Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated both previous president did not have Fast Track. The statement about this being the first time Fast Track is not granted to a president is a lie.
Former President Clinton submitted Fast Track twice and both time the legislature voted it down.
Former President Bush was denied Fast Track as well.
Minority Speaker Pelosi will be voting against it.
Paul Ryan has no clue. He states there has to be approval of Fast Track to keep it in the legislature. He is such a liar. The only reason he is still in office is because he ran for Vice President. No one needs his help.
"The global rules for any trade economy is being written right now without the USA." That is buloney. The world economy does not run without the USA.
Let's get this clear. Fast Track is a way for the legislature to wash their hands of responsibility for trade agreements.
Fast Track (click here) was an extreme and rarely-used procedure initially created by
President Richard Nixon to get around public debate and congressional
oversight. Fast Track is how we got into the job-killing,
wage-flattening North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Thanks to Fast Track, NAFTA and the WTO included terms that promote the offshoring of U.S. jobs to low-wage countries.
President Obama knows how he wants to structure these agreements. When he submits those agreements (with Fast Track) to congress they will have sold out labor (benefiting Wall Street profits) while upholding more stringent environmental regulations for other countries. The terms of the agreements on Fast Track will be irresistible for the Republican cronies so it pass with an up or down vote.
That is how Fast Track authority works. Congress simply has an up or down vote.
If the President can't trust the Congress with global agreements that are well balanced including environmental standards and regulations, then why do it? I makes to sense to agree to standards and regulations when they will be undone, no different than the Citigroup Amendment to the USA budget. Republicans are corrupt. It is the corruption that needs to be dealt with before any trade agreement can go forward.
The answer to corruption is not to allow it, it is to expose it and reject it. The Republicans are using coercion to achieve an end. Americans aren't afraid of the fight and we have only recently have been seeing unemployment rates in the 5% range.
Fast Track proves how lazy the Congress actually has become. They are push button now, with Fast Track they'll be able to vote on holiday.
Fast Track also empowered executive branch officials advised by large
corporations to skirt Congress and the public and use secretive "trade"
agreements to roll back a wide range of non-trade policies on which our
families rely for safe food, a clean environment, affordable medicines,
financial stability and more.
Fast Track is a corrupt law to begin with and then to believe it will ever uphold environmental standards is nonsense.
Bush never said it right. It goes like this, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
When Ryan lies, jobs can say good-bye.
TAA is voted down.
The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program (click here) is a federal program
that provides a path for employment growth and opportunity through aid
to US workers who have lost their jobs as a result of foreign trade.
The TAA program seeks to provide these trade-affected workers with
opportunities to obtain the skills, resources, and support they need to
become reemployed. The program benefits and services that are available
to individual workers are administered by the states through agreements
between the Secretary of Labor and each state Governor. Program
eligibility, technical assistance, and oversight are provided by the US
Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration's Office of
Trade Adjustment Assistance.
TPA (Fast Track) passed.
Every $1 billion (click here) in exports of U.S. goods and services supports more than 5,000 U.S. jobs. In 2012, exports of U.S. goods and services supported an estimated 9.8 million American jobs, including 25 percent of all manufacturing jobs. Expanded exports have added 1.3 million American jobs since 2009, and those export-supported jobs pay 13 to 18 percent higher than
the national average wage. The way to support more of these
high-paying jobs is to expand trade and investment opportunities. And
the way to make sure that happens is to support TPA.
US Chamber of Commerce (click here) provides a website where the number of trade supported jobs exists.
What they don't talk about is the jobs that disappear because they are not linked to trade. Factories and shops close and the economy takes a down turn because there are jobs that disappear.
Sure trade related jobs will be within these agreements, but, the people that work for a living aren't trade related. In Texas, less than 700,000 jobs are trade related. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statics there are 13,154,900 jobs in Texas with a population of over 26 million. That means there are 12,454,900 jobs completely unprotected from the trade agreements.
In California the TPP will protect a little more than 900,000 jobs. There is a population in California of 38.8 million Americans. There are 18,953,700 jobs in California. That means 18,053,700 jobs are unprotected.
The population in Michigan is 9.9 million Americans. There are 4,740,600 jobs in Michigan. There are 178,875 trade related jobs in Michigan. That means 4,561,725 jobs are at risk with the trade agreements.
The trade agreements are about Wall Street and greater wealth, while the USA Middle Class loses more ground and dissolves job security to the Middle Class. Then the political sphere wonders why Americans don't come out to vote. What difference does it make?
June 11, 2015
The House (click here) is set to vote on a quirky sequence of trade bills beginning
Thursday and going into Friday. That sequence was negotiated between
Speaker John A. Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,
and it was supposed to allay Democratic concerns about a Medicare
offset in the TPA bill while also not requiring the Senate to vote on it
again....
The GOP assault against Medicare.
April 15, 2015
By Peter Sullivan
The
Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) bill helps workers displaced by trade
and provides a tax credit to help pay for health insurance. It was
rolled out in addition to a proposal to give President Obama
“fast-track” authority on trade.
The healthcare
providers object to the TAA bill including a 0.25 percent cut in
Medicare payments in fiscal year 2024, which amounts to a $700 million
cut, according to the Congressional Budget Office....
The Middle Class and the Poor are in the crosshairs of the Republicans in all their bills. This is the first time Medicare attacks are hidden in a major bill. This makes the total costs of Medicare cuts 2.25% since the Sequester.
The Sequester was passed to assist in Republican priorities to reduce the National Debt. Not the deficit. But, these Medicare monies are going to support a Republican trade authority that will cause the loss of good paying jobs.
It is amazing to realize the TPP is not accessible in a meaningful way to legislators, yet, the IRS is raided by hackers.
China does not need a trade agreement to 'up their game.' China made a conscience decision to increase the quality of life of it's citizens. China now has a Middle Class that is growing in number when none existed before. There was no need to leverage power over China to move their leaders to take the well being of their citizens seriously. It is all nonsense. China with a far higher number of citizens within it's borders than all other countries, with the exception of India, did what no one thought would ever happen. If China can do it, every other country on the planet can do it, too.
As the Middle Class in China grows into a larger percentage of it's people, the country is proud of itself and it didn't compromise anything. The Chinese people want CO2 controlled. Do you believe that. People with profound poverty want Earth's environment to return to balance. The Chinese people are good friends to the rest of the world as it works on it's human rights issues and changes the outcomes for it's people.
Do you know China makes their own solar panels? It is going to be easy for the people of China to change their methods of achieving reductions in CO2. Easy. The leaders know it, too. And what does the USA do? COMPLAIN.
