Mike Levin: “I will close, first of all, if I might, commenting on TAA to the gentleman from Texas and to Mr. McCrery and Mr. Herger…”

“I will close, first of all, if I might, commenting on TAA to the gentleman from Texas and to Mr. McCrery and Mr. Herger, who could not be here, we have a lot of work to do on TAA. We are working on legislation that would reform it as well as reauthorize it, that would expand its scope. To exclude service workers, for example, is no longer acceptable, if it ever was. We also need to be sure that we remove the obstacles to those who have been eligible on paper for TAA but, because of the obstacles and the complexities within the law, have really not been able to access it. We also need to look at the health benefit because today only about 10 percent of the people who are eligible for TAA ever are able to access the health benefit. So as mentioned by my friend from Washington and as I said earlier, as Mr. Rangel has also said publicly, we are working on legislation. We hope to have a draft ready next week, but we want to disseminate it and discuss it within the majority ranks, also to discuss it with the minority, in the hope that perhaps we can obtain strong bipartisan support.”