Tag Archives: Trade Adjustment Assistance

TPP: 13 Democratic Senators Invite Republicans to Make Them Laughing Stocks and More Serious Matters

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Joe Firestone | 8 comments

The cloture vote in the Senate is now done, making the TPA vote itself a mere formality. The vote was 60 – 37 in favor of cloture with 13 of the 14 original Democratic defectors (Ben Cardin was the exception) sticking with the multinational corporations, the President, and all but five of the Republicans in supporting cloture. Supporters of cloture celebrated the bipartisan nature of the vote, as if Americans who lose their jobs and their sovereignty as a consequence of it, and the things it enables, will look more favorably on what they did because both major parties did it. Continue reading →

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged 13 Democratic Senators, congress, Fast-track, John Boehner, laughing stocks, Michael Bennet, Mitch McConnell, Patty Murray, Ron Wyden, TAA, TPA, TPP, Trade Adjustment Assistance, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership

TPP: Will Voters Re-elect Laughing Stocks to the Senate?

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Joe Firestone | 13 comments

Let’s review the devious process for passing the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill devised by the Republicans I outlined in my last post. It has the following steps:

– Step one: the House passes a TPA bill without passing Trade Adjustments Assistance (TAA); then

– Step two: the Republicans in the Senate give assurances to Senate Democrats that TAA will be passed by the Senate and later the House;

– Step three: the Senate then passes the House’s TPA bill, and then sends it to the President; then Continue reading →

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged 14 Democratic Senators, congress, Fast-track, John Boehner, laughing stocks, Michael Bennet, Mitch McConnell, Patty Murray, Ron Wyden, TAA, TPA, TPP, Trade Adjustment Assistance, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership

TPP: Fast –Track Is Back: Shall It Pass?

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Joe Firestone | 1 comment

Under this plan, they say, the President and the Republicans get what they want, and so do the free trade Democrats (as without their saying it do the funders of both parties). In addition, the free trade Democrats have the TAA fig leaf they believe they need to defend them against primary challengers and Republicans who may run against them saying that the sold out American workers and national sovereignty to foreigners.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t It? But here are the process problems with it.

Step one assumes that a clean TPA bill can pass the House. Proponents of this step assume that this will happen because 191 Republicans and 28 Democrats, a total of 219 members of the House, passed such a bill last Friday, June 12th, while 54 Republicans and 157 Democrats, or 211 members voted to defeat it. Continue reading →

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged boehner, clinton, congress, democracy, Democratic Leadership, Fast-track, Pelosi, Republican leadership, ryan, sovereignty, TAA, the House, TPA, TPP, Trade Adjustment Assistance, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership

TPP: Fast –Track, the Next Rounds In Congress

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Joe Firestone | 1 comment

The roll call 126-302 vote (Roll call 361) defeating the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) bill was a result worth a little celebrating on Friday, since it was a very decisive victory on that particular vote, and also stopped the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) fast track bill from being sent to the President’s desk for signature. If the vote on TAA hadn’t failed, it would have been far more difficult (I don’t say impossible as many do) to defeat all manner of “free trade” agreements (aka multinational sovereignty agreements), including the currently scheduled Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Trade in Services (TiSA) agreements over the next year or so.

Everything we know about these agreements is that they would have been a disaster for all but an extremely small segment of the people of the United States. So, we ought to be overjoyed that, for now, fast-track is stalled in the House, and may get pigeon-holed there for quite some time to come, if the re-vote on TAA fails. Still as Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, and Bill Black say in their recent posts, this stall may be short-lived if we don’t keep up the pressure and make sure that the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, along with the President are, unsuccessful in reversing Friday’s vote on the TAA. Continue reading →