Extending the Generalized System of Preferences

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. For the benefit of the Senators, so we can look at the schedule a little bit this evening, first of all, I appreciate the support for this trade adjustment assistance from my Republican colleagues. It is an important piece of legislation. I am glad we are able to complete this at least in the Senate.

As I have said many times, we have to make sure the House also passes this. I have been told by the Speaker and others in the Republican leadership in the House that they will do that. I am hopeful and confident they will. Once that is done--and they have ways of making sure through a rule they can issue, it would not be sent to the President. They do not have to enroll it until the trade bill is passed. Once the trade bill is passed, of course, they would send the trade adjustment assistance to the White House.

This is the first step of this agreement, I don't need to tell everyone here--I have spoken to the Republican leader many times--I do not support any of those trade agreements, but I am going to live up to what I said I would do and do what I can to move those through the Senate as quickly as possible so there are fair votes on all of them. We are waiting for the House to take action also.

Finally, without belaboring the point on trade adjustment assistance, I repeat what I said earlier. I appreciate very much the support of the Republicans in getting the votes necessary to pass this bill. It was a nice vote and I appreciate it very much.

As far as the rest of the evening, I just talked with the House Democratic leadership, some of them, and right now the Republicans are still trying to get enough votes to pass something over there. Right now they have not been able to do that so they have not even asked for the rule to be issued. We are waiting to see what they do. Some of the reports out of the House are troubling, to say the least. One of the latest proposals we have heard--remember, one reason this went so bad is that 53 House Republicans wrote a letter to the Republican leadership in the House and said, unless you cut back the CR--remember, that is an agreement we worked on for 3 months to get agreements so we took care of the 301(a)s and 301(b)s for the rest of the year. They said until you cut that by $28 billion, we are not going to vote for it--$28 billion.

The latest we have heard from the House in an effort to satisfy the $28 billion that the 53 Republicans want is they said they are going to cut renewable energy projects by another $110 million. So if that goes through, then the 53 Republicans, instead of settling for $28 billion, are going to settle for $110 million. From Las Vegas, those are not very good odds in a card game.

I hope we do something that is fair and realistic. I hope they send us a CR. I hope they send a reasonably important number on FEMA. We know what is needed. The Secretary of Homeland Security was in Joplin, MO, today, looking at the devastation there and the work that has stopped in that town that was struck by winds of 300 miles an hour.

We are here. We are going to have a caucus in 20 minutes, but I cannot see us doing anything tonight.

Mr. McCONNELL. If my friend would yield on that point.

Mr. REID. Surely.

Mr. McCONNELL. I think I can probably speak for everybody on this side that if we had a choice between wrapping all of this up sometime tonight, as opposed to coming back tomorrow, I think I am pretty safe in saying we prefer, if it is possible, to complete the job tonight knowing full well we are scheduled not to be here next week. Presumably if we finish the job in a way that is satisfactory to both the House and the Senate, I think our preference would be to grind through and to try to get to the end tonight.

Mr. REID. I understand what my friend is saying. I am sure if we took a vote, everyone would agree on that. If we don't get that bill until after midnight tonight, there is a limit as to what we can do. It may be necessary to come back sometime tomorrow morning. I have a number of us over here who have important things to do, not only legislatively but some with their own personal business. So I understand if we have to come back tomorrow, we will try to do it as early as possible. We have some very serious things to do here. We have millions of people who are struggling because of this disaster relief. We talk about disaster relief as if it is some number up in the air, but these are jobs we are talking about. These are millions of dollars we are talking about providing for renovation, repair, and all of the other things that need to be done in the disaster areas. These are jobs. People are waiting to do that work and, of course, the CR is very important.

I would hope the House would send us something that is fair and reasonable, because if it is more of the same as yesterday, I do not think they are going to get the Democratic votes in the House. I do not think they will get any over here. This is not a high school game of ``I've gotcha.'' We are willing to be reasonable, but we are not willing to vote unreasonably.

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