Below is Schakowsky’s Congressional Record statement in opposition to the legislation. 
 

Mr. Speaker, I rise in profound regret, disappointment and anger as we consider the conference report before us tonight.  The House leadership is attempting to ram through this bill, in the dead of night, without giving the American public the ability to look at it and express their views before we vote.  It is clear why.

The United States should be using its unprecedented economic power and global leadership position to fight for trade policies that respect labor and human rights, expand economic opportunities for workers, and improve the environment, both at home and abroad.  We should use our power not just to promote corporate profits but to promote higher standards of living for working families.  We should help stop the global race to the bottom in which some multinational companies move operations from country to country as they search for the one that lets them pay the lowest wages, commit the worst labor abuses, use child labor, and damage the environment without penalty.  We should use the power of our markets to push for democratic reforms, equal rights for women, and stronger human rights.  And, we should ensure that property rights and profits do not come first, ahead of the ability of governments to protect the very lives of their people.

We had an opportunity in this bill to accomplish those objectives.  Tragically, the House Republican leadership rejected that opportunity.

This bill abrogates Congressional authority and Congressional responsibility to review trade agreements to ensure that workers’ rights and environmental protection are included.  If we pass this bill, Congress would have the opportunity to consider only one privileged resolution on each WTO negotiation, agreements that may last five to seven years.  Even if serious information arose regarding food safety, environmental regulation or health standards, Congress would get one and only one opportunity to exercise its Constitutional prerogative to review and ratify trade agreements.

This bill fails to provide Trade Adjustment Assistance to all workers who lose their jobs.  Instead, it makes arbitrary and extraordinarily unfair distinctions.  Workers who lose their jobs because of foreign imports are deemed worthy of assistance.  Workers who lose their jobs because their employer shut down a factory and moved it to China are not.

The bill holds out the theoretical possibility that workers who lose their jobs because of trade policies will get help in maintaining health insurance coverage for their families, then dashes any hope for meaningful assistance.  Laid-off workers would have to pay 35 percent of premium costs for coverage, an enormous financial burden.  There are no market protections, so insurance companies could charge whatever premium they want for whatever coverage they decide to provide. 

The bill rejects Senate language endorsing the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health, meaning that the monopoly patent rights of pharmaceutical companies will be protected while the right of developing countries to deal with the AIDS pandemic through compulsory licensing and generics will not.

Finally, this bill eliminates Senate language to require that, in order to receive special trade benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), countries end child labor and discrimination against women and other groups. 

Mr. Speaker, if we in this body care about the rights of women and workers; the needs of children and the sick; the environment and human rights; we must reject this conference report.  We owe it to the people of our country and the people of the world.