Despite support from congressional conservatives, the Obama administration might not get the votes it needs to advance the Trans Pacific Partnership through the Senate.
Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee mostly voiced their skepticism over the secretly-negotiated trade deal, while their opponents across the aisle served up rare praise for the White House on Tuesday at a hearing.
The split could leave President Obama without the mandate he needs for the Senate to invoke cloture on a key precursor to the deal–a move that would leave the handful of trade agreements he is negotiating open to filibuster and revision.
“If we’re gonna get trade promotion authority passed, he’s gonna have to work the telephones one on one with some senators to get us to the sixty vote threshold,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told US Trade Representative Michael Froman.
Trade promotion authority, also known as fast-track, would remove Congress’ ability to amend trade deals after the executive branch asks the legislative branch to approve of them. Many Democrats are concerned that it would hamper oversight—particularly with respect to the TPP, given that it is near completion.
“You say you need fast track from Congress to provide you with marching orders for negotiations and that it puts Congress in the driver’s seat, yet the TPP is almost complete,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) told Froman.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) echoed these concerns, saying that TPP negotiations are advanced to the point that he questioned “whether TPA really will work in the way it was intended to work with congressional input.” He said that it is typically approved before trade negotiations begin.
Joining Cardin and Menendez in looking askance at their administration’s position on trade were Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). They largely voiced doubt that the deal would serve to reverse the diminishing income of the middle class—a trend that many say has been exacerbated by trade deals.
While Froman said currency manipulation provisions would not be in the TPP and deferred questions about the matter to the Treasury Department—an answer that caused many Democrats dismay–he claimed enforcement mechanisms over labor and environmental standards called for by progressives would be stronger in the deal than in past agreements. Wyden, however, brought to the fore questions he has had about trusting the administration’s claims, given how the deal has been negotiated without much oversight.
As The Sentinel has reported before, lawmakers themselves haven’t, in the course of negotiations, been able to see the draft TPP—the so-called “bracketed text.” They have only been given access to the US Trade Representative’s proposals, despite asking to review bracketed negotiating text on a range of provisions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he would introduce legislation to make the administration reveal the draft deal if it wasn’t provided to him—a bill that, if it went through any stage of the legislative process, would almost certainly be met with a veto threat.
Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said he was afraid this approach to a cloistered process would continue even after the deal is finalized, when lawmakers should be able to review it.
“The concern here is that the the President would sign a TPP deal that would be protected by fast-track and then you’d have middle class families saying ‘we don’t know what’s in it,” he said.
In response, Froman couldn’t even definitively say that the deal will be widely published before the President signs off on it, if fast track is approved.
“Certainly in the past, the practice has been for it to be public before it’s signed. That’s our expectation here,” he said. “We need to consult with our trading partners to understand what their processes and domestic constraints are, but we are beginning that consultation process with that expectation in mind.”
Despite the controversies, opacity and warning issued by Sen. Grassley, many Republicans on the panel were optimistic about trade and, uncharacteristically, effusive in their praise for President Obama.
Committee chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said that “compared with this time last year, this administration is much more engaged at all levels in making the case for renewal of TPA” – a policy priority, he said, that “is at the top of my list.”
“At the State of the Union, one of the things that brought Republicans to their feet faster than anything else that the President said was his announcement that he wanted to go forward to gain trade promotion authority and move these trade agreements forward,” Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said, adding that everyone has to be “all-in” and the deal can’t favor one party over another.
The GOP, in this case, appears content that its newfound marriage of convenience with the administration will be enough to muffle significant reservations to its left.
“I would just like to reiterate that this committee is all in,” Sen. Pat Robers (R-Kan.) said, referring to Sen. Coats statement.
