Senate Democrats ready to revolt over TPP 'fast track' authority
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Version 0 of 1. Senate Democrats were on a collision course with the White House on Tuesday as the party’s newly emboldened liberal wing dug in its heels over global free trade deals it claims will drag down US wages and working conditions. Ahead of one of the tightest and most uncertain votes in recent years, the Democratic minority leader, Harry Reid, took to the Senate floor to warn that his party would block passage of an enabling bill unless it was broadened to include currency manipulation provisions aimed at China. “If we don’t, it’s going to be very difficult to get the bill out of committee,” warned Reid. Related: The Trans-Pacific Partnership suggests Obama has no sense of irony Yet the Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who is in a rare alliance with Barack Obama on the issue, said he would refuse to include such provisions when he brought the trade legislation up for a vote at 2.30pm, arguing that Democrats should simply seek to make amendments instead. Republicans and White House officials fear that the currency issue is a “poison pill” designed to hobble trade negotiations in a way that would prove unacceptable to other countries negotiating the giant Pacific trade bill. Obama is seeking “fast track” authority that would let him present Congress with proposed trade agreements it can ratify or reject, but not amend. If successful, he is likely to ask Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership being negotiated with 11 other Pacific rim countries, including Japan, Vietnam, Canada and Mexico. Other free-trade proposals could follow. “If we care about America’s position in the 21st century, we can’t cede the most dynamic region in the world to China,” said McConnell in a passionate plea not to walk away from the trade deal. But without support from at least half a dozen Democrats, McConnell will struggle to reach the 60-vote threshold he needs on Tuesday afternoon to even clear this first procedural hurdle in the long race to win over congressional sceptics. Crucially, Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the finance committee who negotiated an initial compromise agreement, sided with his party leadership and called on McConnell to change his mind in the remaining few hours before the vote and bring the currency and trade bills together. “I would hope that the majority leader would take this morning to work with those on my side of the aisle who are supportive of trade to find the same bipartisan approach,” said Wyden. Earlier, the liberal Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who is driving much of the Democratic opposition to trade, launched a withering attack on Obama’s economic agenda on Tuesday, suggesting his administration was “captive to the rich and powerful” just hours before the critical Senate vote. “This county is in real trouble,” Warren said in remarks about Obama’s Pacific trade deal. “The game is rigged and we are running out of time. We cannot continue to run this country for the top 10%. We can’t keep pushing through trade deals that benefit multinational companies at the expense of workers.” She added: “Government cannot continue to be the captive of the rich and powerful. Working people cannot be forced to give up more and more as they get squeezed harder and harder.” Three days ago, Obama said the Massachusetts senator was “absolutely wrong” and accused her of speculating about the contents of the emerging 12-nation trade deal for personal gain. “The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else,” he told YahooNews. “And you know, she’s got a voice that she wants to get out there.” Warren did not refer to the president in her remarks at the National Press Club, but made plain her concern about the influence of corporations on this administration’s trade policies. She said the deal had been formulated “in concert with over 500 non-government advisers, 85% of whom were industry executives and industry lobbyists”. “Now this trade deal is getting the same full-court lobbying press from those same giant multinational corporations,” she added. Warren and the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, appeared side-by-side at the launch of a report, authored by the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, that laid out a wishlist of progressive government policies to reduce America’s soaring inequality. Warren called the report “groundbreaking” and complained that she, as well as other members of the public, cannot see Obama’s secretive trade deal. “It is too bad that a Nobel prize-winning economist isn’t even allowed to read the trade deal until after Congress votes,” she said. Stiglitz said Obama had made some “fairly nasty remarks” about his liberal opponents not understanding the details of his trade deal. “Actually I don’t think he understands what has happened in the last third of a century in terms of inequality,” he said. “That trade agreement is another move in increasing corporate power at the expense of ordinary individuals, and that will lead to more inequality.” |