Keith Ellison: “We are talking about trade, Mr. Speaker, within the context of two decades of flat wages for working people. When you…”

“We are talking about trade, Mr. Speaker, within the context of two decades of flat wages for working people. When you look at real wages, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about flat real wages for working people. We are talking about a system of health care where we leave 47 million people out of it and so many other people carrying an increasing burden on their jobs just to be able to afford the health care that their job does provide. It is within this context that I want to talk about trade tonight within flat wages, within increasing health care costs, within the context of increasing and mounting consumer debt. The average American, when you take their mortgage out of the equation, has about $13,000 worth of consumer debt to carry around. And that is talking about your credit cards and everything else. So we have got consumer debt, increasing health care costs, and flat wages. And now we are going to talk about trade, trade that has sapped our jobs. If you look at NAFTA, NAFTA alone I want to talk about tonight. NAFTA was sold as a way to make sure that workers both in Mexico and in America would benefit. But has that really happened? Has that really happened?”