Political Quotes

“I am joined on the floor this evening by Senator Casey. Just 2 weeks ago, he and I and a half dozen other Senators came to the floor in an unusual configuration. It is not something Senators do all that often. We came as a group, but each spoke individually about our concerns with trade promotion authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both the so-called fast track and the trade agreement that is being negotiated among the United States, Canada, Mexico, some Pacific nations, and Peru, I believe, too, as well as nations in Asia. The concerns we have and the concerns an increasing number of Senators have about trade promotion authority, about fast track--they changed the name because they knew the public did not like fast track, so they tried to obscure it by coming up with some technical-sounding name--trade promotion authority. We have increasingly seen the public rising up against these trade agreements because we have watched them for some 20 years, and we have seen the damage the North American Free Trade Agreement did to the United States, to our economy, and to workers around the world. We have seen that has been sort of a prototype for the next generation of CAFTA and other agreements in Colombia and Peru and now the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I want to discuss this, in part, because we know so little about the U.S. Trade Representative's upcoming trade agenda and specifically the Trans-Pacific Partnership.…”