Subject: RE: Video Request: Jeff Sessions floor speech on TPP, 4.25
From: "Kasnetz, Joel" <[email-masked]>
To: Research_D <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 15:06:13 -0700

*         POTUS is going to try to push through TTP and TTIP, despite its unpopularity

*         These agreements are the beginnings of a European Union-style trade union with Asian countries (not new)

*         A Tufts study suggests that the US will lose 400,000 jobs and there are hidden numbers in the White House's own study that suggests similar job losses.

*         He regrets voting for the Korean trade deal (not new)

o    Same with the China deal

*         POTUS has no business telling the U.K. to stay in the E.U.

The presiding officer: The senator from Alabama.
Mr. Sessions: I would ask consent that the quorum call be dispensed with.
The presiding officer: Without objection.
Mr. Sessions: Madam president, on Sunday, during a joint press conference in Hanover, Germany, with Angela Merkel, the president of the United States said this -- quote -- "With respect to congress and the trans-pacific partnership" -- that's the big 5,000-page trade agreement that the president is trying to move through congress. He said -- quote -- "I think the primary season is over the politics settle down a little bit in congress, and we'll be in a position to start moving forward with this agreement 'because I know we had a majority of members in the past who were in favor of this deal. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten the authority for me to go ahead and fast-track this agreement. But I think we all know that elections can sometimes make things a little more challenging and people take positions in part to protect themselves from attacks during the course of an election season.'" now I would suggest that the American people should be very uneasy about their president making such a statement as that. We've already heard that there are plans by a number of forces, interest groups to try to slip this T.P.P. Through after the election in a lame-duck congressional session. Why would that be the case? Well, the president says it right here. The American people are uneasy about it. They're not for this.

[3:45:43 PM]

Support for it is sinking. Elections are turning on it, and it does not need to become law. I am firmly opposed to this agreement. I believe it is bad for our country and it bothers me that if it's such a good deal, why don't they bring it forward. Why don't we have a debate here while elections are on? Why aren't people willing to go home and explain to their constituents how and why they voted the way they did and why and how they believe the way they do. What's wrong with that? Why wait afterwards when things have cooled, settled down a little bit in the president's words, where people can't be held accountable by their constituents for the votes that they cast or they think they may be able to slide away afterward. I don't like this. I don't think it's the right thing to do. I think it's arrogant. What the president is fundamentally saying and what a lot of these special interest groups are saying is, well, we know you in congress are so smart and we know the president is smart. The people out here, they don't understand how smart we all are, and we just need to get this done, and so we'll have this trade agreement, but we understand you probably shouldn't do it right now while elections are going on because, well, you might get your clock cleaned. They might vote you out of office, so we'll see if we can't work up a way to pass it sometime in the future. So the president has made clear he intends to continue to push through this 5,544-page trade agreement that the American people don't want. Polls show consistent disapproval of the T.P.P. A March poll by Americans for limited government found 51% of Americans did not know anything about it. Well, I would say 50% of the members of congress don't know much about it.

[3:47:47 PM]

It's 5,000 pages. I probably spent more time on it than the vast majority have, and it's rather difficult, if you want to know the truth, to read the thing. No wonder the American people say they don't know a lot about it, but of those who claim to be familiar with it, 58% oppose it. This isn't -- and there are a lot of reasons for this, and we're going to talk about it more. And today our U.S. Trade representative, Michael Froman, announced that they are beginning the 13th round of the transatlantic trade investment partnership, t-tip, they call it, with the European union in New York. So this is the second part of the fast track. The fast track guarantees a fast vote, without amendments, without filibuster on the floor less than two days, you get up-or-down vote. That's what fast track is. So we'll have the pacific agreement probably coming up first and then they would have the t-tip, the atlantic agreement, and then there is a third one, trade and services agreement. All these are huge trade agreements, unlike anything we've seen before, creating in the pacific an international trade union, so much of the beginning of the European union that Britain is trying to get out of, and I think we should be very dubious about that. But how is the trade agreement fairing in Europe? Or how about Germany, which is probably one of the leading trading countries in Europe. A bertleson foundation poll, a nonprofit organization that studies domestic and international politics, found that only 17% of Germans feel that t-tip, the transatlantic partnership, would be a good deal, even though less than two years ago it had a 55% positive rating.

[3:49:54 PM]

The more people learn, this study found, about the agreement, the more they opposed it. And the same thing is happening in the United States, in my opinion. So the president had referred to the T.P.P. As -- quote -- the most Progressive trade deal in history. Its chapters create new labor and environmental provisions that the public really knows nothing about. On Sunday, April 24, during a joint press conference in Germany, the president again has pushed forward with this agreement. So even -- colleagues, even the economic data that the white house claims that the T.P.P., even under the economic data they promote, the white house promotes as proving the validity of the T.P.P., if you look at it carefully, you can see that their own report and study that they cite the most, that signing the agreement will decrease the rate of American manufacturing jobs by 120,000. How is this good for America? We're going to lose 120,000 manufacturing jobs that we would maintain had we not signed the agreement, by their own study. Another study by tufts university says they will lose -- the country will lose 400,000 jobs. And we're going to go into the differences in the studies, and we're going to see the assumptions that were utilized in the model that creates -- that the president cites, and we're going to see that the assumptions they make are not reasonable.

[3:51:57 PM]

They are extreme assumptions. Something that would never occur in the next 15 years, as they assume will occur, and no wonder they can justify positive numbers with those kind of assumptions. So we have to begin to reveal, I think all of us do, and the American people need to be more alert to how bad this international agreement really is, how it will not positively affect the lives of most Americans. It's just not going to do so. We'll look at how the promises for the Korean trade deal that I supported in 2011 nowhere came close to being beneficial to the United States. That agreement assumed and stated when the president signed the deal in 2011, president Obama said it would can create an increase of $10 billion in exports to South Korea. I thought that was a good thing. It sounds pretty good. Computer -- the model that the experts used to study the trade deal is the same one they're using to study this trade deal, and so we have a pretty good test, don't we. Do we increase exports by $10 billion each year to south Korea? Well, their imports to us increased by $12 billion, and the trade -- we increased our exports to Korea about a couple of hundred million dollars more than in 2011 last year. But we didn't get any increase at all, virtually none. They had a huge increase to us, and our trade deficit with our allies and friends in south Korea increased 280%. This is a serious little matter.

[3:53:59 PM]

The same thing happened, they used this same computer model when we signed the agreement with China in 2000. We then had about a 70 -- little less than $70 billion in trade deficit with China, and they said our exports to China would grow at the same rate as China's exports to the United States would grow. Did that happen? No. What's the trade deficit with China today, pushing $400 billion. It went up last year, our trade deficit did. So how -- at some point, who's right here? The American people who are worried about their jobs, their wages, their incomes or the experts who promise all these grand things if we would just sign these agreements and everybody's going to be better off for it? I think the American people are the ones being proven right by this data, and I've supported most of these in the past, too. And finally, I am very -- very concerned about the effort to dictate --
the presiding officer: Your time has expired.
Mr. Sessions: I thank the chair. I would ask consent to have one additional minute.
The presiding officer: Is there objection? Without objection.
Mr. Sessions: We don't -- the president does not need to be threatening our allies in Britain about their own decision of their people whether or not to exit from the European union. They're not happy with how things are going in the European union. A lot of people are concerned about it. It's heading toward a close vote. The people of the United Kingdom can make their own decision without hearing advice or threats from the president of the United States. I don't blame them for being offended by it. This is certainly not an acceptable position for the president to take.

[3:55:59 PM]

So, madam president, I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks. I want to push back from the president's recent statements about this trade agreement, how he plans to move it through when people aren't watching, and I also think congress really needs to speak and assert that we affirm the right of the people of the U.K. To decide whether or not to remain in the European union. I thank the chair and would yield the floor.

From: Polson, Jonathan
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 1:00 PM
To: Kasnetz, Joel; Research_D
Subject: RE: Video Request: Jeff Sessions floor speech on TPP, 4.25

Saved here<https://toolbox.dnc.org/?tool_name=vantage%20uploader&path=vantageuploader.dnc.org/videos/shared_show?jwt=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpYXQiOjE0NjE3NzQwMzYsImVtYWlsIjoicG9sc29uakBkbmMub3JnIiwiaWQiOjMxMjY0MCwiZG93bmxvYWRhYmxlIjp0cnVlfQ.hHCUBuxjKmw-MCCjVEPKM4Pl0ejy7nUe5pBEFJvC_I4>

From: Kasnetz, Joel
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 11:21 AM
To: Research_D
Subject: Video Request: Jeff Sessions floor speech on TPP, 4.25

Thanks for saving his whole speech!

http://www.c-span.org/video/?408673-1/us-senate-debate-energy-water-spending-bill&start=2603