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trans pacific partnership
'Turncoat Dems' in House Blasted as Fast Track Fight Heads Back to Senate
'We expect more regard for environmental protection and respect for working families from President Obama and the Democrats who supported this bill.'
Jun 18, 2015
Drawing the swift ire of progressives around the country, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday took a step to revive President Barack Obama's faltering corporate trade agenda, passing Fast Track, or Trade Promotion Authority, in a 218-208 vote.
Twenty-eight Democratic lawmakers voted in favor of Fast Track, which would make it easier for Obama to ram through controversial trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership, reducing the role of Congress to an up-or-down vote on such mammoth agreements.
"Thanks to House Republicans and a handful of turncoat Democrats, the army of corporate execs and industry lobbyists who wrote the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership will now have an easier time shoving it down the throats of an American public that's broadly opposed to more NAFTA-style trade deals," Democracy for America chair Jim Dean said after the vote. "While we will continue to work to defeat fast-track for the job-killing TPP in the U.S. Senate, we will never forget which House Democrats stood with American working families against Fast Track and who sold them out."
The vote comes as a result of procedural maneuvering and arm-twisting by the White House and GOP leaders--machinations that Fast Track opponents were quick to decry.
"Our disappointment with the president is profound," said Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica on Thursday. "Sadly, we have come to expect Republicans to sell out the environment for the pursuit of corporate profits. But we expect more regard for environmental protection and respect for working families from President Obama and the Democrats who supported this bill."
While Thursday's vote is a setback, the fight is far from over. The legislation will now head back to the Senate, where as Public Citizen notes, "its fate remains at best unclear."
In May, the Senate originally passed a version of Fast Track that was linked to Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) legislation that gives aid to workers displaced by trade. But last Friday, the TAA measure was overwhelmingly defeated in the House, in turn derailing Fast Track.
Thursday's vote separated Fast Track from TAA legislation, meaning those who voted in favor supported a bill without protections for workers. It is unknown whether Senate Democrats will support a stand-alone Fast Track bill.
The Hillreports on the wheeling-and-dealing currently happening on Capitol Hill:
Obama spoke with a group of Senate Democrats on Wednesday at the White House, and talks continued in the Senate on Thursday on a way to give the president trade promotion authority, also known as fast-track.
One possible mechanism for giving assurances to Senate Democrats would see the Senate vote first to pass a trade preferences bill, this time with the TAA program attached. It would then be sent to the House for a vote before the Senate considers fast-track.
This planned move angered members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who asked Senate leaders not to use the trade measure, which would provide preferential access to the U.S. market for African countries, as bargaining chip to pass fast-track.
"The legislation that barely squeaked through the House today faces a much more uncertain future in the Senate," said Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter. "Today's narrow vote to approve Fast Track in the House is an ominous harbinger of the fate of Fast Track in the Senate, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the electoral prospects for Fast Track supporters."
Echoing the warning of others, Hauter added: "Voters will remember all this and hold members of Congress accountable for siding with transnational corporations rather than their constituents."
Follow ongoing developments and reaction on Twitter:
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Fast Track Derailed? House Deals Blow to Corporate-Friendly Trade Agenda
But groups warn citizens to 'remain vigilant to ensure that future efforts to pass Fast Track and climate-destroying trade agreements are defeated'
Jun 12, 2015
Though it wasn't the resounding rejection progressives had hoped for, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday dealt a serious blow to President Barack Obama's corporate-backed trade agenda, while erecting a major stumbling block for proponents of Fast Track, or trade promotion authority.
After a tense showdown and multiple votes in the chamber, a final decision on Fast Track was ultimately deferred, affording a delay that critics say could further scuttle the trade authority.
"Today was a big win, but the thousands of climate activists across the country who stood up and linked arms with fellow progressives to get us here won't rest until Fast Track and TPP are dead for good."
--May Boeve, 350.org
"Today's votes to stall Fast Track and TPP are a major win for anyone who cares about climate change," said 350.org executive director May Boeve. "This disastrous deal would extend the world's dependence on fracked gas, forbid our negotiators from ever using trade agreements in the fight against global warming, and make it easier for big polluters to burn carbon while suing anyone who gets in the way."
She continued: "That message clearly broke through today, as House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi got up, bucked enormous pressure, and rallied against the deal, specifically citing concerns about its impact on climate change. Today was a big win, but the thousands of climate activists across the country who stood up and linked arms with fellow progressives to get us here won't rest until Fast Track and TPP are dead for good."
A bill on Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which would provide aid to workers displaced because of so-called "free trade" agreements, had been packaged with Fast Track authority, and a vote against either doomed the total package. Legislators opposed to Fast Track sought to derail the entire package by voting against TAA.
And derail it they did, voting 126-302 against TAA.
"While the fight will no doubt continue, today's vote is a victory for America's working people and for the environment. It is clearly a defeat for corporate America, which has outsourced millions of decent-paying jobs and wants to continue doing just that."
--Senator Bernie Sanders
Moments later, the chamber did pass a stand-alone version of Fast Track. But, as the New York Timesexplains, because the Senate version linked TAA and Fast Track, the House vote "would force the Senate to take up a trade bill all over again. And without trade adjustment assistance alongside it, passing trade promotion authority in the Senate would be highly doubtful."
Instead, the House will reportedly take up TAA again next week.
Still, progressives viewed Friday's deferral of a final decision as a victory even as they cautioned against becoming complacent.
"I applaud the House of Representatives for the vote today," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a statement after the vote. "While the fight will no doubt continue, today's vote is a victory for America's working people and for the environment. It is clearly a defeat for corporate America, which has outsourced millions of decent-paying jobs and wants to continue doing just that."
Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth added: "Today's move to delay final decision on the trade package represents a significant victory in the fight to ensure that toxic trade agreements like the TPP do not get bulldozed through Congress." But he noted the victory "is not decisive. Friends of the Earth and others will remain vigilant to ensure that future efforts to pass Fast Track and climate-destroying trade agreements are defeated."
As Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch pointed out after the vote, "Passing trade bills opposed by a majority of Americans does not get easier with delay because the more time people have to understand what's at stake, the angrier they get and the more they demand that their congressional representatives represent their will."
This story is developing. Follow ongoing reaction to the votes, and their implications, on Twitter:
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Don't Expect Clinton, GOP Candidates to Work for Social Justice
Jun 10, 2015
My car's bumper sticker reads "I'm ready for Oligarchy: the choice is clear. There is none." It's a truism that under our system, no one can be nominated or can win the presidency who isn't a shill for the billionaire class. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will campaign as a populist in the primaries as Wall Street winks and says, "We totally understand the charade you need to perform to attain the White House. We'll even act annoyed if that helps." In the general election, she will move to the center and, after her likely coronation, govern from the right. Always cozy with the military-industrial complex, Clinton voted to authorize President George W. Bush's criminal war in Iraq, which ended the lives of 4,000 U.S. service members, cost more than a trillion dollars, brought untold death and destruction to the Iraqi people and spawned the Islamic State.
As Harvard professor Stephen Walt recently noted, "Blaming bad intelligence is a smokescreen the war's architects and cheerleaders now employ to evade blame for the debacle." And all evidence suggests Clinton cast that vote from conviction and subsequently pushed for U.S. escalation in Afghanistan, intervention in Syria and the destruction of Libya as a viable state, all of which generated more Islamic State franchises. A warmonger and widow maker of the first rank, she is disqualified by this alone to be commander in chief.
Clinton remains silent on President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership trade initiative -- NAFTA on steroids -- a trade deal that will send millions of American jobs offshore and further exacerbate income and wealth inequality. For speeches, Clinton has accepted $2.5 million from companies that support the proposed trade agreement. As secretary of state she enthusiastically backed Israel's savage attack on Gaza and promoted fracking in East Europe, China and India. During this period, large corporate payments ($25 million since 2014) flowed into the Clinton Foundation, including contributions from ExxonMobil, Chevron and the Saudi Arabian government while a Canadian backer of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline added to foundation coffers. In 2013, Goldman Sachs paid her $400,000 for two speeches.
But don't we need our first female president? Martin Luther King Jr. cautioned us to judge people by the content of their character, not their color. Didn't we learn that lesson by twice electing a black president only to chart his faithful service to the oligarchs while mouthing faux populist rhetoric? Shouldn't we judge Clinton by her character and record, not by her gender? Previous female secretaries of state, including Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice demonstrate that women who've internalized "American exceptionalism" behave just as reprehensibly as any male. I sense that too many people retain a moral blind spot regarding Clinton simply owing to their desire to see a woman in the White House.
So, should folks outside the 1 percent bother to vote? If Sen. Bernie Sanders is on the Democratic primary ballot, you might cast a protest vote for him. In the general election, and given our electoral system, if you live in a red state like Idaho or blue Massachusetts, your vote won't matter.
If the race in Pennsylvania or New Jersey is extremely close, I can imagine voting for Clinton for only one reason: The Krusty the Clown clone emerging as the GOP nominee will be worse, a scary individual who's pathologically devoid of empathy. The plutocrats give us a really terrible candidate and another who is even worse. With that, we're urged to choose.
But instead of wasting time and energy on presidential campaigns, we should heed the late historian Howard Zinn's counsel that "What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but 'who is sitting in' -- and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change."
King learned that even though high-level politicians don't care about ordinary citizens, "the political structure listens to the economic power structure." And the latter only reacts out of the fear created by mass mobilizations, disruption, militant campaigns, boycotts and direct action. There is no other way to obtain social justice, and it's getting very late in the game.
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