Sirotablog
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. David writes about political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties.
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May 15, 2007 5:06 PM
BREAKING: Emanuel Blocks Dem Debate on Trade Deal As White House Signals Real Agenda
Breaking news out of Washington today, five days after a handful of senior Democrats and the Bush administration announced a secret deal to push a package of free trade pacts just months after Democrats successfully used opposition to lobbyist-written trade deals to win the 2006 election. According to sources on Capitol Hill today, after the Los Angeles Times confirmed that Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) earlier this week agreed to demands by rank-and-file congressional Democrats to debate the secret trade deal at this Tuesday's Democratic Caucus meeting, Emanuel abruptly took trade off the agenda prior to the meeting, preventing the discussion from taking place. Additionally, Emanuel, one of the chief architects of NAFTA as a top Clinton administration staffer, refused to agree to set a date to discuss the secret trade deal. Meanwhile, White House and GOP participants in the deal are now signaling that the deal's much-touted labor and environmental provisions are designed to be kept out of the core text of trade agreements and thus potentially rendered utterly unenforceable. To date, the specific legislative language of the secret deal has been kept concealed from the public.On May 10th, six Democrats followed Democratic Caucus rules and filed a formal letter to Emanuel requesting a caucus meeting. That request, according to the Hill Newspaper, was "rebuffed" and hours after the letter was sent, Democratic leaders appeared at a press conference to announce the secret trade deal with the Bush administration. The legislative language of the deal has still not been released either to reporters or to rank-and-file lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, industry newsletter Inside U.S. Trade this afternoon reports that House Ways and Means Ranking Member Jim McCrery (R-LA) "said it is his preference and that of U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab that the new obligations for free trade agreements announced last week not lead to a reopening of the Peru free trade agreement." This follow's McCrery's claim yesterday that the secret deal can be completed "in a way that does not require Peru's political system to revisit the deal all over again."
In laymans terms, the enforceability of the promised labor and environmental provisions hinge on the Peru and Panama free trade agreements being reopened so that their texts can be modified. As NAFTA has shown, so-called "side agreements" that are not written into the text of the actual trade texts have proven entirely unenforceable because they are not part of the core agreement. If the Peru and Panama deals are not, in fact, going to be reopened and renegotiated, then the highly touted promises of adding enforceable labor and environmental provisions to the core texts of trade agreements appear to be in question.
McCrery and Schwab's move may explain why the Bush-connected head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has told reporters he has received "assurances that the labor provisions [in the deal] cannot be read to require compliance." It may also explain why the dealmakers have yet to release the legislative language of the trade deal texts in question. If they are planning to not actually change the texts of the deals and pass them as is, there may not actually be any new language, meaning there would likely not be any substantive change to U.S. trade policy, despite the flood of press releases.
Freshmen House Democrats, many of whom have signed letters demanding to the Democratic leadership respect the 2006 Election mandate against lobbyist-written trade policy, are scheduled to attend a regular breakfast with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Wednesday morning. Sources say it is probable that the trade issue could be put front and center at that breakfast by the group of lawmakers.
UPDATE: Responding to the reporting of this story, a spokeswoman for Emanuel's office this emails to say that the cancellation of the trade debate occurred because of "time constraints" and that Emanuel has now promised the caucus "we would continue with our plan to have a trade-focused caucus meeting soon." He did not set a date certain for that meeting.
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About David Sirota
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover. He lives in Denver, Colorado. His daily blog can be found at CREDO Action. He contributes regularly to the Denver Post's Web site, is a senior editor at In These Times magazine and is working on his second book. He has been profiled in Newsweek and the Rocky Mountain News and is widely known for his reporting on political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties. Sirota serves as co-chair of the Progressive States Network, a 501(c)3 organization that supports state legislators and that is a partner of CREDO.
You can subscribe to Sirota's e-mail newsletter by going to davidsirota.com and signing up in the lefthand corner. To find out more about Sirota, download his official biography or see his recent media appearances. You can e-mail him at sirota@credoaction.com.
The views expressed on this blog are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Working Assets (publisher of CREDO Action) or the institutions Sirota works for.
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Discussion
If Rahm's past behavior was any indication, this one shouldn't be too surprising. By the way, is he "representing" Cooke County by any chance? I'm pretty sure that Cooke County has the MOST to lose, well so too does rural IL, but you get the idea.
Rahm Emmanuel is a traitor to the long-standing ideals of the Democrat party, and as such should be recalled.
It would be interesting in this leadup to the 2008 elections to see if disgruntled constituents of these Republi-lite sell-outs could launch recall campaigns.
There might be some interesting things happen.
Worth a try.
Rahm Emmanuel does represent part of Cook County, including parts of Chicago, but seems to be playing his own game more often than not.
Let's say that I think the party regulars are going to rebel over this one. Heck, even Mayor Daley might chime in on this one -- hopefully to tell Rahm to stop this idiocy. If this passes, expect every union in Cook County to endorse someone else in the primary. (I don't think we have a recall law here.)
Its a sad sight to see only Sirota covering this issue, the rest of the liberal blogosphere doesn't seem to be bothered by this betrayal. Instead all I see are rants on the now dead Fallwell as well on Wolfie and the new war czar. But domestic issues like a secret "free" trade agreements cooked up in the middle of the night and selling out the working class in this country, the blogosphere couldn't care less.
Its like the liberals take their marching orders from Murdoch and Rove when it comes to critical domestic issues.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm seeing the Democratic party die in real time with all thats going on.
I wonder what exactly the Democrats think they were elected to do. Maybe they think they're supposed to be kinder, gentler Republicans.
It's disheartening for us who turned out in large numbers last November to elect these jokers, only to have them turn secretly against us and towards their corporate masters. We need to elect progressive only in the Democratic movement. We need people who are responsive to the welfare of the average American. People who enter the political arena to effectively make things better for all, rather than using the situation to slyly increase their net worth. Rahm Emanuel is typical of the opportunistic nature of the jackels in sheep clothing. Wasn't he the pompous ass who proclaimed that last November's win was due to the DLC? The way I see it is that for the foreseeable future we will be bereft of leadership for the non-millionaires as the lifestyle of workers become depressed to the point where they're on par with the other working poor around the globe. Thank you Pelosi, Emanuel. You're doing a heck of a job.
Here we go again the same old corrupt politics regardless of the party in charge. It's time we took things in our own hands, if you know what I mean.
Rahm Emanuel is a sell-out to the corporate interests. He's also incredibly STUPID and doesn't "get" the fact that his position is NOT as secure as he thinks it is. Let's put a strong, progressive, Iraq vet up against him in '08 and drive this scum from office and public life. Then Hillary or Obama can make him Secretary of Commerce or something. UGGGGGHHHH.
this is simply sickening. david, please push this issue further. accountability may be the only thing that forces these "democrats" into properly representing their constituents.
what can i do to help promote this story?
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