Fast track advances after Senators flip flop

Following arm-twisting from President Obama, 10 Senate Democrats who had voted earlier in the week against starting debate on controversial “fast track” trade authority changed their positions, allowing the bill to go forward.

Senators voted 65-33 on Thursday to open debate on a bill that would grant the Obama administration the ability to “fast track” free trade deals through Congress without amendment. Just two days earlier, the Senate had stalled the legislation.

In both cases, Minnesota’s U.S. Senators, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, sided with fair trade advocates and voted against fast track.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged to push fast track through the Senate before Memorial Day. The legislation faces an uncertain future in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Obama administration, like previous Democratic and Republican administrations going back to the presidency of George H.W. Bush, wants the ability to ram through free trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a huge agreement covering 40 percent of the world’s economy that is currently being negotiated in secret.

The TPP is the worst of three trade pacts Obama wants to implement before he leaves office.  Another is with Europe, while the third opens trade in services – including government services – to foreign firms.

Such deals lack meaningful provisions to protect worker rights, consumers and the environment, fair trade advocates say. Unions predict massive job losses in the United States.

“I challenge any member of Congress to show us a trade deal that gave us a net increase in jobs and a net increase in wages,” United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said. “They can’t find it.”

The Democratic Senators who flip-flopped on their votes did so after they received assurances that Congress would pass legislation to aid workers who lose their jobs to imports and to penalize countries that manipulate the value of their currencies to gain an advantage under free trade deals.

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