Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORKER. Madam President, I rise today to speak on the matter before us, which is the trade promotion authority that is so important to our Nation.

I realize that whenever we deal with issues such as this, there are always parochial issues that people deal with in order to make sure their State's interests are represented well. I realize, for instance, that issues such as the Ex-Im Bank are very important to various people around our country based on manufacturing operations that happen to be in their States, and I respect that.

I appreciated yesterday that we were able to move beyond an issue that was holding us up and get to a place where we are going to be able to vote on some final amendments and, hopefully, move trade promotion authority into fruition.

I know we have talked a lot about these parochial issues. I want to move back to those in just one moment, but I want to talk about the importance of trade promotion authority and an agreement that I hope will come to fruition after we pass this, which is TPP.

I know that many in our country--especially now as we see things on our television screen and in newspapers about unrest that is taking place around the world--have been concerned about our foreign policy. We have been concerned about the effectiveness of what we have been doing.

One of the areas that our committee focused on this last week was much of what is happening in the South and East China Seas at present. Because of those activities, I was in Southeast Asia within the last 12 months.

Let me just say that there are concerns there among friends, people who want to move more toward a Western-based value system in their countries. They are very concerned about many of the activities that are taking place in the South China Sea but also about the economic dominance that is occurring now in China as it continues to export not only its strength into the South China Sea but also its economic dominance.

They have been very concerned about the fact that our pivot to Asia really hasn't borne much fruit. They haven't really been able to see anything very substantial taking place in that regard. I think people on both sides of the aisle have concerns about what is happening in that area.

But here we have an opportunity to do something that has nothing to do with military might, has nothing to do with things that could evolve down the road such as kinetic activity or anything along those lines.

We have an opportunity now to hugely shape that part of the world by passage of this trade promotion agreement, which will allow the countries to finally put their last deal on the table. Without this, there is no way we are going to get to a final TPP agreement that will bring that region more closely aligned to the United States.

It calls us to do much greater business with them, which will help people in Tennessee. It will help people in West Virginia. It will help people all across this country to be able to export goods to other places. But, importantly, it will draw those countries more closely to the United States, and it will act as a buffer against the dominance that is taking place now with China.

In meeting after meeting, constantly I was asked: Will the United States come together and deal with this issue in an appropriate way? Will the United States actually be our partner? Will the United States work with us to make sure that our economies expand as the United States' economy expands? Will we be able to count on the United States to enter into an agreement where we have a balance, where we have the opportunity not just to export our goods to China and deal with China but also have the opportunity to deal with the United States? Can we count on the fact that the United States is going to promote free enterprise, is going to promote the rule of law, is going to promote anticorruption, is going to move away from state-owned enterprises, which in many cases is dominating that area?

I just want to say that TPP--and passage of TPA, in order to cause us to come to a final agreement on TPP--is in our national security interest. It is the best way for us to counter what is happening in the region that we consider to be a threat. It is the best way to promote American values.

In the process, what we are doing is actually raising the standard of living of Americans. So this is a win-win. Again, I know we have a lot of parochial issues that people care about rightly--I don't challenge that--and that could possibly get in the way. I hope that over the course of the next several hours, we will figure out a way to appropriately deal with amendments that allow people to voice concerns, especially concerns that they have in their own respective States. But I hope, when we move beyond that, when we move beyond disposing of those amendments as a group, that we will come together and pass this TPA, which, more than anything else we can do now in the region, will cause us to be a bulwark and will cause us to allow people to move toward the Western values that we hold so dear.

That brings me to an issue, first, on the national security front. We have a host of former Secretaries of Defense who have signed a letter--people on both sides of the aisle, former generals who have worked in the region. They know how important TPA is and TPP following on. They know how important they are to our national security interests.

In addition, I think you know we have had 10 Treasury Secretaries who signed a letter talking about one of the amendments that may be on the floor dealing with currency.

I don't know what the office of the Presiding Officer is like right now, but we are being inundated with emails, especially from the auto industry, regarding this currency issue. During the crisis, I know the Presiding Officer was serving in the House of Representatives, and I was in the Senate. During the auto crisis, the Senate debated issues relative to the auto crisis. I know the House did the same. But during that crisis, President Bush, late in December, decided that he would use U.S. taxpayer monies to bail out the auto industry. And President Barack Obama, who was elected and came into office shortly thereafter, followed up on what President Bush had put in place. Through something called TARP, which was unexpectedly put in place to be utilized to bail out the financial industry--again, something that was regrettable and had to take place--the auto industry was bailed out. Taxpayers of the United States bailed out the auto industry to the tune of $80 billion. So $80 billion we invested in the auto industry.

What that did was not just bail out the large entities that needed the money, but it bailed out the supply chain that worked to support what they did in their manufacturing operations.

And so the taxpayers of this country, in a massive way, in an unprecedented way, back in 2008 and 2009, injected taxpayer money--taxpayer money--into private enterprises to make sure they would survive. It was obviously controversial. Today, obviously, many jobs have stayed in place as a result of that. People certainly have differing opinions about what should have happened during that time.

I fear what is happening right now is that the auto industry is back and asking for another bailout. In our office anyway, and I think other offices around the Capitol, we are hearing from the auto industry right now about a currency provision--a provision they want inserted in TPA in order to give them another bailout. They want to ensure, as we move into this agreement, that they will have a competitive advantage.

I think all of us understand that the President has said he would veto TPA if it has this currency provision in it. We have had Treasury Secretaries--10 of them, highly respected on both sides of the aisle--who have told us we should not have currency provisions of this type in a TPA agreement. I think we understand the difficulties having these currency provisions in TPA will create in actually completing the TPP agreement, which again I have mentioned before. Obviously, it is important to us economically, but it is hugely important to us from a national security standpoint and from our national interest standpoint.

So I know these currency issues sometimes are difficult to deal with. I think it is important certainly for Senators to be able to express concerns about things that may happen in their own States, and I respect that. I respect that, but I hope as a body we will rise above giving another bailout to the auto industry because, if we do, it will greatly complicate our ability to enter into an agreement called TPP, which will be in our national interest, it will be in our economic interest, and it certainly is something Treasury Secretaries, Defense Secretaries, and others who know of the great national interest at stake oppose.

I thank the chair for the time. I hope as a body we will do what is good for our Nation and not just for a small group of people; that we will do something that will stand the test of time; we will do something that will increase the standard of living for these pages who sit before us today and cause them to be safer; that will cause American values to be more prolific and certainly benefit our Nation's economy.

With that, I yield the floor.

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