Posted on 06/17/2015 12:34:28 PM PDT by Lucky9teen
Good heavens - I think you might have lost your formatting there...
Senator Cruz entirely understands the widespread suspicion of the President. Nobody has been more vocal in pointing out the Presidents lawlessness or more passionate about fighting his usurpation of congressional authority.
Senator Cruz would not and will not give President Obama one more inch of unrestricted power.
There have been a lot of questions and concerns about the ongoing Pacific trade negotiations. Many of those concerns, fueled by the media, stem from confusion about Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Lets unpack the issues one by one.
What are TPA and TPP?
TPA stands for Trade Promotion Authority, also known as fast track. TPA is a process by which trade agreements are approved by Congress. Through TPA, Congress sets out up-front objectives for the Executive branch to achieve in free trade negotiations; in exchange for following those objectives, Congress agrees to hold an up-or-down vote on trade agreements without amendments. For the past 80 years, it has proven virtually impossible to negotiate free-trade agreements without the fast-track process.
TPP stands for Trans-Pacific Partnership. TPP is a specific trade agreement currently being negotiated by the United States and 11 other countries, including Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. China is not a negotiating partner. There is no final language on TPP because negotiations are still ongoing and have been since late 2009. Neither the Senate nor the House has voted yet on the TPP. There will be no vote on TPP until the negotiations are over and the final agreement is sent to Congress.
Some Key Facts:
Neither the Senate nor the House has voted yet on the TPP.
Congress is the only entity that can make U.S. law and nothing about TPP or TPA could change that.
TPA gives the Congress more control up-front over free trade agreements.
TPA mandates transparency by requiring all trade agreements (including TPP) to be made public for at least 60 days before the Congress can act on them.
Does TPA give up the Senates treaty power?
No. Under the Constitution, there are two ways to make binding law: (1) through a treaty, ratified by two-thirds of the Senate, or (2) through legislation passed by a majority of both Houses of Congress. TPA employs the second constitutional path, as trade bills always have done. It has long been recognized that the Constitutions Origination Clause applies to trade bills, requiring the House of Representatives involvement.
Does the United States give up Sovereignty by entering into TPP?
No. Nothing in the agreement forces Congress to change any law. TPA explicitly provides that nothing in any trade agreement can change U.S. law. Congress is the only entity that can make U.S. law, and Congress is the only entity that can change U.S. law. Nothing about TPP or TPA could change that.
Does Senator Ted Cruz support TPP?
Senator Cruz has not taken a position either in favor or against TPP. He will wait until the agreement is finalized and he has a chance to study it carefully to ensure that the agreement will open more markets to American-made products, create jobs, and grow our economy. Senator Cruz has dedicated his professional career to defending U.S. sovereignty and the U.S. Constitution. He will not support any trade agreement that would diminish or undermine either.
Does Senator Ted Cruz support TPA?
Yes. Senator Cruz voted in favor of TPA earlier this year because it breaks the logjam that is preventing the U.S. from entering into trade deals that are good for American workers, American businesses, and our economy. Ronald Reagan emphatically supported free trade, and Senator Cruz does as well. He ran for Senate promising to support free trade, and he is honoring that commitment to the voters.
Free trade helps American farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers; indeed, one in five American jobs depends on trade, in Texas alone 3 million jobs depend on trade. When we open up foreign markets, we create American jobs.
TPA also strengthens Congress hand in trade negotiations, and provides transparency by making the agreement (including TPP) public for at least 60 days before the Congress can act on any final agreement. Without TPA, there is no such transparency, and the Congress role in trade agreements is weaker.
Is TPA Constitutional?
TPA and similar trade authority has been upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional for more than 100 years.
Does TPA give the President more authority?
No. TPA ensures that Congress has the ability to set the objectives up-front for free trade agreements.
Trade Promotion Authority has been used to reduce trade barriers since FDR. When Harry Reid took over the Senate, he killed it. History demonstrates that it is almost impossible to negotiate a free-trade agreement without TPA. Right now without TPA, America is unable to negotiate free-trade agreements, putting the United States at a disadvantage to China, which is taking the lead world-wide. It is not in Americas interests to have China writing the rules of international trade.
Moreover, Obama is going to be president for just 18 more months. TPA is six-year legislation. If we want the next president (hopefully a Republican) to be able to negotiate free-trade agreements to restart our economy and create jobs here at home then we must reinstate TPA. With a Republican president in office, Senate Democrats would almost certainly vote party-line to block TPA, so now is the only realistic chance.
How can Senator Cruz trust Obama?
He doesnt. Not at all. No part of Senator Cruzs support for TPA was based on trusting Obama. However, under TPA, every trade deal is still subject to approval by Congress. If the Obama Administration tries to do something terrible in a trade agreement, Congress can vote it down. And most congressional Democrats will always vote nobecause union bosses oppose free trade, so do most Democratswhich means a handful of conservative congressional Republicans have the votes to kill any bad deal. Thats a serious check on presidential power.
Isnt TPP a living agreement?
That particular phrasea foolish and misleading way to put itis found in the summary portion of one particular section of the draft agreement. That section allows member nations to amend the agreement in the future, expressly subject to the approval of their governments. Thus, if some amendment were proposed in the future, Congress would have to approve it before it went into effect.
But isnt TPA a secret agreement?
No, it is not. The full text of TPA (fast track) is public. What the Senate just voted for was TPA, not TPP.
Right now, the text of TPP is classified. That is a mistake. Senator Cruz has vigorously called on the Obama administration to make the full text of TPP open to the public immediately. The text being hidden naturally only fuels concerns about what might be in it. Senator Cruz has read the current draft of TPP, and it should be made public now.
Critically, under TPA, TPP cannot be voted on until after the text has been public for 60 days. Therefore, everyone will be able to read it long before it comes up for a vote.
Couldnt Obama use a trade agreement to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants?
No. There is one section of TPP that concerns immigration, but it affects only foreign nationsthe United States has explicitly declined to sign on to that section.
Moreover, Senator Cruz introduced a TPA amendment to expressly prohibit any trade deal from attempting to alter our immigration laws.
Two Republican Senators (Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul) blocked the Senates consideration of that amendment, but the House of Representatives has agreed to include that language in the final text of the trade legislation. Thus, assuming the House honors that public commitment, federal law will explicitly prohibit any trade deal from impacting immigration.
And, regardless, no trade agreement can change U.S. law; only Congress can change U.S.law.
“You fail to understand that this is written into the TPA bill, so it WILL BE able to be withdrawn if terms arent met.
Hence the need FOR the TPA, to begin with.”
And how exaclty is that done?? By joint resolution?? That is not binding. The Congress can only do things BY LAW, which requires the executives signature.
This is all smoke an mirrors and outright lies.
The article says we need the TPA so that the president doesn’t have the sole power to negotiate agreements, but the president is saying he needs TPA to finish the negotiations. Well which is it?
The Congress should have more than just an up or down vote. Any trade bill should go through committee, be scrutinized, and revised and amended if necessary. But foreign governments apparently do not like the American people through their representatives being involved, and neither do business or the president.
Why do you think they call it “fast track”? In other words, rush through with no debate (and no amendments). Negotiate (alone), sign, then strong-arm it through. We’ve seen this dance many times before.
I done trust Obama and I don’t trust GOP leadership.
Polls show Americans are against Obamatrade...big time.
...and every freeper that supports TPA, because Cruz supports it, will give him a complete pass when TPP passes because he will be ‘against’ it. It’s exactly the same thing as supporting a vote for Obamacare, then suddenly voting ‘no’ since your vote isn’t needed to pass it anyway. The ‘yes’ vote occurred when you vote to allow a vote!
George W. Bush started a war in Afghanistan, and then he started Gulf War II. After a time, it became obvious that to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, we would have to go to war against them as well.
However, congressional leaders, both Republican and Democrat, told W. Bush that they would not tolerate a third war during his presidency, if there was to be a war, it would be under his successor.
Well, Obama has had his time in office, and though he didn’t start any wars, and badly managed the holdover wars he inherited, he carried out Obamacare, a poorly designed, badly executed disaster inflicted on not just the American economy, but on the people themselves.
Obamacare has *hurt* America, far more than two wars did. And it was wholly a Democrat idea, without any Republican input or support. None. Zero.
So Obama is politically even worse off than was W. Bush after two wars. He and his agenda are exhausted. He has no more, and should have no more grace extended to him from Capitol Hill. And he certainly deserves no more grace from the American people.
Now he and his internationalist socialist Democrat supporters, a part of the Democrat party, but not all of it, seek to join with multinational corporation Chamber of Commerce Republicans, to effectively undermine and harm America even more.
So it is really an existential argument.
Will the union Democrats, who are at least patriotic enough to not to want to destroy America as a nation, if just to keep their jobs, willing to join with conservatives, who love and admire America as a nation, as harmed as it has been by socialism already, to give a resounding “NO!!!!!” to any part of this trade deal?
Can we all agree that America, as an independent nation, is better than life in a socialist district under the rule of the UN, or whatever Frankenstein monster the internationalists come up with, be it a world wide Corporatocracy, Kakistocracy, Kleptocracy, Kratocracy, Plutocracy, or good old fashioned fascist dictatorship?
Have you read the secret bill behind the secret doors?
That and the following are still giving me pause:
That all changed in 1974, when the Democratic congressional majority decided to push back against Republican President Richard Nixon by establishing their own priorities and terms for trade negotiation with the Trade Act of 1974 the progenitor of and template for the modern TPA.
Why is the original act no longer good enough? Why is Obama fighting so hard, as you say, to limit his own power? Can anyone answer these questions please?
I'm more than willing to hear a reasonable explanation for these, because to me it's equally mystifying that Cruz is on the "same side" as Obama apparently "fighting to limit his own power". So they are a push as far as I can see.
It seems to me that someone is getting bamboozled without knowing it. I want to believe it's Obama who's getting outsmarted. I just don't see how it is though.
And the narrative is right. A "trade agreement" is a treaty. Any agreement which binds the United States of America and a foreign country is a treaty.
The president alone has the Constitutional Authority to negotiate treaties. He has no authority to negotiate some kind of lesser document that is effectively a treaty and then submit it to congress for a majority vote.
These must be submitted to the Senate for 2/3 approval.
If Congress doesn't like that procedure because it doesn't guarantee swift approval, then they can amend the Constitution to allow for a vote of both houses (a proposal specically rejected by the Founders).
What five year secrecy clause?
Was not the point of trade policy would be the input and power of Congress, via amendments and other considerations. TPA takes away such endeavors.
There was nothing wrong with bilateral trade deals, secondly the only enumerated power via the Constitution for a agreement[foreign nation] involving a President is a Treaty.
If the TPA truly checked the powers of the president why wouldn’t Obama simply veto it and return to what this author calls “unchecked power?”
The answer is that he has no intention of following the restrictions of TPA and he knows the republicans won’t do anything about it. He does want the ease of a no-filibuster, no amendment, 51 vote approval and he knows the republicans will give him that as well.
The only check against horrible giveaways of our sovereignty with this president and this senate is a high hurdle for a passing vote and the ability of the (few) conservatives to make enough noise to rouse people against it. TPA removes both those impediments.
The other problem is that the courts could negate any of the supposed protections in the bill.
Congress may withdraw TPA at any time if the President fails to follow all terms set forth in TPA including reporting to Congress at the discretion of at least three different congressional committees.What nonsense. Congress can only do this BY LAW, which would then be vetoed by the president (if it even got that far). So deceptive!
Totally false. Not only does the latest version of TPA include new language expressly stating that the House or Senate can dismantle the fast-track rules for various disapproval reasons, buteven more importantlyCongress has always retained this power because it has plenary authority over its rules of procedure, including fast track.
The new TPA, like previous versions before it, acknowledges this fact in Sec. 106(c), which states that the fast-track rules are enacted as as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the House of Representatives and the Senate, but with the full recognition of the constitutional right of either House to change the rules (so far as relating to the procedures of that House) at any time, in the same manner, and to the same extent as any other rule of that House. The CRS summary of TPA reiterates this fact: Congress reserves its constitutional right to withdraw or override the expedited procedures for trade implementing bills, which can take effect with a vote by either House of Congress.
Such power is not merely theoretical. It is precisely what then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi did to the Colombia FTA in 2008 after President Bush submitted its implementing legislation. Her move effectively dismantled the fast track procedures and thus delayed congressional consideration of the agreement indefinitely.
In short, Congress retains total control over the FTA implementation process under TPA and can only be bound by the fast track rules if it wants to be bound.
Mostly false. There is little doubt that FTAs benefit some U.S. corporations and workers, while harming othersthats kinda free-market competitions thing.
SHOCK: FTA predicted to reflect/amplify USA's comparative advantages & disadvantages: http://t.co/PUgLrpL3O8 pic.twitter.com/INypfluXSk
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) March 16, 2015
In general, however, the corporate winners (who tend to be in growing, innovative industries) from U.S. FTAs outnumber the losers (who tend to be in archaic, uncompetitive ones). And every legitimate economic analysis of the TPP confirms this general rule. FTAs also contain rules and exceptions for well-connected stakeholders. As Ive repeatedly discussed, this is a big reason why FTAs are third best option for U.S. trade policy.
Nevertheless, there is also little doubt that (i) FTAs are pretty much the only trade liberalization game in town these days; (ii) while unpalatable, the cronyist exceptions in U.S. FTAs, are relatively minor compared to the overall liberalization; and (iii) the biggest winners from such liberalization arent corporations or the mega-rich, but consumers, particularly poor ones.
Hey, average American [especially low-income ones], heres how you benefit from free trade http://t.co/0T2XnveplW pic.twitter.com/sLf8p6p62c
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 20, 2015
(More here.) These gains wouldnt be possible without FTAs (as much as we free traders wish they would be).
Good oped from NRF's Matt Shay on how US FTAs, made possible by #TPA, benefit US consumers: http://t.co/PLck4zo6dI pic.twitter.com/0IYlQwwV0L
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 11, 2015
Thus, the idea that FTAs like the TPP, or any other reduction in global trade barriers, benefit the 1 percent at the expense of working class is just not true. Indeed, as we at the Cato Institute are constantly pointing out, the real cronyism in trade policy takes place on the anti-trade side of the ledger: corporations and unions lobbying government to shield them from free-market forces, always at consumers expense. Its precisely for this reason that many of the U.S. lobbying dollars spent on TPP arent from pro-export mercantilists (although there are plenty of those, too) but from those anti-competitive industries (autos, steel, textiles, sugar, etc.) and unions that are seeking to scuttle the deal or secure their own special exemptions.
Totally false. As already noted above (and reiterated here by Catos Dan Ikenson and here by the Congressional Research Service), Congress under TPA retains total control over the international trade authority granted to it by Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Any trade agreement negotiated by the president (which he has constitutional authority to do under Article II) still must be approved by Congress.
As noted by the CRS, TPA reflects decades of debate, cooperation, and compromise between Congress and the executive branch in finding a pragmatic accommodation to the exercise of each branchs respective authorities over trade policy. It represents a gentlemans agreement between the legislative branch and the executive branchwith the former promising the latter fast track rules for the requisite congressional approval of an FTA, if, and only if, the latter (i) agrees to follow a detailed set of congressional negotiating objectives for the agreements content; and (ii) engages in a series of consultations with Congress on that content. As discussed more fully below, each branch of government retains its constitutional authority to abandon this gentlemans agreement, but doing so will essentially kill any hope of signing and implementing new FTAs. So, with limited exceptions, Congress and the executive toe the line.
Because neither branch gets expansive new powers or short-changed, Congress has granted every U.S. president since FDR some form of trade negotiating authority (source):
Pretty boring when you think about it, huh?
Totally false. As already noted above (and reiterated here by Catos Dan Ikenson and here by the Congressional Research Service), Congress under TPA retains total control over the international trade authority granted to it by Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Any trade agreement negotiated by the president (which he has constitutional authority to do under Article II) still must be approved by Congress.
As noted by the CRS, TPA reflects decades of debate, cooperation, and compromise between Congress and the executive branch in finding a pragmatic accommodation to the exercise of each branchs respective authorities over trade policy. It represents a gentlemans agreement between the legislative branch and the executive branchwith the former promising the latter fast track rules for the requisite congressional approval of an FTA, if, and only if, the latter (i) agrees to follow a detailed set of congressional negotiating objectives for the agreements content; and (ii) engages in a series of consultations with Congress on that content. As discussed more fully below, each branch of government retains its constitutional authority to abandon this gentlemans agreement, but doing so will essentially kill any hope of signing and implementing new FTAs. So, with limited exceptions, Congress and the executive toe the line.
Because neither branch gets expansive new powers or short-changed, Congress has granted every U.S. president since FDR some form of trade negotiating authority (source):
Pretty boring when you think about it, huh?
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