[CTC] Defeat of Fast Track Package Highlights Americans¹ Concerns About More of the Same Trade Policy ­ Senate-Passed Bill NOT Adopted

[Mitch Jones]

Here's our statement...
For Immediately Release:
June 12, 2015

Contacts:
Patrick Woodall – 202-683-2487
Rich Bindell – 202-683-2457


Stalled Fast Track is a Victory for Consumers, Workers and the Environment

Statement of Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter

WASHINGTON — “Today, the House of Representatives put consumers, workers and the environment first when it blocked the easy passage of the Senate-passed Fast Track, also known as Trade Promotion Authority. The House of Representatives blocked one-half of the Fast Track measure in a lopsided bipartisan vote, which will prevent Fast Track from going to the President’s desk.

“Finally, Congress stood up to the Big Business interests pushing Fast Track, which derails the as-yet-unseen Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact that will undermine key consumer, public health and environmental protections, and other trade deals that follow. Although the House narrowly passed the Fast Track measure itself, the other portion of the legislation covering worker trade assistance failed.

The American people should cheer that the Fast Track juggernaut has been derailed today. It will be nearly impossible to jump start Fast Track at this point, but the broad-based coalition that brought down the Fast Track package today will remain vigilant to prevent future parliamentary shenanigans in the House and Senate that try to reanimate Fast Track.”

Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control.

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Mitch Jones
Senior Policy Advocate
Food & Water Watch
3121 St. Paul St., Ste. 28
Baltimore, MD 21218
410-394-7651
mjones at fwwatch.org

Twitter: @MitchJonesFWW


From: Arthur Stamoulis <arthur at citizenstrade.org<mailto:arthur at citizenstrade.org>>
Date: Friday, June 12, 2015 at 2:03 PM
To: CTC Field Field <ctcfield at lists.citizenstrade.org<mailto:ctcfield at lists.citizenstrade.org>>
Subject: [CTC] Defeat of Fast Track Package Highlights Americans’ Concerns About More of the Same Trade Policy – Senate-Passed Bill NOT Adopted

For Immediate Release:                                              Contact: Symone Sanders, (202) 454-5108
June 12, 2015                                                              Lori Wallach (202) 454-5107, lwallach at citizen.org<mailto:lwallach at citizen.org>

Defeat of Fast Track Package Highlights Americans’ Concerns About More of the Same Trade Policy – Senate-Passed Bill NOT Adopted

Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

The Fast Track package sent over from the Senate was rejected today by the House because two years of effort by a vast corporate coalition, the White House and GOP leaders – and weeks of procedural gimmicks and deals swapped for yes votes –could not assuage Americans’ concerns that more of the same trade policy would kill more jobs and push down our wages.

Passing trade bills opposed by a majority of Americans does not get easier with delay because the more time people have to understand what’s at stake, the angrier they get and the more they demand that their congressional representatives represent their will.

Welcome to the weekend as the millions of Americans across the political spectrum actively campaigning against Fast Track will intensify their efforts to permanently retire the Nixon-era scheme and replace it with a more inclusive, transparent process that instead of more job-offshoring can deliver trade deals that create American jobs and raise our wages.

Today the allegedly unstoppable momentum of the White House, GOP leadership and corporate coalition pushing Fast Track to grease the path for adoption of the almost-completed, controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal just hit the immovable object called transpartisan grassroots democracy.

The crazy gimmicks employed to try to overcome what polls show is broad opposition to Fast Track actually backfired. Yesterday, the House GOP leadership put most GOP representatives on record in favor of cutting Medicare by $700 million with a vote on a procedural gimmick. Today, it was Democrats’ ire about a gutted version of a program to assist workers who will be hurt by the trade agreements Fast Track would enable that was the proximate cause of the meltdown. That program was included only to try to provide cover for the two dozen Democrats who would even consider supporting Fast Track at all.

Today’s outcome is a testament to the strength and diversity of the remarkable coalition of thousands of organizations that overcame a money-soaked lobbying campaign by multinational corporations and intense arm-twisting by the GOP House leadership and the Obama administration. The movement now demanding a new American trade policy is larger and more diverse than in any preceding trade policy fight. It includes everyone from small business leaders and labor unions to Internet freedom advocates and faith groups to family farmers and environmentalists to consumer advocates and LGBT groups to retirees and civil rights groups to law professors and economists.


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