Byron Dorgan: “we are now discussing something called the TEAM Act, which to a lot of Americans will not mean very much. It is an…”

“we are now discussing something called the TEAM Act, which to a lot of Americans will not mean very much. It is an acronym that talks about teamwork. We have gone through a kind of interesting and difficult time in our country in recent years. We have seen a transition to a global economy, a period during which it has been, at least for some companies, difficult to deal with new rules of competition. These companies have had to deal with global competition, have had to experience the reality of competing with companies that produce elsewhere in the world and which have production facilities that are not required to meet the same rules or the same obligations as we are required to meet in this country. They do not always have to worry about child labor laws. They do not have to worry so much about antipollution concerns, do not have to worry about things like minimum wages. The result has been that American enterprises find themselves competing with, in many cases, enterprises in other parts of the world that hire 12-year-old kids and pay them 24 cents an hour, throw chemicals into the water, pollution into the air, and produce a product and ship it to Pittsburgh or ship it to Denver or Bismarck or Topeka and sell it and compete against local businesses while they do that. This has been an increasingly challenging time for American businesses.”