Cutting Medicare by $700 Million to fund failed Trade Adjustment Assistance and fuck us

[fasttense]

22. When my spouse was laid off in 2008 he tried to apply for TAA

But you had to get a note from your former employer saying that the job was moved to another country. Or you had to have some kind of evidence to prove that it was due to our crappy trade policies and NOT due to the crappy economy.

Most corporations don't specifically move jobs from one country to another. They lay off people here in the US, then they magically create New Jobs in Mexico or wherever. So getting a corporation to admit that your specific job was moved to North America is near impossible.

Besides it's bad PR. What corporation wants to admit that thousands of people were fired in the US so they could build it cheaper in Mexico? Corporations don't JUST want to build crap with the cheapest labor around, they want to still be able to sell their crap here in the US. So, telling their customers that they moved hundreds of thousands of jobs to another country so they could pay 50 cents an hour for labor, instead of having to pay a US citizen, doesn't sell more crap.

So the requirements you had to meet to be eligible for the program were next to impossible.