David Obey: “just 2 weeks ago, the Congress passed the China trade legislation. There were a lot of reasons why a lot of Members…”

“just 2 weeks ago, the Congress passed the China trade legislation. There were a lot of reasons why a lot of Members voted against that bill. One of the reasons is that a lot of us are concerned about the prospect of putting American workers in a position where they are going to be directly undercut by practices such as slave labor and child labor. The administration, the White House, tried to make at least a nominal effort to try to prevent those problems from becoming any worse than they are by raising funding for efforts to combat the incidence of child labor and weak labor standards. This committee chose not to agree with that funding. This amendment simply would restore for the international labor standards portion of the bill the amount of money requested by the administration that was not included in the bill. Let me explain in a little more detail what it does. It would add $730 million to reduce the incidence of child labor. It would add $17 million to enforce core labor standards. And it would add $10 million for responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Sahara Africa by supporting workplace education and prevention programs. I would simply point out, Mr. Chairman, that, according to the International Labor Organization, there are 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 who are working in developed nations with approximately half of them working full-time but not going to school.”