Political Quotes

“I have appreciated this colloquy with Senator Brown. I have a couple of town meetings at home this weekend, working-class neighborhoods, where trade has been really important. One out of four jobs in my State revolves around trade, and those jobs often pay better than do the nontrade jobs. If anybody says ``Well, Ron, do you think anything is really going to be accomplished with what you and Senator Brown are talking about?'' I am going to say that I went through the entire enforcement process in terms of the key provisions, and we laid out for the country and the Senate that you have led an effort to speed up by more than 300 percent the timeline for an enforcement action. I mean, it used to take years and years sometimes. You have shortened that by literally more than 300 percent. You have been part of an effort that is tougher because you can go after the individual factories. Then, finally, I think this enforcement proposal gets to the heart of what we need to be doing because it means if you rip off workers, we are going to stop products those workers have produced at the border. My guess is, there will be a lot more discussion. I see we have another valuable colleague from the Finance Committee who has been heavily involved in these issues for a lot of years. But I want to say again that this didn't happen by osmosis, because when we got that flawed bill, I think everybody said: Well, they will probably have some discussions about it, and that will be pretty much it.”