A cliffhanger vote is expected on Friday as the U.S. House of Representatives takes up Fast Track, or trade promotion authority, which would cut off lawmakers’ ability to amend or filibuster corporate-friendly trade agreements, reducing the role of Congress to an up-or-down vote.
Civil society and social movement groups from around the U.S. and world criticize Fast Track as a tool for ramming through secret corporate-friendly deals, at the expense of people and the planet. In April, some 2,000 such groups described Fast Track as “an abrogation of not only Congress’ constitutional authority, but of its responsibility to the American people.”
Leading up to the Fast Track vote, labor, environmental, public health, and social justice organizations warned lawmakers that votes in favor of Fast Track could be politically dangerous.
Consider, for example, this email from Democracy for America chair Jim Dean to members: “Ahead of today’s votes we wanted to be very clear to Democratic members of Congress: If you vote for either Medicare-cutting Trade Adjustment Assistance legislation or Fast Track Authority for the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership, we will not lift a finger or raise a penny to protect you when you’re attacked in 2016, we will encourage our progressive allies to join us in leaving you to rot, and we will actively search for opportunities to primary you with a real Democrat.”
And in a jointly penned op-ed published Friday in The Hill, 350.org executive director May Boeve and Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ president Hector Figueroa slammed the “massive boondoggle of a trade deal” known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Passage of that secretly negotiated trade pact between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim countries would be facilitated by Fast Track approval.
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