Jim Baird: “last weekend, I had the great privilege of visiting the Pendleton Woolen Mills in Washougal, Washington. I met with many…”

“last weekend, I had the great privilege of visiting the Pendleton Woolen Mills in Washougal, Washington. I met with many of the hundreds of employees who work there, many of whom have been there for 20 or 30 years. Their whole life has been spent working in one of America's finest textile industries. The challenge we face today is that we are presented with legislation that possibly will cost these people their jobs, with very, very little time to discuss this, with little time to debate it, and with little time to explore the ways we can improve it and minimize the impact on the people who might be displaced. I have supported trade, proudly supported trade in this body: trade in the Caribbean, trade with Africa, and trade with China, and elsewhere in the world. But to bring a piece of legislation to this body with so little time, when it could affect so many of our American workers, is not the kind of procedure we should follow. It does a disservice to those workers, and frankly, it does a disservice to the principles of trade itself. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this piece of legislation and ``no'' on the rule until we get this right. We need time, we owe the time to the people whose jobs could be lost, to do this right. I am a supporter of trade, but we need to return to a more deliberative, conceptual, thoughtful process here in this body; we are not doing it, and it is a darn shame. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule.”