Mark Pocan: “Thank you again so much, Representative Edwards. When you talked about the job loss in Maryland, we lost nearly 75,000…”

“Thank you again so much, Representative Edwards. When you talked about the job loss in Maryland, we lost nearly 75,000 manufacturing job through the NAFTA-WTO period in the last 20 years. When I was a legislator in the State of Wisconsin, it was a Buy American law that I got passed with a bipartisan vote in the Wisconsin Legislature. The fact that we are going to give up our sovereignty to have that law and some multinational corporation can sue any local unit of government so that they can contest those laws and we can lose that ability, I think the average person, if they knew that was something even being discussed, would be opposed to that, much less the other 28 chapters in addition to procurement that are included in this Trans- Pacific Partnership. Thank you so much for all the work you have done on this and for making people aware of all the little hidden gems that if we don't have an ability to have a full and fair debate in this House, things that could happen in the biggest and the baddest of the trade deals yet we have seen in this country, so thank you so much. Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Caucus is going to be doing everything we can in the coming months to fight this, to make sure that Congress has a say.…”