Providing for Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2146, Defending Public Safety Employees' Retirement Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source