[CTC] Fast Track will empower GOP president, McConnell says

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/13/morning-plum-fast-track-will-empower-gop-president-mcconnell-says/ <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/13/morning-plum-fast-track-will-empower-gop-president-mcconnell-says/>

Morning Plum: Fast Track will empower GOP president, McConnell says
By Greg Sargent <http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/greg-sargent> May 13 at 9:23 AM  

Yesterday, Senate Democrats blocked <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/12/is-fast-track-in-serious-trouble/> the bill that would have given President Obama “fast track” authority to negotiate trade deals, subject only to a Congressional up-or-down vote later. Though this battle is far from over, this raises the possibility that Democratic opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership could ultimately succeed in derailing it by scuttling the Fast Track process itself.
Now opponents of Fast Track may have inadvertently been given some new ammunition by an unlikely source: Staunch TPP-advocate Mitch McConnell.
In an interview with John Harwood <http://www.cnbc.com/id/102672207>, McConnell said that Republicans should support Fast Track authority, explicitly because — and here’s the rub — it will empower the next GOP president to negotiate trade deals more easily, despite Democratic opposition to them in Congress:
“If we had a Republican president right now, not a single Democrat would vote for Trade Promotion Authority. So what I’ve said to my members, if we want the next Republican president, who we hope will be sworn in less than two years from now, to have a chance to do trade agreements with the rest of the world, this bill is about that president as well as this one.”

McConnell added, by way of illustration, that Fast Track is a “six year bill.” Expect Democratic opponents of Fast Track to grab on to this. It dovetails nicely with the argument they are making: That Fast Track could ultimately undermine achievements like the Dodd Frank financial reform bill.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and others worry that a GOP president taking over in 2017 could use Fast Track to undermine Wall Street regulations through a back-door route. As Warren puts it <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/11/elizabeth-warren-fires-back-at-obama-heres-what-theyre-really-fighting-about/>: “We are already deep into negotiations with the European Union on a trade agreement and big banks on both sides of the Atlantic are gearing up to use that agreement to water down financial regulations.” The basic idea <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/11/elizabeth-warren-fires-back-at-obama-heres-what-theyre-really-fighting-about/> is that Fast Track authority would allow such a trade deal to pass with a simple majority in the Senate, precluding a Dem filibuster.
Obama vociferously rejects that argument, insisting <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/04/27/is-tpp-trade-deal-a-massive-giveaway-to-major-corporations-an-exchange-between-obama-and-sherrod-brown/> that the TPP can be written to completely protect against any weakening of regulations. And we may not be able to settle this aspect of the dispute until we see the deal.
But on Fast Track in particular, McConnell — in the course of reassuring Republicans worried about granting Obama vast authority — is basically confirming one element of the left’s concerns: That Fast Track will empower a future GOP president to negotiate terms of a future trade deal with less worry about the ability of Democratic opposition in Congress to stop it. This is a legitimate concern <http://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8561797/ttip-dodd-frank>, whatever you think of what it means for Wall Street regulations in particular.
Of course, Warren and her followers may ultimately be irrelevant to whether Fast Track passes the Senate. That’s because there is a bloc of Democratic Senators generally in favor of TPP who are still holding out for changes to the Fast Track bill (such as a provision curbing currency manipulation), andwill probably support it if they get what they want <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/12/is-fast-track-in-serious-trouble/>, allowing it to pass the Upper Chamber. But in the House, if enough Republicans oppose Fast Track (because they don’t want to give Obama expanded authority over anything), Fast Track’s fate could turn on how many House Democrats oppose it.  And there, opponents of Fast Track may put McConell’s quote to good use.
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