Lloyd Bentsen: “Mr. Speaker, let me say I am going to vote for this bill, but this bill is a day late and a dollar short. This issue has…”

“Mr. Speaker, let me say I am going to vote for this bill, but this bill is a day late and a dollar short. This issue has been on the front burner, I think, of the whole trade debate for many, many years. And I think as the chairman and the ranking member know, there have been numerous articles in economic journals and academia about the whole issue of trade adjustment assistance. This is a program that was created in 1962, and I cannot think of any program that was created in 1962 that somebody in Congress has not talked about the need to reform, and this program certainly needs reform. As best as I can tell from this bill, it does not address the issues of secondary workers in any clear-cut fashion or manner. It does not address the issue of allowing workers who we want to go back into retraining to get a part-time job to help put food on the table, which is really counter to every other public assistance program that we have addressed in the time I have been in this Congress. It does not have anything to do with providing for better coordination between the Federal Government and State and local government, where a lot of these dollars are done through the work force training partnership programs that we have.”