Congress Introduce Bi-Partisan Bill To Abdicate Its Own Role And Screw Over American Public All At Once

from the shameful dept

We knew this was happening sooner or later, but Senate Finance chair Max Baucus, along with ranking member Orrin Hatch, have introduced the "fast track authority" bill in the Senate. Over in the House, the same basic bill has been introduced by Rep. Dave Camp. There had been rumors that the introduction of the bill would be delayed because not a single House Democrat would co-sponsor the bill, but apparently the existing bill supporters decided not to wait. Fast track authority or "trade promotion authority" is a very dangerous concept. It is basically Congress completely abdicating its Constitutional authority under Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, which grants Congress the sole power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations."

Instead, what fast track authority means is that Congress is saying, "that's okay, you guys in the administration can handle that." Basically, it's Congress flat out telling the White House and the USTR that it, and not the Congress, can come up with trade agreements with foreign powers, and Congress will tie its own hands in being able to challenge or review the various provisions. Instead, it will limit Congress entirely to an up or down vote on the entire trade agreement. And, in this case, the fast track authority will be used to approve the TPP (and likely TAFTA/TTIP after that). These are trade agreements that, as we've already discussed, are designed to help certain legacy industries at the expense of innovation and the public. Specifically, this would grant the administration four years of "fast track authority" with an easy three year extension after that.

The most ridiculous part is that the sponsors of the bill that will give up Congress' own powers are claiming that it does the opposite:

TPA-2014 also provides greater transparency and gives Congress greater oversight of the Administration’s trade negotiations.

Uh, no. It does the exact opposite. It takes away Congress' Constitutional powers to regulate commerce with other nations, providing less oversight for trade negotiations and guaranteeing even less transparency than the almost none that exists today. The sponsors of the bill are pretending that the details in the 107 page bill "instruct" the USTR how to properly negotiate things like the TPP, but it's basically just repeating the USTR's existing wishlist. Included are, of course, a section on the importance of "high standards of intellectual property protection" as well as support for dangerous corporate sovereignty tribunals, commonly referred to as "investor state dispute settlement" plans.

While this bill is moderately bipartisan in the sponsorship (with Senator Baucus selling out the majority of his party who is opposed to it), it's the Republicans who are the driving force behind this. And that makes no sense at all. This is the same Republican party who shut down the entire federal government to block the president's healthcare proposal, and has spent years attacking anything that even has the mild stench of the executive branch taking on a role that goes beyond what the Constitution allows. And yet here they are gleefully handing over the Constitutionally-given reins for regulating foreign commerce... to the president they hate? How does that make any sense at all?

Filed Under: congress, dave camp, fast track authority, max baucus, orrin hatch, tafta, tpp, trade promotion authority, ttip, ustr

As White House Makes Final Push On TPP, Congress Slams On The Brakes

from the some-good-news... dept

Things are heating up around the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the trade agreement among many of the Pacific Rim countries that has tremendous problems. The US has been pushing very, very hard to get the deal signed and delivered by the end of the year. US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that he still believes an agreement can be made by the end of the year.

"I think the important thing to remember is that the reason we are in the TPP discussion is the same as the reasons Singapore is -- same for Japan and the other countries are -- that it is in each of our own interest for there to be high quality agreement that benefits each of us individually and all of us together collectively.

"And that is the reason why we are still optimistic that we can reach a successful conclusion of the TPP discussion this year."

Of course, there are a number of indications that with some of the massive gaps between negotiating positions that still remain that it may be difficult to hammer out an agreement in time. But... it also might not matter much, because Congress may be slamming the brakes on the whole process. We just noted that a very large number of folks in Congress have told the White House that they're very uncomfortable giving the USTR "trade promotion authority" or "fast track authority," which would effectively have Congress giving up its Constitutionally defined role as the sole governmental branch that can "regulate commerce with foreign nations."

In effect, without trade promotion authority, the USTR is negotiating without any real mandate. That is, the agreement itself is somewhat meaningless, because the USTR has no ability to commit the US to anything. Only Congress can do that, and it appears Congress is skeptical about giving up its Constitutional powers to the USTR -- and, given what's been seen in the leaked versions of the TPP (oh yeah, and the very fact that it had to be leaked in the first place) -- it seems Congress has some very good reasons to be wary of the USTR having any more power than it currently does.

So it's good to see that Rep. Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House, has basically said that there's almost no way Congress is giving the USTR trade promotion authority this year. Bizarrely, as the article notes, the Republicans seem overeager to support trade promotion authority, while it's the Democrats who are effectively blocking it. Yes, you read that right. The Republicans in the House, who have been fighting President Obama on nearly everything, are eager to give up their own constitutional powers in Congress and hand them directly to the Obama White House, while it's the President's own party that is (rightfully) concerned about moving forward with such a plan.

For the life of me, I cannot see why Republicans would support such a thing. It appears that a bunch of highly paid lobbyists are going around pretending that TPP is actually a "free trade" agreement, and telling Republicans they should be in favor of free trade. But it's not a free trade agreement at all (quite the opposite, actually). Maybe someone should explain to the Republicans that giving up their own sole power to regulate foreign commerce and handing it the White House, which has written a proposal designed to massively benefit traditional donors to Democratic candidates, isn't the wisest of political strategies.

Filed Under: congress, fast track authority, jack lew, steny hoyer, tpp, trade promotion authority, ustr

Congress May Not Be So Eager To Simply Hand Over Its Own Authority To The Obama Administration To Approve TPP

from the a-good-sign dept

We have all sorts of concerns about the TPP Agreement (Trans Pacific Parntership), but as we've discussed (both recently and in the past), a huge concern is over "trade promotion authority" or "fast track authority," in which Congress completely abdicates its Constitutional role "to regulate commerce with foreign nations." Basically, this power allows the USTR, which is a part of the executive branch, to get Congress to more or less give the USTR the "power" to finalize the trade agreement. Without it, Congress can -- as it should -- debate the different parts of the TPP agreement, and push back on the (many) problematic ones. Yet, if Congress gives up that power, without even seeing the full agreement (!?!?), then all Congress can do is a simple yes or no vote -- and there will be so many goodies in there that it will be difficult for them to reject the entire agreement.

The USTR and President Obama have been talking about the importance of getting this fast track authority from Congress for years -- but nothing has really come of it, nor has there been a direct public request. That suggests the administration knows it doesn't have the votes. In the past couple of months, the lobbying effort for getting fast track authority has ramped up a lot. While I still fear that Congress will cave on this, in the past few days, a group of 22 House Republicans and a (somewhat shocking) group of 151 House Democrats have sent separate letters to the White House, saying that they're opposed to granting fast track authority. Basically, it appears that Congress might actually be standing up for itself (shocking) on this issue, rather than just caving. That's nearly, though not quite, half of the House. It's not enough yet, but it does show that this isn't going to be easy (which again explains why there's been no real direct request yet).

The Republican letter focuses on the fact that Congress is supposed to (as per the Constitution) manage the nation's trade policy -- not the executive branch. The Democrats' letter calls into question the lack of consultation with Congress during this process (directly contradicting the USTR's own bogus claims of "working with Congress." The letter doesn't hold back on criticizing the White House, despite being from the same party:

For some time, members of Congress have urged your administration to engage in broader and deeper consultations with members of the full range of committees of Congress whose jurisdiction touches on the numerous issues being negotiated. Many have raised concerns relating to reports about the agreement’s proposed content. While your Administration’s goal was to sign a TPP FTA at the October 2013 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, we believe that to date the process has failed to provide adequate consultation with Congress.

Such opportunity for input from Congress is critical as the TPP FTA will include binding obligations that touch upon a wide swath of policy matters under the authority of Congress.

It later notes that fast track authority "is simply not appropriate for 21st Century agreements."

A NY Times story about the letters notes that there's a lot of anger that the USTR has blocked Congressional staffers from even being able to take part in the negotiations or the discussions -- something we've discussed over the past couple years.

The amazing thing here is that this mess that the USTR and President Obama are in right now over TPP was easily avoidable. Rather than negotiating in secret, and only sharing drafts with a select group of deep industry insiders, they easily could have and should have opened the discussion up publicly. The USTR should have released its own negotiating drafts from the very beginning, so that the public and Congress could weigh in while the process was ongoing. That way, there would be no surprises and no concerns. Instead, they kept the public and Congress out of it entirely -- putting extra special precautions against the public or Congress from finding out what was going on, so that we know the final product will have massive problems. And now they want Congress to just say "Sure, we trust you got it right"? Really? The USTR screwed this one up badly, and it's good to see Congress pushing back on this blatant attempt to usurp Congress' own powers.

Filed Under: congress, copyright, fast track authority, international trade, patents, tpp, trade promotion authority