i'm going to represent the mississippi delta and i know some of you might have heard about it. the delta runs down the mississippi river from tennessee all the way down past fort gibson from the river back east past jackson. in that district we have an unemployment rate of african-americans of 25 to 50%. what has happened to us in the last 20 years is an act 20 years ago called nafta. they branded our businesses out of the united states. at one time, we had 65,000 furniture manufacturers employees in our state. at the present, we have less than 1,000. at one time, the cotton that we grow, the lords that has given us to grow throughout the years in mississippi and in abundance, we don't gin it, mill it or create any textiles out of it. we ship it in containers over to indonesia indonesia to mexico and at that point in time it gets to walmart. we have destroyed our own economic base. the question to our congressmen is -- what can we do to look at that treaty that we made, the north american free trade treaty and repeal it. so that american jobs will come back to america? >> well,

kennedy and she guided them through the mississippi delta as they investigated first-hand the devastating conditions under which impoverished children and their families lived. peter edelman helped shape legislation to ease poverty around the country, and was a top official in president bill clinton's department of health and human services. he famously resigned when clinton signed the 1996 welfare reform legislation. peter edelman teaches at georgetown university and is faculty director there of the center on poverty, inequality, and public policy. peter, welcome. >> thank you. i'm so glad to be here. >> let's indulge in a little bit of nostalgia. >> sure. >> because 50 years ago, you and i were part of the same era. i was a young white house assistant for lyndon johnson working on some poverty issues. and you were a young assistant to senator robert f. kennedy when you made that celebrated tour through mississippi. you seemed absolutely shocked, you and robert kennedy, and the party that went with you, seemed absolutely shocked at what you found. what did you see? >> we saw children wit

of this is a waterway which allows goods to be transferred up and down all the way to the delta and the mississippi and all the way out to the st. lawrence seaway. it is the middle west access to commerce that centers around the chicago and northwest indiana area. this provision that was slipped in without debate, without consideration that didn't appear in the senate bill, transportation bill and didn't appear in the house transportation bill, and therefore is a blatant violation of rule 28, which simply states you can't do this kind of thing, but it was done anyway, and i will be at the proper point here raising an objection to that in a procedural way. let me first talk, if i could, about the way in which we do business around here. throughout my campaign in 2010 to turn to the senate, i continually heard from the people as to how frustrating they were with the process with the laws as now passed. people say why did you vote against that? they say well, i voted against that because it included this over here which was not relevant to it, and even though i like the rest of the bill, i didn't like

and that is the great mawshes of the -- marshes of the gulf coast and the delta that this mighty mississippi river built thousands and thousands of years ago, and leave it better to our grandchildren than most certainly we found it. it's been a wonderful part of my life's work. it's been a worthy project to work on. there are others that have most certainly joined me in this leadership, but i am very, very proud of the work that this senate did, and very disappointed in some things that the house did on it, but as the senator said, barbara boxer, it's legislation. and you just can't have a perfect bill. and it was better to get this than to leave it on the cutting room floor even though they did leave important pieces of it just there. so, mr. president, i want thank barbara's staff as well, senator boxer's staff in particular. senator inhofe's staff for being so courteous. and senator boxer's staff for being very, very tenacious, petina and jason particularly to help us negotiate one of the great environmental pieces of legislation in decades. and i yield the floor and suggest the absence o