No Lameduck Vote on TPP

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to call on Congress to rule out an end-of-the-year lameduck end-run vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

No other time in the Congress is less accountable to the people who entrust us to represent their interests than the period between election and the swearing in of a new Congress in January. That is why it is called lameduck.

Retiring Members or those who lost elections still have a say. And whose interests are they more likely to represent?

Sometimes corporate interests weigh in with tantalizing offers of high-dollar remuneration on their retirement. Or for those fresh off an election, a lameduck can present pressures from donors who funded their campaigns.

In 2000, I watched this scenario play out when the permanent normal trade relations with China, unfortunately, passed. For China's PNTR vote, look at Texas. The President secured at least five Members' votes by promising an environmental cleanup of a military factory, a study on job losses due to imports, and finalized an EPA study for a pipeline.

And what happened to those promises?

Nothing. In fact, the factory closed with the district losing 5,000 jobs.

Madam Speaker, we have been told time and again that free trade deals create jobs, but they outsource our jobs instead. Americans deserve a vote from accountable, elected Representatives. No lameduck TPP vote.

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