Jay Rockefeller: “I also want to make one point clear. Some people say: Why can't the Department of Labor--which sort of decides on TAA…”

“I also want to make one point clear. Some people say: Why can't the Department of Labor--which sort of decides on TAA matters--why doesn't it just include, administratively, steel retirees? They cannot. They do not have the power to do that. They do not have the authority to do that. The retirees we are talking about--Senator Wellstone, Senator Mikulski, myself, and Senator Stabenow, who obviously wants to say something--they do not have the power to do that. They cannot include them on their own. It can only be done through action of the Congress, which is why this amendment is before us. Back last summer, a number of us were doing the legacy bill, which is sort of the big solution, a $16 or $17 billion solution. And there is a great reason for that; it just did not happen to be a very compelling one at the time we were doing it. But you have to do three things to make steel work. I apologize to my colleague from Michigan, because I know how much she wants to speak. You have to invoke section 201. That is the International Trade Commission. The Finance Committee had voted to do that. Oddly enough, the Finance Committee has the same power under the law to invoke the International Trade Commission on the subject of imports and the damage from imports as does the President of the United States. So does the Ways and Means Committee. They did not choose to invoke it. We did. So had the President not invoked section 201, we would have, and already had voted to do so.”