Jay Rockefeller: “yesterday the President made very clear what we have all known for a long time in steel country, and that is that he…”

“yesterday the President made very clear what we have all known for a long time in steel country, and that is that he basically does not care whether the American steel industry goes to Japan, Korea, Brazil, Russia, or some other place; that he is willing to see it go as an industry but, much more importantly in terms of my comments, that he is willing to consider perhaps TAA health care benefits for workers who have been destroyed by illegal importing problems. But steelworkers do not count. He specifically, in his statement of administration policy, said: I don't want steelworkers to have any health care retirement--retirement in the sense they do not have any more health benefits. I don't care about them. I want the Record to be crystal clear on that. It is a sad position. It is a terrible day for steel. Abandoning steelworkers, not allowing them to have health care coverage--we are only talking about 125,000 people as we start the process, none of whom, incidentally, is from the State I represent, the State of West Virginia. But they are just being excluded from the process.”