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So to say that the United States needs ILO standards on worker rights because we aren't currently doing anything about these issues, or because we

[Page: S4459]  GPO's PDF

   I again urge my colleagues to oppose this bill and support the bipartisan compromise.

   I move to table the amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. STABENOW). Is there a sufficient second?

   There is a sufficient second.

   The question is agreeing to the motion.

   The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.

   Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. HELMS) and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. MURKOWSKI) are necessarily absent.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

   The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 46, as follows:

   Allard

   Allen

   Baucus

   Bennett

   Bond

   Breaux

   Brownback

   Bunning

   Burns

   Campbell

   Cantwell

   Chafee

   Cochran

   Collins

   Craig

   Crapo

   DeWine

   Domenici

   Ensign

   Enzi

   Fitzgerald

   Frist

   Gramm

   Grassley

   Gregg

   Hagel

   Hatch

   Hutchinson

   Hutchison

   Inhofe

   Kyl

   Lott

   Lugar

   McCain

   McConnell

   Miller

   Nelson (NE)

   Nickles

   Roberts

   Santorum

   Sessions

   Shelby

   Smith (NH)

   Smith (OR)

   Snowe

   Specter

   Stevens

   Thomas

   Thompson

   Thurmond

   Voinovich

   Warner

   Akaka

   Bayh

   Biden

   Bingaman

   Boxer

   Byrd

   Carnahan

   Carper

   Cleland

   Clinton

   Conrad

   Corzine

   Daschle

   Dayton

   Dodd

   Dorgan

   Durbin

   Edwards

   Feingold

   Feinstein

   Graham

   Harkin

   Hollings

   Inouye

   Jeffords

   Johnson

   Kennedy

   Kerry

   Kohl

   Landrieu

   Leahy

   Levin

   Lieberman

   Lincoln

   Mikulski

   Murray

   Nelson (FL)

   Reed

   Reid

   Rockefeller

   Sarbanes

   Schumer

   Stabenow

   Torricelli

   Wellstone

   Wyden

   Helms

   Murkowski

   The motion was agreed to.

   Mr. REID. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

   Mr. BAUCUS. I move to lay that motion on the table.

   The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

   Mr. REID. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business for 4 minutes.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   (The remarks of Senator LEAHY are located in today's RECORD under ``Morning Business.'')

   Mr. LEAHY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   AMENDMENT NO. 3433 TO AMENDMENT NO. 3401

   Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I send to the desk an amendment which is sponsored by myself, Senators MIKULSKI, WELLSTONE, DEWINE, DURBIN, VOINOVICH, and STABENOW.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

   The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

   The Senator from West Virginia [Mr. ROCKEFELLER], for himself, Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Wellstone, Mr. DeWine, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Voinovich, and Ms. Stabenow, proposes an amendment numbered 3433.

   Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   (The amendment is printed in today's RECORD under ``Text of Amendments.'')

   AMENDMENT NO. 3434 TO AMENDMENT NO. 3433

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

   Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

   The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

   The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. DASCHLE] proposes an amendment numbered 3434 to amendment No. 3433.

   Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   (The amendment is printed in today's RECORD under ``Text of Amendments.'')

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

   Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I rise this afternoon to talk for a few minutes about the need for trade adjustment assistance as a program and also an addition to it, something that meets the real needs of workers as currently contemplated, and then what is also contemplated in our amendment which is to add, at very small cost, about 125,000 steel retirees.

   I want to talk about them. Their health benefits have been lost due to the import surge that has taken place. I passionately believe the trade adjustment assistance concept has to be considered an integral part of U.S. trade policy.

   When U.S. trade policies result in American workers losing their jobs through no fault of their own, much less Government inaction to protect them in a legitimate forum, then I think we owe them help.

   I want to take a moment to highlight the importance of the TAA health provisions that will hopefully be included in the final package the Senate passes.

   Majority Leader DASCHLE, Chairman BAUCUS, Senators BINGAMAN, CONRAD, MIKULSKI, WELLSTONE, myself, and many others have fought to include health protection as part of TAA for the first time. Workers want to get it. If workers lose their jobs as a result of imports, they deserve to get something back. They deserve to be on their feet, they deserve to have access to retraining, and they deserve to get cash assistance. They also deserve to have something called health care, which is what everybody talks about and nobody does anything about, but we would like to. What has been lacking has been some help for displaced workers to retain their health care coverage. I am not talking about just steelworkers, I am talking about the general population.

   Under the Baucus-Grassley amendment that is under consideration now, they will have that help. I want to extend my sincere appreciation to the majority leader for his advocacy for provisions to provide health care assistance to displaced workers who lose jobs due to imports. This is a tremendous improvement to the existing program.

   I also thank him, as I believe all steelworkers do and should, for his support of our upcoming amendment that will extend the new TAA health benefit for steel retirees who have also lost their retirement health coverage due to closure of their former employer.

   The majority leader had originally agreed to include this as a provision in his substitute amendment. But as we all know, that effort was undermined by a point of order and a threatened filibuster. So we had to make an adjustment.

   The majority leader agreed to support the inclusion of the steel retiree health benefit as part of the overall Trade Adjustment Assistance Program because he understands what is at stake. He understands that steel retirees have lost their health benefits as a direct result of imports--the most ferocious assault of imports, with a blind eye from the U.S. Government and,

[Page: S4460]  GPO's PDF

   If steel retirees have lost their health care coverage because their company closed as a result of this massive insurge of imports, they should get some temporary relief. In fact, we are giving them only bridge relief--1 year's relief--but it is a full year, which they would not now have. I am talking about 125,000 people right now in the country. They would get 1 year's health benefits. This amendment would provide it to them.

   As we seek to improve benefits for employees who lose their jobs because unfair--and in many cases illegal--imports have ravaged their industry, we cannot forget the former employees of these same industries--the retirees. Under the current TAA system, an active worker can get help in health care--if we pass it--because they are displaced by imports, but retirees are left behind. The people who have gone belly up and who are no longer working at all but who worked for years and years in the steel mills got nothing; they are shut out.

   The pending amendment will eliminate that disparity by affording retirees access to health care coverage that displaced workers hopefully will soon also be able to receive.

   If a steelworker retires and they have lost their health care because their company closed, they will now be eligible to receive the same temporary health benefits for 1 year as other workers--active workers who have lost their jobs and health coverage due to imports.

   These steelworker retirees are also victims of imports. They have lost health care because their companies closed. Their companies closed because the import crisis in the domestic steel industry became overwhelming. I call it a crisis because the International Trade Commission called it a crisis and said unanimously that it was due to serious damage caused by imports, imports from which our Government--not just this administration but the previous one--failed to defend American interests.

   We have national laws on our books. We failed to defend them. They don't allow other countries to dump their steel products into our country. We failed to defend that. That is not true in other cases particularly, but it is true with steelworkers. They have been clobbered by this, and they have no health care retiree ability whatsoever right now.

   Health care coverage for steel retirees, who often live on fixed incomes, is incredibly important to them. It can mean the difference between all kinds of things that make their lives miserable or OK. I want to clarify this because it is confusing. Whom are we talking about in this amendment? Active workers and retirees. Active workers is the TAA category; active retirees is the steel category. Those are the people we want to add to the TAA for 1 year.

   Active workers who lose their jobs are not retirees, they are unemployed workers. Retirees--the steel folks--have met years-of-service requirements--vested 15 years working and this kind of thing--and they are out in the cold. Now their companies have closed and, for the most part, have filed chapter 7. LTV in Ohio filed for chapter 7--no health benefits, no light bulbs, nothing; everything is shut down. The health benefits they used to plan for in their retirement are now gone. These are not people who can retain and find new jobs, they are retirees who have finished, for the most part, their working years.

   Under the new and improved TAA program, for active workers, if a worker loses his job, he will now be eligible for cash assistance, retraining, and health benefits. In the case of a retiree in the steel industry, they may not be eligible for any retirement benefits from the job that they have lost, and under the current plan retirees are eligible for nothing at all--unless my amendment is adopted, and that will only be for health, not for cash, not for training, or anything else. The money will only go to the retiree, not to the company.

   Retirees are eligible under my amendment for the TAA health benefits only if they were already eligible, going through this vested process, for retiree health benefits and if their former employer permanently shut down.

   We have created a small universe of 125,000 people. When I get to the offset in a minute, people are going to be shocked by how cheap it is, how easy it is to do. But the steel retirees will not be eligible for any of the cash assistance, or anything else that active workers who are otherwise displaced under the TAA will get. Active workers are eligible for TAA health assistance for the duration of the TAA cash assistance, which goes on. On the other hand, eligible steel retirees--the subject of our amendment--would only be eligible for 1 year of health benefits. That was the bridge we talked about, to give everybody a chance to regroup and see what we can do to retain the steel industry and for them to be able to get health care.

   So this isn't a Cadillac plan we are talking about. This is a slimmed down version. If retirees don't have health care coverage because companies shut down due to imports, they should not be left behind--particularly when the Government is responsible for not defending their interests over the past 30 years and not protecting the Federal law against dumping and willingly letting people do it. Of course, in the United States we are suckers for anything that is cheaper. It doesn't matter if it was made in America. Well, it matters in the steel industry, and we are about to lose it. Thirty-three companies have shut down in the last couple of years, and most of the others are on the brink. We could very well have no steel industry in 2, 3 years.

   Today, there are only about 125,000 retirees. That is what my amendment is about, along with Senator Mikulski and Senator Wellstone. So 125,000 retirees and their dependents, who worked for companies such as LTV in the steel industry do not have any health coverage.

   They have not, in fact, had any for the last several months, since March.

   These people live in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Alabama, Illinois, Utah, Louisiana, North Carolina, Missouri, and they do not at this point live in West Virginia. Without the steel retiree provision in this bill, those retirees will continue to go without health care. Is that what we do here? Is that what we do as a legislative body?

   Many of these retirees are not Medicare eligible and have no other recourse. We all know about the terrible human scourge of Americans without health care coverage. We have done a lot of talking about that, but we have not done much to cure it. This is not what retirees who spent a lifetime working in the harsh conditions of a steel mill--which my colleagues, Senators MIKULSKI and WELLSTONE, have been in. Many others have, too. I have not. It is like a coal mine; you do not go in very often. It is dangerous, terrible work. They helped us win the war, and now we have a chance to do something for them.

   I come back to the fact that the Federal Government has failed the steel industry by not enforcing our national trade laws against dumping, which is what puts them out of work. Steel companies were forced into bankruptcy--as I said, 33 companies since the year 2000--because our trading partners were dumping steel on our shores, and this is not my opinion. This is what the International Trade Commission found unanimously: That our industry had been seriously injured by imports.

   Because of the Government's inaction for so long on those unfair trading practices by our trading partners, our domestic steel industry has suffered irreparable harm. People look at that and say: OK, we do not have steel in our State; maybe it is true, maybe it is not. It is true. The Presiding Officer knows it. It is absolutely true. They are falling like flies. Their stock is selling at $1, $2. It is awful.

   Section 201 gave them a little bit of a boost, but it is a boost that will only last 6 or 8 months or a year at most, and then it will go right back down. Here we come to the workhorse.

   The provision is simply this. The provision will give retirees, many of whom are entering, as I indicated, their second month without health care coverage--85,000 of these workers are former LTV workers, which went chapter 7. They were in Ohio or they may have moved elsewhere. It tries to give them some breathing room.

[Page: S4461]  GPO's PDF

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