Sessions Exposes TPP

Senator Reads the TPP and Exposes Its Contents; Other Elected Officials Should Do the Same, Posted on May 25, 2015 Written by truth-out.org

Sen­a­tor Jeff Ses­sions (R-AL) is one of the few mem­bers of Con­gress who has taken the time to jump through the hoops and read the Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship (TPP). But, he has gone a step far­ther than other mem­bers — he told mem­bers of Con­gress what he read. He told the truth about what the TPP says and why Con­gress should oppose it in a five page let­ter to his colleagues.

Ses­sions’ action flies in the face of the threats made by the US Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to pros­e­cute elected offi­cials who tell peo­ple what is in the trade agree­ment. Oth­ers should fol­low his exam­ple and get out the truth about the TPP.

The debate in the Sen­ate begins on Tues­day, May 19. This is an oppor­tu­nity for Sen­a­tors to tell their col­leagues the truth about what is in the TPP.  Ses­sions’ “Dear Col­league” let­ter was leaked and reported in Bre­it­bart.  Sen­a­tors from both par­ties may want to take a sim­i­lar approach. Even bet­ter, dur­ing the debate on the Sen­ate floor there will be an oppor­tu­nity for amend­ments that expose prob­lems with the TPP. Sen­a­tors can tell their col­leagues and, through C-SPAN, their con­stituents the truth about what is in the TPP.

How Sen­a­tor Ses­sions Exposed the Truth About TPP

Bre­it­bart has writ­ten two arti­cles on Ses­sions’ rev­e­la­tions. In “Crit­i­cal Alert: Jeff Ses­sions Warns Amer­ica Against Poten­tially Dis­as­trous Obama Trade Deal,” they report:

“‘Con­gress has the respon­si­bil­ity to ensure that any inter­na­tional trade agree­ment entered into by the United States must serve the national inter­est, not merely the inter­ests of those craft­ing the pro­posal in secret,’ Ses­sions’ team writes in a doc­u­ment that lays out the top five con­cerns with the Obama trade deal. ‘It must improve the qual­ity of life, the earn­ings, and the per-capita wealth of every­day work­ing Amer­i­cans. The sus­tained long-term loss of mid­dle class jobs and incomes should com­pel all law­mak­ers to apply added scrutiny to a ‘fast-track’ pro­ce­dure wherein Con­gress would yield its leg­isla­tive pow­ers and allow the White House to imple­ment one of largest global finan­cial agree­ments in our his­tory — com­pris­ing at least 12 nations and nearly 40 per­cent of the world’s GDP.’ …

“The Ses­sions doc­u­ment then goes point-by-point for five full pages through the TPA trade deal, lay­ing out why it wouldn’t help Amer­i­cans — rather, it would likely hurt Amer­i­can work­ers — and why the deal doesn’t in fact pro­vide Con­gress with more power over trade despite talk­ing points from the Obama trade deal’s proponents …”

The sec­ond arti­cle in Bre­it­bart, “Only Two Repub­li­cans Admit They Have Actu­ally Read Secret Obama Trade Deal — Both Unsup­port­ive” reports on a sur­vey they did of Sen­ate Repub­li­cans where they asked three ques­tions: (1) Have you read the TPP, specif­i­cally the ‘liv­ing agree­ment’ in the trade deal that allows the deal to be changed and coun­tries added with­out con­gres­sional review? (2) Does the Sen­a­tor agree with Sen. Ses­sions’ call to make the TPP avail­able to the pub­lic? And, (3) Will the Sen­a­tor vote for fast track Trade Pro­mo­tion Author­ity (TPA) if the TPP hasn’t been stripped of the ‘liv­ing agree­ment’ sec­tion that would allow coun­tries to amend the deal with­out Con­gres­sional approval, and to even add coun­tries (like China, if they wanted to) to the deal with­out Con­gres­sional approval?

Bre­it­bart reports that one addi­tional Sen­a­tor, James Lank­ford (R-OK) was sched­uled to read the TPP on Fri­day, May 16.  Inter­est­ingly, the Okla­homa leg­is­la­ture recently passed a res­o­lu­tion urg­ing their fed­eral rep­re­sen­ta­tives to vote against fast track trade authority.

While the US Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive has threat­ened mem­bers of Con­gress with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for telling oth­ers what is in the TPP, they have made no threat to Sen­a­tor Ses­sions. No doubt if they did so, fast track and the TPP would be dead because the years of work by the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to move this for­ward in secret would be over, and as the first trade rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, Ambas­sador Ron Kirk, told the media “if the Amer­i­can peo­ple knew what was in this agree­ment it would never become law.”

The Truth About Trade Is Needed Right Now

We are in the crit­i­cal phase of debate about the Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship and other rigged cor­po­rate trade agree­ments.  While Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH) has promised to pub­lish all bills before they are voted on, he has not even read the TPP and def­i­nitely has not required it be made pub­lic.  While the fast track bill can be read, the TPP is dif­fer­ent; elected offi­cials have lim­ited access to it and they are not allowed to dis­cuss what they read.  So, the Con­gress is tying its hands on the TPP and other deals, with­out know­ing what is in them and thereby shirk­ing their con­sti­tu­tional respon­si­bil­ity under the Com­merce Clause which directs Con­gress “To reg­u­late Com­merce with for­eign Nations.”

Now, it becomes even more impor­tant because Pres­i­dent Obama has repeat­edly chided mem­bers of Con­gress for being inac­cu­rate about what is in the TPP, even com­par­ing Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D-MA) to Sarah Palin talk­ing about death pan­els.  He makes the claim that Con­gress does not know what it is talk­ing about while keep­ing the agree­ment secret and dif­fi­cult for elected offi­cials and their staff to read. On top of that Obama and his admin­is­tra­tion con­sis­tently put out false and mis­lead­ing state­ments about the agree­ment.  One won­ders, and I hope the media begins to ask him, whether Pres­i­dent Obama has read the agree­ment? As Rep. Louise Slaugh­ter (D-NY) said in response: “We know exactly what we’re talk­ing about. My con­cern is that he does not under­stand what’s in it.”

Obama crit­i­cized War­ren for claim­ing that the TPP would under­mine fed­eral reg­u­la­tion of banks. If the lan­guage of the TPP were released we could see if he is accu­rate. But, after their argu­ment on this issue, Cana­dian Finance Min­is­ter, Joe Oliver, bol­stered Warren’s posi­tion by claim­ing that bank­ing reg­u­la­tion that requires banks to invest with only their own money vio­lates NAFTA.

The pres­i­dent has claimed that his deals are the most pro­gres­sive trade agree­ments ever and fix the prob­lems of NAFTA “by mak­ing labor and envi­ron­men­tal pro­vi­sions actu­ally enforce­able.” Yet, a leak of the envi­ron­men­tal chap­ter actu­ally shows the oppo­site — there is no envi­ron­men­tal enforce­ment and the pro­tec­tions are weaker than agree­ments dur­ing the George W. Bush era.

The pres­i­dent also makes the claim that “no trade agree­ment is going to force us to change our laws.” This is an out­ra­geous claim because all pre­vi­ous trade agree­ments have required the US to har­mo­nize its laws with the agree­ment.  How can they not? The TPP, accord­ing to leaks, changes laws around patents and trade­marks. How can the TPP say one thing about intel­lec­tual prop­erty and US law say another? They must be har­mo­nized. Elected offi­cials who have read the text can explain dif­fer­ences between US law and the TPP — what laws will have to change? For exam­ple will pop­u­lar laws favor­ing buy­ing Amer­i­can prod­ucts sur­vive the TPP? The Finance Com­mit­tee refused to approve an amend­ment that would pro­tect Buy America.

Cer­tainly Pres­i­dent Obama knows that his Orga­niz­ing For Amer­ica is being com­pletely mis­lead­ing when in an email: “argued that the term ‘fast track’ for TPA was a mis­nomer because TPA would have to go through Con­gress like any other bill.” OFA and Obama know the debate is not whether fast track has to go through Con­gress in the nor­mal fash­ion but whether trade agree­ments will be fast tracked.  Why would the pres­i­dent and OFA be so obvi­ously mis­lead­ing? Are they desperate?

Ralph Nader has sug­gested that Pres­i­dent Obama debate Sen­a­tor War­ren on the TPP. This would be one way to get to the truth, hear both sides debate in pub­lic so we can all decide for our­selves whether this is an agree­ment that should be fast tracked through Con­gress out­side of the tra­di­tional con­gres­sional process. But a pres­i­dent that has worked for his entire tenure in office to keep the TPP and other rigged agree­ments out of the pub­lic dia­logue will cer­tainly not take up this suggestion.

Con­gress Is in Posi­tion to Expose the TPP

Now, at this key moment in the debate, mem­bers of Con­gress who have taken the time to view the TPP are in a posi­tion to get out the truth.

The debate in the Sen­ate with its open amend­ment process is an oppor­tu­nity to tell the truth about all the issues in the TPP so there can finally be a pub­lic debate about trade agree­ments that will impact every aspect of our lives.

In the House, Repub­li­cans should be shar­ing the com­ments of Sen­a­tor Ses­sions for a solid Repub­li­can cri­tique of fast track for the TPP and other agree­ments. Democ­rats should be high­light­ing key sen­ate amend­ments to their cau­cus to high­light short­com­ings.  And those who have read the TPP should share what they learned in order to strengthen oppo­si­tion to fast track in the face of what will be a mas­sive Obama effort to change their minds.

Those who oppose the TPP have the tools needed to win this debate, stop fast track and stop the TPP and other rigged agree­ments. If we suc­ceed, we will have the oppor­tu­nity to rethink global trade in light of two decades of expe­ri­ence with a failed model. It will be an oppor­tu­nity to develop trade so that it pro­tects the planet and raises the stan­dard of liv­ing for peo­ple around the world. To achieve that oppor­tu­nity, the first task is to expose the truth of what is before us.

Copy­right, Truthout.org. Reprinted with per­mis­sion - http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/30848-senator-sessions-takes-a-bold-step-tells-the-truth-about-the-tpp#14325792172351&action=collapse_widget&id=0&data=

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  Filed Under: Climate Change, Corporatism/Fascism, Federalism/State Sovereignty, Free Market Economics, New World Order, Property Rights, Trade
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