rules, and your income for your family, in real terms, goes down by 12
percent. There is something wrong with this. I think everyone will say
they want to do more for the middle class, and there is a
straightforward agenda we could turn to, to do just that. But instead
what do we turn to: a trade agreement that threatens the middle class--
that threatens the middle class. What should we be doing here? Not
confabbing in a corner over there about how to push a trade bill on
this floor that doesn't help working America, we should pass a highway
bill. The highway bill is critical--good-paying jobs, businesses that
thrive in all of our communities. More than 60,000 of our bridges are
structurally deficient, more than 50 percent of our roads are not in
good condition. But, oh, no, even though the highway bill expires--we
have no more authority to expend money out of that fund come the end of
May--they are bringing forward a trade bill that is a threat to the
middle class.

Why don't we increase the minimum wage? The minimum wage needs to be
raised. Oh, no, they do not want to do that. They have not done it in
years. The States are doing it. Oh, no, let's keep people working full
time in poverty. So instead of confabbing over there on how to push a
trade bill onto this floor, we ought to be raising the minimum wage.

What else should we be doing? We should make college more affordable.
We have people here on Social Security in this country who are still
paying off their student loans. That is a shame upon America. They
cannot even refinance their student loans.

Instead of confabbing in the corner about how to bring a trade bill
to this floor, why don't we fix the student loan problem? Why don't we
raise the minimum wage? Why don't we pass a highway bill that is funded
to help middle-class people?

It is all a matter of perspective, my friends. We still have not done
equal pay for equal work, so women are not making what they should.
That hurts our women when they retire. They have lost more than
$400,000 in income.

Instead of standing in the corner and figuring out how to bring a
trade bill to the floor, they ought to be fixing equal pay for equal
work. They ought to be fixing student loans for our students. They
ought to be passing a highway bill. They ought to be increasing the
minimum wage. They ought to deal with currency fairness because our
trading partners play with their currency in order to push forward
their products. But oh, no, that is not on the agenda.

We could have an agenda for a vibrant middle class. But instead of
that, we are moving toward a trade bill.

I know there are some who disagree with me and who come down to this
floor and say: We are going to create jobs with this trade bill; it is
going to be great. Let them explain how we are not going to see some of
the 12 million jobs that are manufacturing jobs in America not move to
countries that pay 56 cents an hour; another country, $1.19 an hour.

I know they will disagree with me. They are making all of these
promises. The more I hear it, the more I hear the echoes of the NAFTA
debate. That was a long time ago, and I was here then. In 1988, I voted
for fast-track authority to allow the administration to negotiate the
North American Free Trade Agreement. Then, 5 years later, I saw the
deal. It was a bad deal, and I voted no, but it was too late--because
when I saw the deal, I knew I could not fix it because that is what
fast-track is.

What this majority today is saying to us is vote for fast-track and
give up your right, Senator Boxer, to amend this trade agreement. They
say: Well, it is very transparent. Go down and look at it.

Let me tell you what you have to do to read this agreement. Follow
this: You can only take a few of your staffers who have to have a
security clearance--because, God knows why, this is secure, this is
classified. It has nothing to do with defense. It has nothing to do
with going after ISIS. It has nothing to do with any of that, but it is
classified.

I go down with my staff whom I can get to go with me, and as soon as
I get there, the guard says to me: Hand over your electronics.

OK. I give over my electronics.

Then the guard says: You cannot take notes.

I said: I cannot take notes?

Well, you can take notes, but you have to give them back to me, and I
will put them in a file.

I said: Wait a minute. I am going to take notes, then you are going
to take my notes away from me, then you are going to have them in a
file and you can read my notes--not on your life.

So instead of standing in a corner trying to figure out a way to
bring a trade bill to the floor that does not do anything for the
middle class, that is held so secretively that you need to go down
there and hand over your electronics and give up your right to take
notes and bring them back to your office, they ought to come over here
and figure out how to help the middle class, how to extend the highway
bill, how to raise the minimum wage, how to move toward clean energy,
how to fix our currency manipulation that we see abroad.

Anyway, I take you back to 1988. I voted for fast-track for NAFTA.
Instead of the millions of new jobs that were promised, by 2010 the
United States had lost 700,000 jobs.

Instead of standing in a corner figuring out how we are going to lose
more jobs, we ought to do something that works for the middle class.

Let me tell you what happened with NAFTA. Instead of improved pay for
our workers, which was promised, NAFTA pushed down American wages. It
empowered employers to say to their workers: Either accept lower wages
and benefits or we are moving to Mexico. Instead of strengthening our
economy, it increased our trade deficit to Mexico, which now this year
hit $50 billion. Before NAFTA we had a trade surplus with Mexico. Now
we have a trade deficit.

So instead of standing in the corner and figuring out how to have
more trade deficits with countries, we ought to do something to help
the middle class.

I want to talk about something that happened in California--in Santa
Ana--right after NAFTA. The city had worked hard to keep a Mitsubishi
plant that assembled big-screen TVs, securing tax credits to help the
plant stay competitive. Even after NAFTA passed, company officials
promised they would keep the plant in Santa Ana. But guess what, folks.
Three years later, Mitsubishi closed the plant. Company officials said
they had to cut costs, especially labor costs, so they were moving
their operations to Mexico.

We lost 400 good-paying, middle-class jobs, even though everyone
promised NAFTA would never do that. This is going to be wonderful. I
got suckered into voting yes on fast-track. I fear we see this pattern
again.

The definition of ``insanity'' is doing the same thing over and over
and expecting a different outcome. We have 12.3 million manufacturing
jobs in this country. We are looking at a transpacific partnership
deal, the largest trade deal in history, covering 40 percent of the
world's economy. Tell me, what chance do our people who work in
manufacturing have against countries that pay less than $1 an hour? In
one case, I think it is 70 cents an hour.

Of the 12 countries in the TPP, 3 have minimum wages that are higher
than ours, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, but most of the
countries have far lower wages, including Chile, with a minimum wage of
$2.14; Peru, with a minimum wage of $1.38; and Vietnam, with a minimum
wage of 70 cents. Brunei and Singapore don't even have a minimum wage.

I think I have laid out the argument as to why all of these promises
about better wages and more jobs fall flat on their face when we look
at that last free trade deal--and this one involves more countries.

Then there is the investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, which
will allow polluters to sue for unlimited money damages. For example,
they could use it to try to undo the incredible work in California on
climate change by claiming that they were put at a disadvantage by
having to live with California's laws.

Polluters could seek to undermine the President's Clean Power Plan or
the toxic mercury pollution under the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
or they could sue because they had to spend a little money to make sure
they didn't dump toxins into our waterways--drinking water.

We have seen this happen before. SD Myers, Lone Pine Resources, and
the Renco Group sued. They notified Peru in 2010 and intended to launch
an $800 million investor-state claim against the government because
they said the fair-trade agreement was violated because it said they
did not really have to install all of these antipollution devices. Yet
Peru forced them to do it, and what happened was that ``polluters pay''
turned into ``polluters get paid.''

So we have a trade agreement that threatens 12 million manufacturing
jobs. We have a trade agreement that is pushing all of the things we
need to do for our middle class off the floor. We have a trade
agreement that sets up this extrajudicial board that can overcome
America's laws.

As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has warned, the consequences
could be disastrous. He calls the TPP ``a Trojan horse in a global race
to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street a way to
eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their
profits.''

We should set this aside and not go to this today. Let's work
together as Democrats and Republicans for a true middle-class agenda,
for a robust investment in our roads, bridges, and highways, and to fix
our immigration system.

I see Senator Leahy is on the floor. He put together a comprehensive
immigration reform bill that was amazing, but it was stopped and never
happened. We have workers in the dark who are afraid to come out into
the sunlight, and that puts a downward pressure on wages. Let's pass
that. Let's make college more affordable, ensure equal pay for equal
work, and fight for currency fairness. We can do it.

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