Mike Levin: “the basic partisanship which has marked this legislation from the beginning in this House even blinds the majority as to…”

“the basic partisanship which has marked this legislation from the beginning in this House even blinds the majority as to what has happened these last years. No trade agreements? Jordan, CBI, Africa, the China PNTR? They were all developed on a bipartisan basis. It is the only way to shape trade policy that is viable. They started on a partisan foot; and they think because they have a few Democratic hands that that makes it a bipartisan product. It does not. 161 Democrats voted for a fast track bill in this House. They did not reach out for 1 minute to try to meld the two bills into one. As a result, they come here tonight with a partisan product more than a bipartisan product, and trade policy built on partisanship is built on sand and will sink. True, there is some TAA here; but a half-baked TAA is no substitute for good trade policy, and half-baked it is. If workers are laid off because a company moves to, say, Ecuador, they are covered; to China or Japan or some other place, they are not covered. That is half-baked, at best. Thirdly, I want to say a word about oversight. There is more facade in this discussion than in any other respect, perhaps. Trade today is not about tariffs; trade today is not about nontariff barriers.…”