Conservative talk radio host and scholar Mark Levin says no conservative in Congress should vote for the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, which he referred to as a “destroy-the-Constitution deal” that would enable President Barack Obama to take “us to the fast track to hell.”
Speaking to host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, Levin said that even people “who are required to comply with it are not going to comprehend” the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which is 6,000 pages long, 2 million words, long, and 30 chapters.
“No conservative—none—in the Senate or the House should vote for this based on the nature of this phony deal,” he said. “It’s too long. It’s too massive. It empowers the government. It empowers the bureaucracy… It empowers other governments and bureaucracies too.”
Levin blasted the agreement, saying “this is not a trade deal. This is a destroy-the-Constitution deal.”
Regarding the treaty clause, Levin said that even though the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to take the case involving NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), “that doesn’t mean the Senate should lie down for this crap.”
He said “what the Senate should say is, ‘we say it’s a treaty… we made a terrible mistake with this phony fast track stuff.’”
“You never give Obama fast track,” Levin declared. “Because what does he do? He takes us to the fast track to hell.”
He said lawmakers in Congress should just admit that “our constituency can’t possibly know what’s in it. The Constitution does not grant this kind of power to foreign governments and our government, so I’m voting no, period.”
Levin noted that the Founding Fathers wanted two-thirds of the Senators present to bring in the full body politic regarding “any major agreement with foreign countries — trade or national security.” He said the Framers decided that “no one man should have the power to commit all the people of the United States to foreign entanglements unless the people of the United States through the United States Senate agree to it.”
“Whatever’s in it doesn’t matter,” Levin said of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. “We have to stop the central government from ramming… massive laws and phony treaties… down our throats.”
Levin said that “Barack Obama hasn’t read this. No Member of the Senate—their staffs may break it up and look at it—has read this. No Member of the House is going to read this.” He pointed out that the Constitution is 4,543 words and 7,591 words with amendments “and they still screw around with it and pretend they don’t understand it.”
“As a citizen, I’m tired of the government, I’m tired of phony experts, I’m tired of professors telling me how to make widgets, where to send widgets, what to charge for widgets, who can buy widgets,” Levin said. “We don’t need two million words to do that. This is another Obama legacy item… Anything that man touches should be opposed because he is not to be trusted.”
Levin also asked, “does anything Obama or this government do promote capitalism? So it’s not a pro-trade deal either.”
Levin added that “the Constitution exists to serve the people. It exists to protect the people from a centralized government. When the Framers met, that’s what the tried to figure out.” He pointed out that when the Framers initially met in Annapolis, they wanted to figure out how to promote commerce and trade, which means “the Constitution’s birth was to promote commerce and trade.”
“This is a disaster,” Levin reiterated. “It’s a disaster from a Constitutional standpoint.”
Bannon pointed out that Breitbart News Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer explained in his bestselling book, Extortion, that the scam on Capitol Hill is that the staffers who write and work with the lawyers on the language of these massive bills then punch out and become consultants “because the bills are so complicated that you need a consultant to interpret it for you.”
“This is just another rat’s nest,” Levin said, before asking, “how are small businesses, how are truckers, how are people on assembly lines, how are consumers supposed to comprehend what’s going on here?”
Levin said the deal “isn’t even a treaty” and “the people of the United States don’t even know what the hell is in it.”
Bannon mentioned that UK Prime Minister David Cameron has spoken about needing reforms in European Union, which was initially formed under the premise of reducing trade barriers, because “they’ve lost their sovereignty to Brussels.”
Senator Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has pointed out that, when one looks at the commissioners and ministers that are being set up, the Trans-Pacific Partnership enters America into a “partnership with the Pacific [region] where we are a junior partner.”
Levin simply said that, “anything that’s two million words long, you vote against it. It never empowers the individual. It doesn’t empower anything.”
“I’m more of a free trader than you are,” Levin told Bannon. “That said, I don’t believe in free trade with the enemy. I believe in our export control scheme… so our enemy doesn’t get our technology, so countries that are hostile to us we don’t even trade with them—that’s good.”
Levin, who was a Reagan administration official in the Justice Department, said that even then “Silicon Valley and the Chamber of Commerce were constantly pressuring the president to reduce those [export controls].”
He said there are two sets of controls—one is handed by the Commerce Department and the State Department deals with those regarding countries that are hostile to the United States—and the Reagan administration was “always being told to reduce the threshold.”
“I’m not ideological about this,” Levin said. “We have enemy countries—they don’t get crap. We have other countries we’re not sure about—they don’t get stuff. We have allies—yes, we should trade with [our allies] … so long as they have export control processes in place too.”
Levin also mentioned the “harmonized tariff schedule” and pointed out that “we put tons of tariffs” on stuff and “almost everything that comes into this country has tariffs on it.”
Ultimately, Levin said that the “pro-American position is to support capitalism, to support the Constitution, to support the individual and to support sovereignty.”
Listen to Levin’s Breitbart News Daily interview here:
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