Slashdot Mirror
Trade Bill Fails In the House
schwit1 writes: President Obama suffered a major defeat to his Pacific Rim free trade initiative Friday as House Democrats helped derail a key presidential priority despite his last-minute, personal plea on Capitol Hill. "In a remarkable rejection of a president they have resolutely backed, House Democrats voted to kill assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has stood by for four decades. By doing so, they brought down legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress — before it could even come to a final vote." This was after Silicon Valley heavyweights made a last minute push to pass the bill and the White House got personal with many Democratic lawmakers.
RTFM, this isn't TPP or any of those treaties. This is some other small sacrificial lamb so everyone stops paying attention.
the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress
It is important to realize here that this does not mean that the bills would be automatically passed, rather that congress either has to say "yes" or "no," they can't add pork to the bill (like they tried on this one).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Right, this isn't a treaty, it's the president's authority to "fast-track" trade bills (like the TPP, TTIP and newly-revealed TiSA) past congress that was shot down.
The TTP should be a Treaty, but what it is instead is a secret agreement that Congress would vote on as a regular bill, not a Treaty. The whole point of "fast track" is that it wouldn't be approved even on this basis, so the President needs advance approval on an agreement with terms that are not final and in any case cannot be legally revealed in public. (Congressmen and women have to go to a special room to read them, and can't take notes out.)
Never mind that this "trade agreement" really just represents corporations trying to get things through the back door they could never get through Congress directly, even if it just contained recipes for Apple pie it should be opposed by anyone who cares about our Constitutional system of Government. Treaties, or for that matter normal laws, can be negotiated in private, but they need to be discussed and passed in public.
morons who want to weaken or destroy our government are only helping the plutocrats. the power they have over you does not disappear when you weaken or destroy the government, all you do is give them a smaller roster of people to pay off
the problem is not government
the problem is the plutocrats who buy congresswhores and fake regulators
you want to FIX government, not destroy it. cure it of its corruption
if you have less government, less regulation, the power the plutocrats have over you does not disappear. they simply have less people they have to bribe. then they start hiring their own goon squads and turn you into slaves
that's not science fiction, that's well establish american history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
we defeated them with labor movements and unions. but, like you said, since reagan the unions have been broken up. scott walker is killing the last of them. and now the plutocrats are back in charge
now we have to fight the fight of our great grandfathers, all over again
the problem is legalized corruption in the usa. we need REGULATION. actual regulation, not corrupt regulation controlled by the people who are supposed to be regulated
of course that's not perfect, but it is 9,000x better than no regulation and less government
look to canada, the nordic countries: places where they actually have effective government, actual laws that control corruption. and where the people are happier, more socially mobile, and spend far less on healthcare and education than we do
in the usa we have a supreme court who in 2010 said "money is speech" and so the rich now have the only real effective speech in the usa. probably the most anti-american and destructive event in the history of the usa. not the war of 1812, not the civil war, not pearl harbor, not 911: the most anti-american event in the history of this country was 2010's citizens united
you want to strengthen your government, and have strong anti-corruption laws passed
that's the only power you really have: your government. YOUR government, not the corrupted piece of shit we currently have. fight to get it back
fix it, don't destroy it (morons who dream of shooting it out in the woods a la the second amendment and revolution are simply dead people waking: you don't have the numbers nor the firepower, and revolutions are far far worse than our current problems regardless)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's sort of how the libertarian viewpoint evolves, I guess. Like Reagan started out as a democrat, presumably because he cared about people and favored social reforms. Then after living through the Communist purges in the McCarthy era, he realized that more government power means more chances for government abuse. Which is why he came to say, "Government is not the solution....government is the problem." As many people like to say, the NSA is a greater threat to US liberty than Al Qaeda.
So, McCarthyism traumatized him so much that, after being FBI informant reporting on people's political beliefs, he then joined the party that fostered McCarthy, and subsequently used similar techniques against student protesters and pot smokers, which was the foundation of his actual political career, as opposed to his sound bites? Sure, whatever you say.
Apparently it was not a personal plea, it was a 40 minute condescending lecture.
Sadly, it isn't that simple. Basically what happened is that the Senate passed a bill (62-37) that coupled the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) extension with an amendment that extended a worker retraining program. In the House the bills were decoupled. The vote rejected the *retraining* bill (but passed the TPA bill) which effectively requires a revote by the senate to grant TPA separately (if the goal is to get it in a form for the president to sign it rather than just blame someone for its failure to pass).
The extension alluded to by the OP is that there is an extension clause in the bill that allows the president to request an extension from 2018 to 2021, but the extension must be requested before June 30, 2018. If either house can pass a bill that rejects this extension, it is considered denied. FWIW, a similar extension clause has been in most TPA that have been granted in the past and were generally put in as a safety in case negotiations schedules are not maintained.
The only foreseeable situation that this affects is if one party were in control of both houses and the presidency, the out-party could then still theoretically filibuster a vote on a negotiated treaty in the Senate if the TPA authority was not in effect. However, with the recent change in filibuster rules of the senate regarding nominations by the democrats (the so-called 'nuclear-option' that was exercised), it isn't inconceivable that filibustering a treaty could trigger a similar 'nuclear' option in the senate if it came down to it, so it may not even matter in practice and is kind of a red herring.
As to why TPA is necessary, it of course isn't, but not having it allows a few members of congress to essentially hold the enabling legislation for a treaty hostage by offering amendments or failing to issue a committee report to allow a floor vote. Since adding an amendment would force the negotiators back to the table, it is presumed that other treaty parties would never offer their best level of concessions during ordinary negotiations (saving them to counter future nit-picking terms offered by rouge legislators) resulting in a sub-optimal agreement for us.
The TPA isn't like the war powers resolution in that it is a bill that affects the rules congress applies to itself by simply limiting debate, amendments and other procedural measures (which it is of course free to do to itself and has done many times in the past). The WPR is hotly debated as being unconstitutional in that it appears allows the president to take unilateral action and report on it later without action from congress. Also, the TPA also has many provisions in it directs negotiations a certain way and if the president ignores them, the TPA is effectively revoked (debate and amendments are then allowed in these areas). Unlike the WPR, the TPA allows congress to reject a treaty *before* it takes effect (not after the fact like the WPR).
Yes, and unions don't abuse their power *rolleyes*. I live in what one of your few remaining old-school conservatives, Patrick Buchanan, with only slight hyperbole described as Soviet Canuckistan, and I beg to differ. The unions in Ontario and BC have caused tremendous economic damage. Their achievements are perfectly exemplified by virtually every group of road workers you pass by: one guy working, three-four people watching. I never saw such inefficiency in the several years I lived in the US (outside of government bureaucracy). Canada ranks very low in terms of productivity per capita, and it's clear why.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."