Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the amendment, as I said, is numbered 645, and I will be discussing the contents of the amendment and why I think it should be addressed. But let me precede that with this point. I think the bill before us, the TAA bill, actually deserved greater scrutiny than the process allowed. There was an opportunity for some more fundamental changes in the TAA Program than occurred. The only changes are pretty rudimentary, and I don't think anyone can contend they will save substantial amounts of money or represent fundamental reform. The process of putting this all together was by people who supported TAA, not people like me who have a real problem with TAA. So it is probably no surprise the program isn't substantially reformed. Specifically, on the TAA training, which is part of what I am focusing on, no work was done to reform the training funding to reflect the fact there are already over 40 programs dedicated to worker training. One of our colleagues, Senator Coburn, has done some great work in this area to highlight the problem. Instead, the substitute just increases overall training funding and does very minimal reform. More broadly, there is little evidence the TAA programs are actually effective. That is what I will speak to with regard to the piece I will be eliminating, hopefully, with the amendment I am proposing. We are going to spend over $1 billion on the so-called enhanced TAA provisions in the substitute and another $7 billion on the baseline program.…”