David Obey: “Mr. Chairman, I find this amendment interesting and in some ways, contradictory. What this amendment does is to provide…”

“Mr. Chairman, I find this amendment interesting and in some ways, contradictory. What this amendment does is to provide about $3 million to the U.S. Office of Trade Representative, but it really, as I understand it, does two things. It does, as the gentleman has indicated, provide additional resources to that agency to monitor trade agreements; but it also, in my view, goes beyond that and also provides additional resources for that agency to, in fact, work on new trade agreements. Now, a lot of people in this House will have no objection to that. I personally would prefer to see solid enforcement of the trade agreements we now have before we move on to new ones. Secondly, I would point out that, and I am not going to oppose the amendment, but I do want to highlight what I think the remaining shortcomings are that this Congress has still refused to meet, because what this does is to totally leave out additional funding for the agency that does the real job of on-the-ground monitoring and enforcement of our trade agreements. This still does not make available the resources which I sought to make available in my amendment that would triple the number of compliance officers and put compliance officers on the ground in China, and add 10 analysts to Japan dumping cases, and do a variety of things that the Commerce Department does in order to protect the interests of American companies and American workers.”