Replies

A few days ago on the Sean Hannity show while Jamie Dupree was on and talking about Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal cooked up by Obama with a number of foreign nations, he assured Sean to not be worried about the deal because Congress gets to vote on it before it can become law. And Jamie repeatedly pointed this out.

What Jamie Dupree did not say is, if Fast Track Trade Authority passes the House, then the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal cooked up by Obama with a number of foreign nations will not need the constitutionally required two thirds vote threshold for approval as our Constitution commands for any deals the president consummates with foreign powers! Fast Track unconstitutionally lowers the two thirds vote threshold needed to a simple majority vote. And this is an irrefutable violation of our founders clear intentions requiring a two thirds vote to approve any deals our president cooks up with foreign countries!

And why did our wise founding fathers require a two-thirds vote? Hamilton explains why in Federalist No. 75 with respect to the President’s treaty making authority. Hamilton points out the President was not granted an arbitrary power to make “CONTRACTS with foreign nations, which have the force of law” because he:

“might sometimes be under temptations to sacrifice his duty to his interest, which it would require superlative virtue to withstand. An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the acquisition of wealth. An ambitious man might make his own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his treachery to his constituents. The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate created and circumstanced as would be a President of the United States.”

In the end, our founders agreed to allow the president to negotiate deals with foreign nations, but only with the constitutional requirement that such deals consummated with foreign countries would not have the force of law unless approved by a two thirds vote in the Senate.

I’m not sure if Jamie Dupree overlooked this critical requirement when discussing FTTPA and the TPP with Sean Hannity, but the facts are what they are and the Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority Bill, having lowered the vote threshold to a simple majority for a deal cooked up by the president with foreign nations is an irrefutable violation of our founders expressed language, not to mention that it is intentionally designed to circumvent Congress’ exclusive power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and violates our Constitution’s separation of powers. In fact, it is designed to do exactly what our founders forbid in crystal clear language.

JWK

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. ___ Madison, Federalist Paper No. 47