Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has issued yet another clarion call to House Republicans urging them to abandon GOP leadership’s desperate ploys to bring Obamatrade back to life and instead vote against Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and stop President Obama from getting even more power in his final years in office.
“The House is preparing to vote again tomorrow on providing fast-track executive authority to the President. If adopted, it will be sent immediately to the Senate for final consideration,” Sessions said, before correcting misconceptions peddled far and wide by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
“It is essential that there be no misunderstanding: fast-track preapproves the formation of not only the unprecedentedly large Trans-Pacific Partnership, but an unlimited number of such agreements over the next six years,” Sessions said. “Those pacts include three of the most ambitious ever contemplated. After TPP comes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, followed by the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), seeking as one its goals labor mobility among more than 50 nations. Together, these three international compacts encompass three-fourths of the world’s GDP. Including the nations whose membership is being courted for after enactment, the countries involved would encompass nearly 90 percent of global GDP. Yet, through fast-track, Congress will have authorized the President to ink these deals before a page of them has been made public. Then, the Executive sends Congress ‘implementing’ legislation to change U.S. law—legislation which cannot be amended, cannot be filibustered, and will not be subjected to the Constitutional requirement for a two-thirds treaty vote.”
Sessions then laid out how several members of Congress didn’t even know about what they were voting on when leadership forced them to vote—and how it’s not too late for Republicans to see the light and oppose the creation of a new global governance.
“According to the European Commission, the TiSA agreement—which most House and Senate members did not know about when they voted—will follow in the footsteps of the WTO’s Trade in Services Provisions, which has already inhibited the U.S. from making needed immigration changes,” Sessions said. “The European Commission says the EU ‘wants as many countries as possible to join the agreement.’ We have already seen how the EU has curtailed sovereignty in Europe; we do not want to follow in its footsteps.”
With regard to TPP, Sessions warned that America has “never seen” anything like it before—and that it’ll force the United States into a version of the European Union he calls “a new Pacific Union.”
“This nation has never seen an agreement that compares to the TPP, which forms a new Pacific Union,” Sessions said. “This is far more than a trade agreement, but creates a self-governing and self-perpetuating Commission with extraordinary implications for American workers and American sovereignty. Such a historic international regulatory Commission should never be fast-tracked, and should never be put on a path to passage until every word has been publicly scrutinized, every question answered, and every last power understood by Congress and the American people.”
It’s unclear what might go down on Thursday when Obamatrade comes back up, but it’s certainly going to be ugly. Of course, if Congress does pass this thing, this will be the sole topic at the top of the political discussion for the next several years and the ramifications for any politician who supports it—by voting for it or voicing public support for it from the campaign trail—may be immeasurable.