On Sunday, June 14th, Hillary Clinton came out publicly for the first time in support of President Obama’s trade-deals — TPP with Asia, TTIP with Europe, and on TISA with all nations to lower the standards on banking and insurance and to privatize government services.
What’s at issue in Congress right now —
and thus what she was responding to — is whether or not to grant U.S.
President Barack Obama the “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority,” which
will produce expedited passage for his trade-deals; the trade-deals
themselves are not even before Congress yet, and have not even been made
public, though the first one up for consideration will be TPP with
Asia; but that deal, like the others, will virtually certainly go down
to defeat unless the President first wins “Fast Track,” which is the
issue now.
The reason “Fast Track” is the issue now
before Congress, is that it’s actually the only feasible way for Obama
to be able to win congressional passage of TPP or of any of his
big-three trade-deals. It’s crucial because it reduces the
Constitutionally required two-thirds of Senators voting for a given
trade-deal, down to merely 50% of Senators (plus VP Joe Biden) needed to
vote for it, in order for the deal to become U.S. law — and there is no
way possible for this Senate to vote two-thirds for either TPP with
Asia, TTIP with Europe, or TISA for “Services.” But 50% can safely be
assured (especially with the gargantuan political-campaign donations
that are pouring into Congress to back it).
Clinton said that it’s so important for Obama to win Fast Track authority, that, “I am
willing to try now to see whether you can push to get rid of
the objectionable parts, to drive a harder bargain on some of the
other parts,” so that Congress will grant the President Fast
Track Trade promotion Authority. (Her underlying assumption, which she
knows to be false, is that to “drive a harder bargain” is “a harder
bargain” against foreign nations, not against the publics in both the U.S. and all nations.
International corporations will benefit enormously. But Obama is not
negotiating against them; he’s negotiating against the public, for the
international corporations.)
She said that
the President should work with congressional Democrats “starting with
Nancy Pelosi,” to pass Fast Track (though she judiciously avoided even
mentioning “Fast Track,” because she’s aiming for low-information
liberal voters, who — like low-information conservative voters — don’t
even know what the issues actually are, and can therefore be easily
swayed by her words, regardless of what the issues are).
According to
the pseudonymous blogger “Gaius Publius,” who is very well connected
with Democrats in Congress and with their aides: “According to two
sources, in private Pelosi is working ‘almost on a daily basis’ to
get Fast Track to pass, and with it, TPP.”
He further reports: “White House’s secret
weapon on trade: Nancy Pelosi. Administration officials have been so
impressed by Nancy Pelosi’s approach to negotiations over
giving President Barack Obama ‘fast-track’ trade authority that they’ve
started to consider a crazy possibility: She could even vote for it
herself. But only if she has to.”
He explains that she won’t vote for it
herself unless only a single additional ‘Democratic’ House member
(namely, her own vote) is needed in order to get the bill over the hump
and to the President’s desk to sign Fast Track into law. He reports
that, “All she cares about, based on her reported behavior, is
controlling her own appearance, her brand, as being ‘pro-worker,’” so
that she won’t be able to be attacked in a Democratic primary by someone
who is running to the left of her, saying “You sold us out!”
In other words: Nancy Pelosi already is
working hand-in-glove with the White House on this fast-track matter.
Pelosi wants these trade-deals to become U.S. law, just as much as does
Hillary Clinton. But, of course, Democratic voters generally don’t know
this (and she won’t tell them).
A subsequent headline on the matter was, “Gaius Publius: Nancy Pelosi Got a TPP Talking-To from Her Caucus, Plus Where We Are on Fast Track.” It
reported the anger on the part of many House Democrats who don’t like
Pelosi’s double-dealing on this: they were enraged that she wanted Obama
to win Fast Track. They’re strongly against it. It’s why the vote of
Friday was disastrous for the President.
Pelosi tried to do everything she
possibly could in order to win Fast Track for the President. Here is how
she helped, as described by “Gaius Publius”:
In order for any law to be placed upon
the President’s desk for his signature, both houses of Congress — both
the Senate and the House — need first to agree 100% on the contents of
the bill, because a President cannot sign two different versions, only
one, final, version, which has passed both houses the same. Then, he can
sign it.
The Senate has already voted for a “Fast
Track” that includes something called “Trade Adjustment Assistance”
(TAA), which will retrain some of the U.S. workers who will lose their
jobs to foreigners on account of these deals. Democrats in the Senate
demanded TAA. (I previously explained
how that happened.) The leader of the Senate, Republican Mitch
McConnell, had to agree with it in order to achieve any sort of Fast
Track that could pass in the Senate, where few Democrats like what
they’ve seen of TPP — the draft that will come up first if the President
first wins Fast Track. McConnell demanded from Senate Democrats that
the federal money to pay for TAA would come out of the hides of Medicare
benificiaries; and, though reluctantly, enough Democrats in the U.S.
Senate went along with that so the bill could pass in the Senate, and
then go on to the House, where it was voted down on Friday.
What’s key is that, because in the House,
Democrats voted overwhelmingly against TAA (the version that passed in
the Senate, with the Medicare cuts), there’s nothing now that can go
directly to the President for his signature. (This was probably what
Harry Reid in the Senate had expected and planned.)
House Republicans were shocked; Democrats in the House weren’t
accepting the bill that had obtained the support of enough Democrats in
the Senate for it to pass in the Senate.
Republicans, on Friday, June 12th,
responded to that failure (for them and the President) by holding an
immediate vote on Fast Track without any TAA in it; and it barely passed
in the House. However, it cannot go to the President’s desk, because
it’s a different bill than the one the Senate had approved. This was
therefore just a symbolic ‘win’ for House Republicans: it didn’t move
anything toward the President’s desk.
The news media have headlined about Hillary Clinton’s statement, “Clinton urges Obama to work with Pelosi on trade deal,” but Obama has already been doing, and still is doing, precisely that. And the press even headlined things like “Hillary Clinton snubs Obama on trade deal,” which is simply false. Even the headlines sometimes lie.
Hillary Clinton actually supports Barack
Obama’s trade-policy, and even supports the way in which he is trying to
get it through Congress. However, the news-media didn’t report it that
way.
Ms. Clinton is repeating her earlier tactics, in
2008, when she tried to give the impression that she had opposed her
husband Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, though in fact she had earlier bragged
about how great it was for the country and claimed it as if it were her
own. As everyone knows, the Clinton foundation, the Clintons personally,
and the Clinton campaign, and her past political career, have been financed
very heavily by the very same international corporations and Wall
Street banks, and their lobbying firms and accounting firms,
that are now lobbying intensely for President Obama to win Fast Track,
and for him ultimately to win all three of his mega-corporate trade
deals: TPP, TTIP, and TISA.
One independent economic analysis has been done of TPP, and one has been done on TTIP. Both show huge U.S. job-losses and considerable boost to the profits of U.S.-based international corporations.
However, though those U.S. job-losses are
the impacts that are receiving all of the media attention (such as TAA,
to compensate for some of those job-losses), there is an even bigger
issue, which is that all of these trade-deals would transfer democratic
U.S. government sovereignty to regulate in the interests of the public —
sovereignty to protect food-safety, product-safety, workers’ rights,
and the environment, among other things — over to panels of
international lawyers, whose careers will depend upon how well they
serve international corporations. Those ‘arbitrators’ will come up with
rulings that will not be able to be appealed to any court in any
democracy at all. The worst aspect of these ‘trade’ deals would thus be
that transfer of democratic national sovereignty to international
corporate sovereignty. It would replace national democracies with an
internattional corporate dictatorship — an international fascist world
government. And, just like Barack Obama and other Republicans, Hillary
Clinton favors it. (Here is the back-story
of how and why.) However, for her to come right out and admit this
would be suicidal for anyone who is running for the Democratic
Presidential nomination. (It would hand the nomination to Bernie
Sanders, whose whole career has been opposed to these types of ‘trade’
deals.) After all: it was Barack Obama himself, in his primary camppaign
in 2008 against Clinton, who said, “Yesterday,
Sen. Clinton also said I’m wrong to point out that she once supported
NAFTA. But the fact is, she was saying great things about NAFTA until
she started running for president.” He was pretending to oppose these
types of ‘trade’ deals, just as she was. Only he was much more skillful
at it than she is. But they both have the same financial backers, who
give also very heavily — and often even more — to the Republican Party.
Whereas most Democrats in Congress try to
do a decent job for the American people (and this statement is based
upon their voting-records — including their having thus far beaten back
the Republicans, including Obama, on Fast Track), most Democrats who run
for President (just like virtually all Republicans who do) are much
more interested in doing a terrific job for their biggest donors. There
is (sad to say) nothing illegal about that. Whether there is anything
immoral about it is (also sad to say) debated. However, voters should be
skeptical of the honesty of any politician — especially if the
politician is running for congress or (even more) for the White House.
The past record should be the sole basis for evaluating any
candidate for national office; don’t trust merely what they now are
saying. To believe a candidate’s words, divorced from their proven
record in public office, including things that they said previously,
would be foolish. It also would assist the corruptness that already
exists. And it would make immeasurably more difficult any political
victory for any honest person to win those offices; so, it’s extremely
unpatriotic. If a voter doesn’t have the time to investigate on his own
regarding a particular election, that person would be more patriotic to
simply not vote, regarding that particular political post. After all:
one can leave a ballot-line blank, which allows better-informed
individuals to make that given judgment. Because the nation’s fate
depends upon that judgment.
But anyway, don’t believe everything you
read or hear — not even this (and I’ll be delighted if you will check
out every source I’ve linked to, because I am honest; that’s my top
commitment — and it’s also why I always link to my main sources, so that
they can be easily accessed). It’s almost impossible to be successful
as a journalist, regarding serious matters such as these, and to be
employable by large-audience, well-financed, news-media (so I am
entirely independent), because news-media are backed by the corporations
that advertise in them, including by their ‘non-profit’ foundations.
For example, pro-publica, which, like virtually all news-media, receives
all of my news-reports and commentaries, just recently placed mine on
their spam-list. They won’t report to their readers the types of things
that I customarily send to them and report. The level of public trust
may be going down, but it still is way too high. One learns this, as an
independent journalist, on important issues, such as international
matters: the public is too trusting. Scoundrels benefit enormously from
that excess of trust. By contrast, decent politicians suffer major
competitive disadvantage from the excess of trust. Excess of trust gives
the competitive advantage to liars. Unfortunately, ours is not a
society in which trust by the public is warranted. Maybe it once was;
it’s not now.
Please pass this along to friends, and
post it to Facebook and Twitter, so that others can know, too, that
despite what the news-media might be saying, Hillary Clinton supports
Barack Obama’s ‘trade’ agenda, which is actually his mega-corporate
agenda — which she has always shared along with him. If your friends are
going to support her, at least they ought to know what they are
supporting. The links here provide access to the facts.
———-
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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