Rubio Continues to Push for Inclusion of Uyghur Forced Labor Bill in NDAA
The National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass bill, hasn't gone to the Senate floor due to disagreement over an amendment to include the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the sponsor of that amendment, is the only reason the NDAA can't go to the floor.
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"As I said last night, the amendment pushed by my colleague would certainly raise a Blue Slip objection in the House and thus kill the entire NDAA," Schumer said on the floor of the Senate. A blue slip objection is when the House Ways and Means Committee says that a bill that raises revenue must start in the House, and they object to the bill as a result. This is sometimes finessed, either through the House passing its own corresponding bill, or by stripping the offending amendment or language in a conference committee between the two chambers. But if a bill were to be blue slipped, the House would return the bill to the Senate and say another vote would need to be taken without the amendment.
"There is no objection to the substance of [Rubio's] amendment. But it simply would violate the provision in our constitution that requires revenue measures to originate in the House. Other members had amendments with similar issues, but they worked with the Ways and Means Committee in the House to resolve them, because they are the arbiter. Senator Rubio has not done the same."
Rubio said on a Fox morning talk show: "Right now, as I speak to you, we've got CEOs and companies who are lobbying to kill my Uyghur slave labor bill. It basically says that if you buy products that are made in Xinjiang, we are going to presume that they're made by slaves. They’re working quietly to kill it. We've got, basically, congressional leaders [who] are willing to kill the defense bill in order to not pass a bill that has my amendment in it. It's outrageous.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in her morning press conference that she didn't understand why Rubio was holding up the defense bill when the House will be passing a strong bill to create a rebuttable presumption that goods made with Xinjiang content were made with forced labor. "Marco Rubio has been a good champion for human rights in China, but we have a disagreement on that," she said.
She said that a bill introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., is stronger than Rubio's bill, and that the policy could also pass in the China package, since it is part of the bill that advanced out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (see 2107290018). She also said it's not true that the Biden administration has lobbied against either version of the bill over concerns that it would make cooperation on climate change with China more difficult.
Rubio's argument was joined by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who said in a floor speech that the NDAA is being held up because Pelosi and Schumer oppose the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention amendment, even though it passed the Senate unanimously this summer.
Romney said there is "no question that it should be U.S. policy to hold accountable those responsible for the forced labor of the Uyghurs, and ensure that our companies are monitoring their supply chains and circumstances of workers making products in China, to make sure that those products that are made by slave labor against the Uyghur people are not brought into this country."
He said that Schumer and Pelosi are pointing to the revenue origination issue, which he called a technicality. He said that's not why they're refusing to allow the amendment to the NDAA. "What's really happening here is that there are some corporations that the Democrats don't want to offend," he said. He suggested that the rare earths processed in China for batteries for electric vehicles or solar storage could be blocked from import if the bill became law.