Max Baucus: “first, I thank, again, my good friends from Minnesota and Oregon, Senators Coleman and Wyden, for their very strong work…”

“first, I thank, again, my good friends from Minnesota and Oregon, Senators Coleman and Wyden, for their very strong work on this amendment. I support this very strongly for a special reason. I have the privilege of representing the State of Montana. About 20 years ago, Montana lost a lot of copper miners and smelter workers. Why? Because of foreign competition. At the time it was probably employment overseas--in Chile, for example--and, in addition, it was the subsidized smelter operations north of the border in Canada. These folks worked very hard, and it affected the lives of a lot of these men, and sometimes women, who held these jobs for a few generations. We had created trade adjustment assistance for these workers. I can tell you a lot of people who lost their jobs on account of trade were able to get some retraining, get a lifeline thrown to them because they had no place else to go. Many of them were 45, 50, 55 years old. They didn't know what to do. There were no other jobs around. Those were good-paying jobs, very good-paying jobs. We had TAA. I remember that I had to do battle with the Department of Labor to get the Montanans who were laid off; in this case, they were smelter workers. Finally, we got a little relief from the Department of Labor at the time when trade adjustment assistance was granted--not in very large measure, but it was granted to smelter workers particularly in Montana.”