Bill Lee: “this isn't complicated. All we are trying to do here is to say that the United States has and probably should have…”

“this isn't complicated. All we are trying to do here is to say that the United States has and probably should have without interruption an ongoing, special, vitally important trade relationship with the United Kingdom and that the President and the Congress of the United States should work toward an agreement to that end. That isn't rocket science. It is not complicated. It is not even in itself a framework for a specific statute or for a specific trade bill. It is laying out a very broad principle--one that I would hope every one of us would accept and would embrace. We have to remember that one of the reasons we are a country, one of the reasons we don't fly the Union Jack or sing ``God Save the Queen,'' one of the reasons we declared independence nearly two and a half centuries ago has a lot to do with the fact that, as Americans, we understand that what we need access to is not so much proximity to government, proximity to the Crown, as proximity to other people. It is how human thriving occurs. It is how the human condition is able to be elevated. It is a free market system that has elevated more people out of poverty than any government program ever has, ever could, or ever will. Yes, what we need is access to markets. That is part of what prompted the American Revolution, the fact that our merchants, our manufacturers, and our farmers were being excluded from markets and were being discriminated against by the Crown.…”