Political Quotes

“I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), the ranking member on our Trade Subcommittee. (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I agree with the last gentleman. We ought to be talking about the jobs bill. The President put a bill out here. We can't get the Republican leadership to even bring it up. But we will bring up the Panama free trade agreement. Now, this is a break from trade policies in the past. It reflects the hard work of many of us to change U.S. trade policy. There are five reasons to support this agreement: First, it has strong enforceable labor and environmental obligations. Many of us fought for years to get these commitments into our trade agreements. We lost those battles in 1995. I was here when NAFTA passed and the debate over CAFTA 6 years ago, which is why in that agreement 15 Democrats voted for it--because it wouldn't take care of workers. Now, that all changed in 2007 when the Democrats took over the House. The last administration finally accepted our demands on labor, the environment, and other issues, such as access to medicine. This agreement includes all of those. We, secondly, have used the leverage of this agreement to eliminate a tax haven. No one denies that Panama was a great tax haven.…”