Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss two amendments that are pending to the trade bill. I want to begin by thanking Chairman Hatch and Ranking Member Wyden, as well as Senators McConnell and Reid, for working with me to make these amendments pending.

I believe it is important that we have an amendment process as we consider granting trade promotion authority to the President. Enacting the bill before us will have major impacts on our Nation's economy for years to come, and Senators should have an opportunity to improve the product reported by the Committee on Finance.

The trade promotion authority bill by its very nature demands that Senators be able to debate and vote on key trade issues. That is because the trade promotion authority bill creates a process by which trade agreements are submitted to Congress for approval without the opportunity to change them on the House or Senate floor. So it is critical that we utilize the opportunity we have now to set the rules of the road for future trade agreements and to enact important trade reforms.

Today, I would like to discuss two amendments I believe will strengthen the trade package.

AMENDMENT NO. 1227

As ranking member of the small business committee, it is my responsibility to look at bills on the Senate floor and ask: How does this affect small businesses? How will they benefit or be harmed? How can we improve this bill so that small businesses have a seat at the table?

I think that is especially important as we talk about trade. Trade has become increasingly vital for small businesses that are looking to diversify and grow. Yet, even though 95 percent of the world's customers live outside of the United States, less than 1 percent of our small- and medium-sized businesses are exporting to global markets. By comparison, over 40 percent of large businesses sell their products overseas. As we consider this trade package, we must make sure small businesses have a seat at the table and the resources they need to sell overseas.

The amendment I filed incorporates bipartisan, commonsense measures that will help small businesses take advantage of trade opportunities. It reauthorizes the SBA's State Trade and Export Promotion Grant Program. This program, known as STEP, was created as a pilot program to help States work with small businesses to succeed in the international marketplace. In just a few years, STEP has been a great success. Since 2011, it has supported over $900 million in U.S. small business exports, producing a return on investment of 15 to 1 for taxpayers.

It has helped small businesses such as Corfin Industries, located in Salem, NH. Before STEP, Corfin's international sales were just 2 percent. Now they are up to 12 percent. As a result, the company has added 22 employees. That is the kind of job growth we will see in our small businesses when we make sure they are part of our trade agenda.

Reauthorizing the successful STEP Program is a commonsense way to make sure our small businesses can benefit from trade, and it builds on bipartisan legislation that was first introduced by Senator Cantwell, who was just on the floor, Senator Collins, and me.

The amendment also takes a number of steps to make it easier for small businesses to access export services provided by the Federal Government. It encourages those Federal agencies, such as the Small Business Administration and the Department of Commerce, to work hand in hand with State trade agencies that have on-the-ground knowledge of local needs.

Finally, the amendment makes sure we understand how trade agreements negotiated under trade promotion authority will affect small businesses.

I urge my colleagues to support this small business amendment, and I hope we can reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank so that our small businesses can access that funding and get into those international markets.

AMENDMENT NO. 1226

The second amendment I would like to discuss is an amendment Senator McCain, who is on the floor, and I have filed to repeal a harmful, job-killing program--the USDA Catfish Inspection Program. This is something Senator McCain has been working on for years. I have joined him in recent years to try to address the concerns I have heard from companies in New Hampshire that are going to be affected by that new USDA Catfish Inspection Program.

Back in 2008, a provision was added to the farm bill that transferred the inspection of catfish--only catfish--from the FDA, which inspects all foreign and domestic fish products, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It required USDA to set up a new, separate program to inspect catfish alone.

I think this is a wasteful, duplicative program that will hurt seafood-processing businesses across the country. There is no scientific or food safety benefit here. In fact, officials from FDA and USDA have explicitly stated that catfish is a low-risk food. In nine separate reports, the Government Accountability Office has recommended eliminating this program.

Even worse, this program is actually a thinly disguised trade barrier against foreign catfish. We are facing an immediate 5- to 7-year ban on imported catfish as soon as the USDA program is up and running. As a result, our trading partners are explicitly threatening retaliation. And since there is no scientific basis for this program, any WTO nation that currently exports catfish to the United States could challenge it and secure WTO-sanctioned trade retaliation against a wide range of U.S. export industries, including beef, soy, poultry, pork, grain, fruit, or cotton. The program is becoming a major issue of concern in Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.

The only other time the Senate has voted on this issue was in 2012 when we voted to repeal it in a bipartisan voice vote. But since then, we have been denied the opportunity to address this issue on the floor. I think it is very important that we have an opportunity to vote on this amendment because the USDA is poised to begin its inspection of catfish very soon. This may be our last chance to solve this problem before the program's harmful effects begin.

Again, we need an opportunity to vote on this amendment. I urge my colleagues to support it and to repeal the duplicative USDA Catfish Inspection Program.

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