Dan Quayle: “I want to thank the chair for his excellent leadership in this because it's taken 5 years too long, but finally the…”

“I want to thank the chair for his excellent leadership in this because it's taken 5 years too long, but finally the House will have the opportunity to vote on the three pending free trade agreements. We have to understand that America competes in the global economy; and if we ignore this, we ignore it at our own peril. And while these free trade agreements have been languishing on the President's desk for 5 years, we have actually lost market share to the EU, to Canada. And those are the things that are going to keep our country from growing again. Now, if you look at just the Colombia free trade agreement, since we have actually drafted that agreement, $3.85 billion in unnecessary tariffs have been put on American products. When we actually have these free trade agreements in place, we're going to actually add to our economy and add to the jobs here in the United States. In my home district, we have a very robust high-tech sector, and it's very heavily on trade. Last year, we had $10 billion of trade going out in exports, and a lot of them have been going to countries that we actually have free trade agreements for. And 35,000 jobs are directly related to that. So I think that this is a jobs bill. I urge my colleagues to support all three free trade agreements, and I urge their passage.”