Maria Cantwell, Ron Wyden vote to fast-track Trans-Pacific Partnership in Senate Finance

Deeply dis­ap­point­ing news to share tonight: So-called “fast-track” leg­is­la­tion that would pre­vent Con­gress from con­sid­er­ing amend­ments to pri­or to a future vote on rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship is mov­ing for­ward after the U.S. Sen­ate’s Finance Com­mit­tee vot­ed twen­ty to six to advance it.

Among the twen­ty sen­a­tors who vot­ed in favor were Wash­ing­ton’s Maria Cantwell and Ore­gon’s Ron Wyden (who is also the com­mit­tee’s rank­ing mem­ber). Five oth­er Democ­rats joined with them to help the Repub­li­cans advance the bill. One Repub­li­can, Richard Burr of North Car­oli­na, sided with the remain­ing Democrats.

The roll call was as fol­lows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Ron Wyden (OR), Maria Cantwell (WA), Bill Nel­son (FL), Thomas Carp­er (DE), Ben Cardin (MD), Michael Ben­net (CO), Mark Warn­er (VA), Repub­li­cans Orrin Hatch (UT), Chuck Grass­ley (IA), Mike Crapo (ID), Pat Roberts (KS), Mike Enzi (WY), John Cornyn (TX), John Thune (SD), John­ny Isak­son (GA), Rob Port­man (OH), Pat Toomey (PA), Dan Coats (IN), Dean Heller (NV) Tim Scott (SC)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Charles Schumer (NY), Deb­bie Stabenow (MI), Robert Menen­dez (NJ), Sher­rod Brown (D‑OH), Robert Casey (PA), Repub­li­can Richard Burr (NC)

That was­n’t all. As The Hill report­ed, Cantwell did­n’t just vote for fast-track. She also inex­plic­a­bly opposed an bipar­ti­san amend­ment offered by Deb­bie Stabenow and Rob Port­man that would force the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to put enforce­able cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion pro­vi­sions into trade deals. The White House did­n’t like the Stabenow/Portman amend­ment, of course, but that’s to be expected.

Despite hav­ing Ron Wyden’s sup­port, the cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion amend­ment failed on a vote of fif­teen to eleven, thanks to the nay votes of Cantwell and four oth­er Democ­rats. If Democ­rats had stuck togeth­er, the amend­ment would have passed.

“I think there is great eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty out­side the Unit­ed States and I sup­port Trade Pro­mo­tion Author­i­ty,” Cantwell said in a late evening press release sent to NPI and oth­er media out­lets fol­low­ing the com­mit­tee’s vote.

The release did not elab­o­rate on Cantwell’s pro-fast-track stance or offer a ratio­nale for her posi­tion. Instead, it focused on two amend­ments to the bill that Cantwell spon­sored that the com­mit­tee vot­ed to adopt. Cantwell says that these are intend­ed to bol­ster enforce­ment and make it eas­i­er to gath­er labor statistics.

Watch­ing Maria Cantwell and Ron Wyden do the work of the Unit­ed States Cham­ber of Com­merce and Wall Street in the U.S. Sen­ate is more than unset­tling… it’s incred­i­bly dis­turb­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing that Cantwell and Wyden have been such pio­neer­ing lead­ers on issues like Inter­net free­dom.

We’re used to think­ing of them as the good guys. But today, they sided with big indus­try’s armies of lob­by­ists over the peo­ple of the Pacif­ic Northwest.

There is plen­ty of evi­dence show­ing that past trade schemes like NAFTA and CAFTA have result­ed in the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, a stag­ger­ing num­ber of lost jobs, and big­ger trade deficit (PDF).

And the lat­est, best analy­sis of the fast-track, “Trade Pro­mo­tion Author­i­ty” leg­is­la­tion that Oba­ma wants (PDF) shows it’s just as bad as leg­is­la­tion that George W. Bush asked for more than a decade ago and did­n’t get.

Per­haps Sen­a­tor Cantwell has­n’t seen the research… like this fine piece from EPI. Or maybe she has seen it and does­n’t think that it’s cred­i­ble. Either way, she and Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden are let­ting us down on a mat­ter of major importance.

If they con­tin­ue down this path, they will quick­ly destroy much of the good­will and grat­i­tude they have earned through their lead­er­ship on issues like Inter­net free­dom and Wall Street account­abil­i­ty. We appre­ci­ate Cantwell and Wyden’s lead­er­ship on envi­ron­men­tal and con­sumer pro­tec­tion. But we need them to be cham­pi­ons for work­er pro­tec­tion, too. We need them to stand with Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Sher­rod Brown. And regret­tably, they’re not. They’re miss­ing in action.

Last night on MSNBC, Chris Matthews asked Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma to respond to sev­er­al crit­i­cisms that have been made of the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship, includ­ing by Sen­a­tor War­ren. Oba­ma respond­ed by say­ing, “I love Eliz­a­beth. We’re allies on a whole host of issues, but she’s wrong on this.”

Wrong how, Mr. Pres­i­dent? “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” is not going to cut it. If the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship is so won­der­ful and full of good­ness, why is it a secret? Why can’t the peo­ple of this coun­try read it and see what it says?

Sen­a­tor War­ren asked and answered that ques­tion in a post on her blog today, respond­ing direct­ly to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma:

Here’s the real answer peo­ple have giv­en me: “We can’t make this deal pub­lic because if the Amer­i­can peo­ple saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”

If the Amer­i­can peo­ple would be opposed to a trade agree­ment if they saw it, then that agree­ment should not become the law of the Unit­ed States.

She adds:

The Admin­is­tra­tion says I’m wrong – that there’s noth­ing to wor­ry about. They say the deal is near­ly done, and they are mak­ing a lot of promis­es about how the deal will affect work­ers, the envi­ron­ment, and human rights. Promis­es – but peo­ple like you can’t see the actu­al deal.

For more than two years now, giant cor­po­ra­tions have had an enor­mous amount of access to see the parts of the deal that might affect them and to give their views as nego­ti­a­tions pro­gressed. But the doors stayed locked for the reg­u­lar peo­ple whose jobs are on the line.

If most of the trade deal is good for the Amer­i­can econ­o­my, but there’s a pro­vi­sion hid­den in the fine print that could help multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions ship Amer­i­can jobs over­seas or allow for water­ing down of envi­ron­men­tal or labor rules, fast track would mean that Con­gress couldn’t write an amend­ment to fix it. It’s all or nothing.

Before we sign on to rush through a deal like that – no amend­ments, no delays, no abil­i­ty to block a bad bill – the Amer­i­can peo­ple should get to see what’s in it.

Sher­rod Brown has been lead­ing this fight, and he points out that TPP isn’t clas­si­fied mil­i­tary intel­li­gence – it’s a trade agree­ment among 12 coun­tries that con­trol 40% of the world’s econ­o­my. A trade agree­ment that affects jobs, envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions, and whether work­ers around the globe are treat­ed humanely.

It might even affect the new finan­cial rules we put in place after the 2008 cri­sis. This trade agree­ment doesn’t mat­ter to just the biggest cor­po­ra­tions – it mat­ters to all of us.

Sen­a­tor War­ren’s crit­i­cisms are spot on.

Con­sid­er­ing that past trade schemes haven’t deliv­ered the ben­e­fits that were adver­tised and promised at the time they were adopt­ed, the last thing Con­gress should be doing right now is giv­ing up its abil­i­ty to mark up and crit­i­cal­ly eval­u­ate a mam­moth, unprece­dent­ed trade scheme like the Trans-Pacif­ic Partnership.

Our founders gave us a repub­lic with a sys­tem of checks and bal­ances for a rea­son. They want­ed a sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. Pres­i­dents almost always ask for — or demand — more pow­er than they should have, regard­less of par­ty. This is one of those times where Con­gress needs to say “Sor­ry, no!” … not, “Sure, yeah, whatever!”