[CTC] DeLauro to White House: Stop selling TPP deal until text out

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Check out #SniffOutTPP & @TPPSearchHound for great images of the bloodhound searching for TPP texts in DC today…


DeLauro to White House: Stop selling TPP deal until text out

By Doug Palmer, POLITICO
10/29/2015 01:38 PM EDT

Rep. Rosa DeLauro and other critics of the recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement demanded Thursday that the White House stop swarming Capitol Hill and barnstorming the country to sell the pact until it releases the full text.

"Do not come up here and try to gain support for something that may not be finished," DeLauro said at a press conference to criticize the secrecy surrounding the deal, which was struck more than three weeks ago. "Stop selling something that nobody but them knows about."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and other Cabinet agencies have released fact sheets outlining details of the pact, but not the text itself. That document is going through a final "legal scrub" with officials from the 11 other TPP countries, USTR says.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett said he was suspicious that the actual agreement could be different than what is described in the fact sheets. Lawmakers want to know if "the text matches the propaganda, and in many cases, we believe it will not," he said.

The trade promotion authority law passed this summer requires the White House to publish the text at least 60 days before signing the agreement, pushing any vote on the pact into February or March 2016 at the earliest. But lawmakers need to see the details now, DeLauro said.

The administration "has got to level the playing field" by releasing the text, she said. "Let's all have the information that we need in order to ask the right questions and get answers."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20151029/ffcfe8a3/attachment.htm>