JOHN LINDER: “that is precisely the point. Absent Trade Promotion Authority this House sits silent. The President can go to any nation…”

“that is precisely the point. Absent Trade Promotion Authority this House sits silent. The President can go to any nation in the world and negotiate a treaty and take it to the Senate, have the Senate debate it, amend it, and take it back to the country with whom we have reached an agreement and ask them to negotiate for a second time. We sit silent with no role. This is not a trade agreement we are talking about. This is a process to allow the President to negotiate with any country in the world some trade agreement that then we will be in judgment on. It will come back to us, and we can vote yes or no. But this House will have a role. Absent this, we have no role. There are 130 trade agreements in the world. We are party to three of them. After NAFTA, Mexico has agreements with 28 or 29 different countries. The European Union, 27. We are not a party. We sit silent. I am astonished by my colleagues that do not want to have a role. This President understands that free trade is necessary for freedom. It is a moral value. He will reach agreements. If he has to go some day by treaty to Chile, Argentina, Brazil, he will go there. He will negotiate with the Senate, and we will sit silent. So if we vote for Trade Promotion Authority tomorrow, which I intend to do, we are saying that the House has a role, there is something we can do. He can bring back an agreement that we can defeat.”