Political Quotes

“I appreciate the courtesy of the senior Senator from Virginia who is about to speak. I will be brief. I wish to applaud the President today on his comments and the administration's comments, especially the comments of Trade Ambassador Kirk and Gene Sperling, the President's top economic adviser. They have made it clear they will not submit the three free trade agreements--one with Colombia, one with Panama, and one with South Korea--until legislation has come to their desks to take care of the issue of trade adjustment assistance. This Congress, because of some objections on the other side of the aisle, allowed the trade adjustment assistance language to expire in February. That simply means many workers who lost their jobs because of free trade agreements, or lost their jobs because of trade--not necessarily the countries we had trade agreements with--were going to get some assistance so they could, in fact, be retrained so they could go back to work. Losing their jobs had everything to do with what happens in other ways but has nothing to do with their job performance or even their company's job performance. The President made the right decision by saying we are not going to move forward with these free trade agreements. I don't much like them, but that is not the point. We are not going to move forward until we have helped these workers find jobs.…”