Exclusive – Jeff Sessions: Obamatrade Can Be Killed

Obamatrade collectively refers to Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which is the controversial fast-track mechanism for ramming bills through Congress with minimum scrutiny, and the three major trade deals that would be guaranteed these ‘fast-track’ protections before a page of them had been made public: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). Sessions has previously pointed out that these three trade deals collectively encompass 90 percent of global GDP.

 

That’s how Obamatrade turns legislative procedure on its head. GOP leaders and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)58%
voted to give Obama these new powers to ink globalist trade pacts – without any real legislative scrutiny – before a single word of them was publicly available. As Sessions declared in his final warning prior to the passage of fast track authority:

 

The entire purpose of fast-track is for Congress to surrender its power to the Executive for six years… A vote for fast-track is a vote to authorize the President to ink the secret [TPP] deal contained in these pages—to affix his name on the Union and to therefore enter the United States into it… Like the Gang of Eight, like Obamacare, and so much else—the goal is to get it approved before the American people know what’s in it.

 

Under fast track authority (TPA), which passed in June of this year, Congress cedes its ability to amend the trade deals negotiated by Obama, and lowers the 67 vote treaty threshold to a mere simple majority. The Senate even surrenders its 60 vote filibuster. After the passage of fast track, the only off-ramp that exists to block Obama’s trade deals is controlled by Paul Ryan, Sen. Orrin Hatch

 

Historically, no trade deal moved through Congress with the fast track mechanism has ever been blocked. That is why Sessions emphasized that a vote for fast-track was a vote for Obamatrade. But Sessions is saying that it’s still not too late to derail TPP and therefore stop Obamatrade in its tracks.

 

Senator Sessions says that despite the procedural fact that Congress has ceded its Constitutional powers, it would be possible to generate enough opposition to stop TPP from getting the needed majority vote:

 

I think it’s possible. When they passed fast track, they got 60 votes… The treaty itself now is no longer subject to supermajority or filibuster. It will pass with a simple majority. It cannot be amended: it’ll be brought up one day and voted on the next day with no amendments– up or down. And in the past, they’ve always passed. And I think that will be what experts will tell you today, but I think the American people are getting more and more uneasy about the effect of trade and the promises that our trading partners are going to comply with their part of the bargain and that we’re all going to benefit have not been real…

 

Even what I read was not the complete final treaty, they were still negotiating… the final words on it. All we had was the basic outline and what they had agreed to at that point… A senator or a congressman, who voted to fast track it could still very easily say, “But, I didn’t see the treaty then, I’m going to read it now and if it doesn’t serve American interests I’m not going to vote for it.”

 

A recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request also revealed that there is a chapter in TPP that addresses temporary entry provisions of foreign workers. Additionally, because TPP is a “living agreement,” it can be changed subsequent to its adoption. This means that a group of twelve nations– and any new nation member that gets added to the partnership– would be able to advance changes to America’s immigration policies.

 

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