Political Quotes

“I thank Chairman Neal for his extraordinary efforts. Twenty-five years ago, NAFTA passed over strong opposition, with serious flaws. At the beginning of this Congress, we were given a bill by the administration that didn't address those problems. It didn't have the votes to pass and it didn't deserve to pass. I am proud of the work with our chairman; with our working group; the Speaker, who periodically invested huge amounts of time to keep it on track; and, of course, Ambassador Lighthizer, who was a great partner working with us. We are voting today on an agreement that has fundamentally been rewritten and strengthened. A personal priority for me was stripping unnecessary and harmful special provisions for Big Pharma. We have strengthened labor protections and enforcement. These are game changers. The help of AFL- CIO President Richard Trumka and, again, the Speaker were invaluable. We have had environmental improvements. My colleague from Oregon, Suzanne Bonamici, deserves great praise for being tenacious on that. We will attack the raw sewage many of us saw flowing into the Pacific in Tijuana. We finally have come to an agreement that can and should be passed. I appreciate the hard work of all our colleagues, and hope that this is a foundation that we can move forward on to deal with challenges we have with a global economy with the same spirit of cooperation and innovation.”