Obama Moves Closer to Inking Pacific Trade Deal

[Wilikon]

President Obama may move closer to a career-defining Pacific Rim trade deal Tuesday that could permanently alter the balance of power between the White House and Congress on trade issues.

The Senate is expected to approve a bill to give the president “fast track” authority to make trade deals, reducing Congress’ role to approving or rejecting the entire deal. Members of Congress would not be allowed to filibuster a vote on a trade pact, add amendments, delete parts or otherwise tweak the final version of a trade deal.

If it passes, the bill would grease the skids for Obama to finish the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an unprecedentedly massive trade pact binding the U.S. and eleven other countries, including Japan, Australia and Chile, and governing 40% of the world’s GDP.

Most trade experts agree that if the fast track bill passes, it all but guarantees that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will too.

Supporters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership say getting the fast track bill passed is crucial since, without it, Congress could muddle up a document that has been delicately wrought in private negotiations for nearly a decade.

But critics of the deal, which includes an unlikely coalition of Tea Party Republicans and liberal Democrats, argue that passing the fast-track bill is akin to signing a blank check.

Conservative critics worry that the fast-track hands undue power to a president they already don’t trust. In an impassioned plea to supporters Sunday, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions wrote that the fast-track bill marks a “consolidation of power in the executive branch,” by eliminating “Congress’ ability to amend or debate trade implementing legislation and guarantees an up-or-down vote on a far-reaching international agreement before that agreement has received any public review.”

Liberal Democrats, for their part, argue that the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be bad for working class Americans by shipping more decent jobs overseas. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has said that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will strip safeguards on the financial industry and establish a shadowy international legal system, wherein powerful corporates can sue countries through private tribunals. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has promised to filibuster it if it comes to that.


http://time.com/3853641/trans-pacific-partnership-senate/

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[Chef Ramsay]

Fast track? How about a pro-America track?

Congress, led by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is preparing to betray American workers, and the grass roots should rise up and say, “No, you don’t.” The secretive underhanded deal is called “fast track,” and that’s an appropriate title because, indeed, it puts Americans on a fast track to lower wages and fewer available jobs.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., one of the few Members of Congress who has actually read and studied fast track plus its companion trade bill called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), has compiled a list of objections to it that are downright frightening. They should be read by all who care about their own future and the future of our once-prosperous nation. Here are some of the ways fast track and TPP will betray us.

The text of TPP emphasizes that it is a “living agreement.” Translated out of bureaucratese code language, that means the text of TPP can be changed in major and minor ways by executive action after Congress OKs the document. The TPP could, for example, add additional countries such as Communist China, which for years has been cheating America coming and going.


Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/fast-track-how-about-a-pro-america-track/#JGkEqfS5aEuIc4Ui.99

[Chef Ramsay]

Senator Warren hits back at Obama in Pacific Rim trade fight

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren hit back at President Barack Obama in their tussle over "fast-track" authorization to negotiate a Pacific Rim trade treaty, a power she says could be used in the future to weaken Wall Street reforms.

The president, who wants expedited negotiating power to streamline the passage of trade deals through Congress, said last week that Warren's claims were "absolutely wrong."

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and prominent liberal voice, stuck to her argument in an interview published on Monday with a Washington Post blog, saying Obama should release details of the Pacific trade talks so legal experts can determine if a pact could be used to weaken U.S. bank rules.

"If the president is so confident it's a good deal, he should declassify the text and let people see it before asking Congress to tie its hands on fixing it," Warren said in the interview with the Plum Line blog.

More...https://ca.news.yahoo.com/senator-warren-hits-back-obama-pacific-rim-trade-161148260--sector.html