Warren Answers Obama
“’We cannot afford a trade deal that undermines the government’s ability to protect the American economy,’ Warren said in the letter, also signed by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.).”
In a later email to her supporters:
“‘The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret,’ Warren wrote in the email. ‘Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: ‘We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.’
‘For more than two years now, giant corporations have had an enormous amount of access to see the parts of the deal that might affect them and to give their views as negotiations progressed. But the doors stayed locked for the regular people whose jobs are on the line,” Warren wrote. “We’ve all seen the tricks and traps that corporations hide in the fine print of contracts. We’ve all seen the provisions they slip into legislation to rig the game in their favor. Now just imagine what they have done working behind closed doors with TPP.”
Besides watering down Dodd-Frank’s ownership restrictions (clip above) on risky derivative ownership (which Obama agreed to changes to requiring TBTF to separate risky investment ownership from TBTF and placing them in separate corporations not eligible for Main-Street-Rescue) during budget negotiation with the Repubs; Warren, Brown and other Senators have pointed out other potential issues with the TPP and fast tracking it besides fighting this one.
– “the deal could include provisions that would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. policies before a judicial panel outside the domestic legal system, increasing exposure of American taxpayers to potential damages.”
– “grant foreign companies access to U.S. markets without being subject to restrictions on “predatory or toxic financial products’ and that would restrict the U.S. government’s ability to impose capital controls, such as transaction taxes, on international firms.”
The TPP is not really about free trade amongst countries as much as it dictates who and who will not feel the impact of it. Corporations and a relative few at the upper end of the income chain have benefited the most from TPP agreements in the past at the expense of the lesser income classes (The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States).
Most of the countries included in this TPP agreement are poorer and have a greater abundance of Labor. The typical result for all countries in the agreement is total income increases with the end result in the US being most of the income is distributed upwards in the income chain. Unskilled labor producing goods in a highly skilled country will be worse off as international trade increases in relation to the global market producing a similar or the same product. In relation to the global market, a first world production worker is a less abundant factor of production than Capital when compared to 3rd world production workers. As Spencer England has shown productivity gains have been skewed heavily to Capital at the expense of Labor.
As I stated no TPP will be good for the middle class and a genuine trade agreement would also impact the middle class in an adverse manner even if there was an increase in total income unless there were stipulations and policies within it. President Obamas claiming Warren and other populist opponents of the TPP are wrong is not true as there is no indication this TPP will impact the middle class in a manner he suggests. Furthermore cloaking it in secrecy from the US and presenting it in a similar manner for an “up or down vote” as the former Bush administration did does not foster support for it. Main Street has already paid too much for corporations and rescuing Wall Street from their gambling.
Would you agree to a contract making you liable for someone else’s agreements and sight unseen? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is not. Warren for Pres!
Senator Warren made the key point on TRMS last night.
Obama threw down on Warren by demanding that the debate be on the FACTS.
Warren pointed out that while Senators and Congressmen had access to the text of the draft agreement that it was classified Top Secret and so she was prevented by debating on those FACTS.
This is ridiculous. Big Business has not only access to the text but full participation in shaping it. The American people have no access at all. Now there may be good arguments for a Fast Track process that doesn’t allow CONGRESS to modify the agreement, that nothing can get accomplished except on an up or down basis. But it doesn’t follow that the American people should be denied the ability to weigh in on that ‘up or down’ decision. On the pure power assumption that “Nothing” is not an answer. Well sometimes “Nothing” is in fact the answer compared to all the alternatives.
For example that was my stated position on Social Security in 2001-2005 when the debate on alternatives was artifically constrained by the Six Guidelines of Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security. CSSS blocked the most logical short term approach while denying longer term policy alternatives based on growing Real Wage. Bush launched on his 2005 Social Security Tour with the stated intention of forcing Congress to admit that SocSec was 1) in crisis and 2) had to be fixed right away but all without actually introducing the plans already endorsed by his 2001 Commision. The idea then was to get Congress to agree on Crisis, admit that the only possible solution was to take an unamendable up or down vote on a proposal developed mostly out of sight by a handpicked ‘bi-partisan’ commission and the call it done.
Obama is simply adopting the tactics of Bush’s 2001 CSSS. First force ‘Crisis’ as a consensus and then demand an Up or Down vote on a less than transparent ‘Fix’. Well I cry bullshit.
If it is good for the American people, why can’t the American people read it?
Not to beat my own drum too much.
During Bush’s 2005 Social Security Tour it was official dogma that Bush wasn’t actually pushing ANY particular plan. On NO, he was just looking for consensus on ‘Crisis’. Now they did float the Posen Plan. By ‘liberal’ ‘Democrat’ Robert Posen who was indeed a member of the Bush CSSS as an EXAMPLE of the kind of thing they were doing. And you can’t get much more bi-partisany than that. Except that Posen was just a Third Way type before his time and his plan bore an eerie similarity to the Bush CSSS ‘Option 2’ ‘compromise plan’. You can read a version of Posen here:
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/solvency/RPozen_20050210.pdf
The problem for Bush was that a number of people called ‘bullshit’ and held that a plan floated by the Bush Administration even at second hand was fair game for analysis. And under analysis Posen broke down, it was a shittier deal for Americans than even a plan of “Nothing” (as promoted back then by Yours Truly).
Which gets us to TPP and Jerry’s point. You got a plan? Let us read it. Okay maybe we don’t get to AMEND it. But if it is a Posen-y Plan that is shittier than the status quo then we get time to campaign our elected representatives to REJECT it. Or maybe the Administration can actually go back and negotiate changes, that would be up to them.
But it is this combination of Secret Squirrel crap on the text combined with Up or Down at the back end that is unacceptable.
Bruce:
We need a few more beaters of drums.
Run many people have told me I am a Master Beater.
Then again my hearing isn’t quite what it used to be.