Fast Track And Trade Policy: Obama’s Republican Collaborators
Article publisher:
VDare
Article date:
21 April 2015
Article category:
National News
Medium
Article Body:
he GOP swept to victory in November by declaring that this imperial presidency must be brought to heel, and President Obama’s illicit seizures of Congressional power must end.
That was then. Now is now.
This week, Congress takes up legislation to cede His Majesty full authority to negotiate the largest trade deal in history, the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, and to surrender Congress’ right to amend any TPP that Obama might bring home.
Why the capitulation? Why would Republicans line up to kiss the royal ring? Is Middle America clamoring for “fast track”? Are blue-collar workers marching in the streets to have Congress grant “Trade Promotion Authority Now!” to Barack Obama?
No. Pressure for fast track is coming from two sources.
First, the editorial pages of papers like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post that truckle to the transnational corporations that provide the advertising revenue stream keeping them alive.
Second, Obama is relying on Congressional Republicans who, for all their bravado about defying his usurpations, know on which side their bread is buttered. It’s the Wall Street-K Street side.
Fast track is the GOP payoff to its bundlers and big donors...
What the nation needs is not only a rejection of fast track, but also a trade policy that puts country before corporate profit, workers before Wall Street, and America first.