{"id":159093,"date":"2015-06-13T03:49:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T03:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=159093"},"modified":"2015-06-13T13:37:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-13T13:37:59","slug":"stopping-obamas-legacy-trade-deals-did-reid-finally-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/stopping-obamas-legacy-trade-deals-did-reid-finally-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Stopping Obama’s “Legacy” ‘Trade’ Deals: Did Reid Finally Do It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

President Obama has many times made clear to congressional Democrats that the most important thing in the \u201clegacy\u201d that he hopes to leave behind from his Presidency is his big-three \u2018trade\u2019 deals: TPP with Asia, TTIP with Europe, and TISA for international services including banking and insurance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is, indeed, the most ambitious international economic agenda that has ever been pushed by any U.S. President. (It\u2019s not about \u201ctrade\u201d; it\u2019s about transferring democratic national sovereignty to dictatorial corporate international sovereignty<\/span><\/a>.) And the leading Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid, has called it\u00a0\u201cinsane,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0because Bill Clinton\u2019s much smaller but otherwise similar NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) sent so many jobs abroad, and so hollowed-out the American economy, that it significantly caused the soaring economic inequality during the Bush-Obama years<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first thing that Reid did to kill those \u2018trade\u2019 deals \u2013 while he was still the Senate\u2019s Majority Leader in 2014 and was thus able to prevent the enabling act, called \u201cFast Track,\u201d to pass in the U.S. Senate \u2013 was to block that \u201cFast Track Trade Promotion Authority,\u201d which he possessed then the power to block, as the Senate\u2019s Majority Leader, because there were more Democrats than Republicans in the Senate, and so Democrats chose the Senate\u2019s leader. I headlined at the time (which was on 30 January 2014),\u00a0“Harry Reid Effectively Kills\u00a0Obama’s TPP and TTIP\u00a0International Trade Deals.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After Reid did that, Obama\u2019s only hope to pass those \u2018trade\u2019 deals through Congress would be for Reid to lose his position as the Majority Leader in the Senate \u2013 in other words, for voters to elect more Republicans than Democrats to the Senate in the 2014 elections \u2013 and this is exactly what happened: Obama in 2014 received the Republican victory that he needed in the Senate, in order for his legacy to be able to become what he hoped it would be: these \u2018trade\u2019 deals (which would cause America\u2019s soaring wealth-inequality to soar even more). (He probably heaved a private sigh of relief at \u2018his\u2019 Party\u2019s losses in November 2014.) Republican Senator Mitch McConnell thus replaced Reid in that position. McConnell, of course, passionately supports Obama\u2019s \u2018trade\u2019 deals; and, so, after the November 2014 mid-term elections, it seemed that Barack Obama would, despite Reid\u2019s opposition, finally be racing toward his Presidency\u2019s finish-line with the high likelihood of winning his \u201clegacy,\u201d which would make Bill Clinton\u2019s legacy seem tiny by comparison \u2013 and Bill and Hillary Clinton made $25 million in just speakers\u2019 fees for merely the year 2014; so, Obama\u2019s equivalent at a similar time in his retirement might be perhaps a hundred million dollars yearly, just in speaking fees alone, for what would then become his historically unprecedented achievement in serving the perhaps one hundred Americans who control half of the world\u2019s largest international corporations and who would be perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars richer because of Obama\u2019s then-successful efforts on their behalf<\/span><\/a>. Those people are grateful to their biggest servants, and so it\u2019s not at all difficult to understand the reason why Obama was seeking to have this type of legacy, as his own. He aspired to become the super-Clinton.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is how Harry Reid was finally enabled perhaps to kill those deals, even though he no longer runs the Senate:<\/span><\/p>\n

In May, Reid made a deal with the new Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, that Reid would be able to get enough Democratic Senators to vote with the Republicans to pass Fast Track only if it included \u201cTrade Adjustment Assistance\u201d (TAA) a slight assistance to the workers who would lose their jobs due to these \u2018trade\u2019 deals. This idea went against the grain of Republicans (who contemptuously call that \u201cwelfare\u201d<\/span><\/a>), but McConnell was finally persuaded to accept it so long as its \u201cpay for\u201d (in order not to increase federal spending) would come out of the hides of other<\/i> poor and middle class Americans, not<\/i> the rich \u2013 and the longtime dream of Republicans has been especially to cripple Medicare; so, cutting Medicare was McConnell\u2019s demand; and, on that basis, Reid rounded up enough Senate Democrats to get what McConnell wanted \u2013 Fast Track with TAA and Medicare cuts \u2013 through the Senate and off to the House, to approve. Everybody at the time thought that it was a shocking sell-out, that Democrats provided the additional votes which were necessary in order to pass that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two phenomenally well-connected and knowledgeable pseudonymous bloggers, \u201cYves Smith\u201d in the field of finance, and \u201cGaius Publius\u201d in the field of politics, headlined on June 12th,\u00a0“Gaius Publius: Nancy Pelosi\u00a0Got a TPP Talking-To from\u00a0Her Caucus, Plus Where We\u00a0Are on Fast Track,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and \u201cGaius\u201d called this Medicare-cut \u201cthe Medicare Poison Pill,\u201d because it\u2019s the thing that some Democrats who otherwise would have voted for the TAA bill, could not vote for it, because they\u2019d then be challenged in primaries by a Democratic contender who\u2019d say \u201cThat\u2019s the person who voted to reduce your Medicare benefits.\u201d The excuse from the incumbent in such a primary \u2013 \u201cI had to do that in order to help the workers who will be displaced by the Obama trade bills that I was helping to fast-track into law\u201d \u2013 wouldn\u2019t do them much good; they might even lose their seats, no matter how much money that some appreciative billionaires would be donating to those Democrats’ re-election campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there was yet another, though lesser \u201cpoison pill,\u201d which caused a few Republicans to peel away from Obama\u2019s \u201clegacy\u201d legislation; and this was Reid\u2019s having also gone along with McConnell\u2019s need to serve McConnell\u2019s big export clients, especially GE and Boeing, by reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, a big subsidy to exporters. A few libertarian Republicans would refuse to go along with that, because they oppose any subsidies, not even to the rich. Or, as the\u00a0Heritage Foundation said,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cTPA [Trade Promotion Authority] has gotten bogged down in the politics of protectionism [the Export-Import Bank] and welfare spending [TAA].\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

So, because TAA died, Fast Track died; and, because Fast Track died, Obama\u2019s \u2018trade\u2019 bills (TPP, TTIP, & TISA) probably won\u2019t be able to pass.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe Obama\u2019s hope of becoming a billionaire died along with it, ending in failure his life\u2019s personal business-plan (or career-aspiration): Obama has always had big plans for himself, and he has had an excellent background for a potential billionaire-class<\/span><\/a> type of operator<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nancy Pelosi, the leading Democrat in the House, was doing all she could to round up enough Democratic votes for Fast Track, but wasn\u2019t willing to vote for it herself unless her vote would be the one that would produce the win and so move the bill to the President\u2019s desk. As \u201cGaius Publius\u201d headlined on June 4th, \u201cNancy Pelosi Is Whipping \u2018Almost Daily\u2019 for TPP.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Like Obama and the Clintons, she\u2019s a Republican \u2018Democrat,\u2019 and thus needs to be able to blame the overt Republicans for America\u2019s decline. She won\u2019t publicly join in it unless that turns out to be the only way that the President\u2019s plan can become law. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/span> was the final vote in the House, which killed TAA, by 302 to 126 (HR1314). This vote meant that only a Fast Track without TAA can be voted on. But such a Fast Track will be rejected by the Senate \u2013 it\u2019s not in the bill that the Senate passed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/span> was the House vote on that doomed version of Fast Track. It passed with two votes more than needed, and with 28 Democrats saying \u201cAye\u201d instead of the initially estimated 20; so, 28 Democrats were willing to join 191 Republicans to pass Obama\u2019s trade bills without assisting the displaced workers, but also without cutting Medicare. Republicans got the numbers they needed, with two to spare, but for a version of Fast Track that won\u2019t get enough Democratic votes to pass in the Senate.<\/span><\/p>\n

USA Today<\/i> reported<\/span><\/a> that \u201cPelosi suggested one path out of the tangle: Tying passage of the trade deal to a job-creating highway bill that Democrats would support.\u201d She won\u2019t give up; she\u2019s still trying to pass Obama\u2019s \u201clegacy\u201d into law. And that report also said the final revote in the House (attempting to approve a Fast Track bill that can pass the Senate) \u201cneeds to come next week, or it probably won’t come at all. But when the congressional leadership and the president agree that when something must pass, it usually does \u2013 even if some arms are broken in the process.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

That \u201cbreaking of arms\u201d might entail a huge burst of campaign contributions from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others of Washington\u2019s big lobbies. After all, the benefits for the super-rich could be in the trillions of dollars on this. An extra billion spent buying members of Congress might turn out to be a bargain for those sponsors.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the custom has it, children are not supposed to see the way sausage is made \u2013 nor the way legislation is made. If \u2018democracy\u2019 is just a superficial overlay upon an underlying oligarchy<\/span><\/a>, then its myth must be maintained, in order to sustain the racket. But, maybe Harry Reid was determined that the racket has gone too far and must not go as far as Obama (along with, principally, the overt Republicans) has been fighting to take it. Enough is enough \u2013 or, more like, too much<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Republicans are delighted to point out<\/span><\/a>, their leaders in Congress \u2013 and Nancy Pelosi \u2013 have higher approval ratings from the American public than Harry Reid does. Unlike Obama and the Clintons, popularity just hasn\u2019t been his thing. There is no gratitude to a politician who really does place the public\u2019s interest first. It\u2019s a thankless type of virtue. Polls show this. The popularity contests get won by others, who care more about that than they do about the public\u2019s welfare. This is \u2018democracy\u2019 in action.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of \u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Eric Zuesse President Obama has many times made clear to congressional Democrats that the most important thing in the \u201clegacy\u201d that he hopes to leave behind from his Presidency is his big-three \u2018trade\u2019 deals: TPP with Asia, TTIP with Europe, and TISA for international services including banking and insurance.\u00a0 It is, indeed, the most ambitious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":153245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,96,962,535,526,844,843,694,49,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-159093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-fast-track","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-propaganda","15":"tag-tisa","16":"tag-tpp","17":"tag-ttip","18":"tag-usa-news","19":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}