Himes Faulted for Stance on Fast Track

By Reginald Johnson

            As a vote in Congress on “Fast Track” legislation draws near,  Rep. Jim Himes’ decision to back the controversial trade bill is being criticized by union officials and progressive activists.

           After months of sitting on the fence about which way he would vote,  Himes, a Democrat representing much of Fairfield County, came out last week and said he will vote yes on a bill granting Trade Promotion Authority to President Obama. The bill, nicknamed Fast Track because it speeds up the process for approving trade treaties, empowers the president to force Congress to vote on a trade treaty within 60-90 days, limit debate and prohibit any amendments.

    If Fast Track passes --- and a vote could come as soon as Friday --- it will set the stage for approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim countries. The agreement is supported strongly by big corporations, most Republicans, and Obama.

   After meeting with supporters of TPP and critics, including labor and environmental groups, the Fourth District congressman said he came down on the side of supporting Fast Track in good part because of Connecticut’s export-driven economy.

   “TPP offers the potential for rich export opportunities, and many high-paying export-oriented jobs,” Himes said.

   “Make no mistake, Connecticut is an export economy, and growing global trade and markets will help strengthen our middle class,” he said. “In 2013, there were $16.4 billion in Connecticut exports. $11.9 billion, or 67.5% of that, came from the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metro area. To say that trade is important to our district is an understatement.”

  Himes, who said he had read the whole TPP agreement, said that so far, it appears Obama is making sure that the trade agreement is addressing environmental, labor and consumer concerns.

   But opponents of the trade bills took the congressman to task on a number of counts.

  Lori Pelletier, executive secretary treasurer of the Connecticut State AFL-CIO said Himes has come down on the side of corporations and not workers.

  “Rep. Himes decision …to support Wall Street profits over Main Street jobs will live long in the memory of 4^th District working men and women,” she said.

   “If Rep. Himes is sincere about creating jobs and revitalizing manufacturing, he needs to use his leverage as a member of Congress to reshape the Trans-Pacific Partnership to help rather than hurt workers in his district. Unfortunately, by supporting Fast Track, Himes is surrendering his ability to offer any amendments to improve this trade agreement or any other future agreements up for six years,” Pelletier said.

   One of the leaders of a grassroots group fighting against Fast Track and TPP said she was skeptical about Himes’ claim that he had read and understood the full text of the TPP.

  Margaret Flowers, from the group Popular Resistance, said that “the text is filled with legalese that could not possibly be fully understood by going into a room and reading it without the ability to analyze its impacts. If Himes is so supportive after reading it, I would urge him to write out the specific areas that he agrees with and the areas of concern that he has. I doubt that he could.”

  Flowers emphasized what other critics have charged, that the whole process for negotiating the TPP has been secretive and behind closed doors, with members of Congress only being given limited access to reading the text. The public has been given no access, despite the huge impact the treaty will have on the U.S. economy and all levels of government here. But corporate lawyers --- hundreds of them --- have been involved in negotiations on the wording of the treaty.

   “If Himes thinks TPP is so great, why does he support a secret and undemocratic process of passing it? Why doesn’t he allow the public to have full review of what is in the text and a debate about how it will impact our economy and our communities,” she asked.

Opponents of Fast Track rally recently in Bridgeport.

   Himes said in a letter to constituents explaining his decision on Fast Track that he did not think the closed-door negotiations were a problem and pointed out that when the TPP agreement is finalized, the text will be accessible to the public.

   “Most sensitive negotiations --- collective bargaining by unions or the purchase of a home for example --- happen behind closed doors.  In the case of TPP, after negotiators reach agreement, the deal will be made fully public online for 60 days before the President can sign it, followed by several months of review and consideration before Congress votes on it,” he said.

  In general, critics claim that the TPP is a corporate giveaway, giving corporations both in the U.S. and overseas the legal ability to thwart national and state laws set up to protect consumers, workers and the environment.

  That raises the issue of sovereignty, and whether the TPP and other trade treaties that are planned, don’t undermine the role of nations in making their own laws, and in the process, transfer power to multi-national corporations.

  Instead of sovereign nations making their own laws, people will be under a form of “corporate governance.”

   A majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives are opposed to Fast Track. Most Republicans favor the bill as well as the TPP, but some GOP members are opposed, due to concerns over the threat to sovereignty.

  Most analysts see the House vote on Fast Track as too close to call. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. --- who publicly has not taken stand on which way she will vote --- is reportedly behind the scenes trying to line up “yes” votes for President Obama and Fast Track.

  

  

Pressuring Himes on Trade Deal

By Reginald Johnson

                      BRIDGEPORT --- As the vote draws near on legislation establishing a Transpacific Trade Partnership, activists are increasing the pressure on Fairfield County Congressman Jim Himes to take a stand against the controversial trade treaty and a companion bill called “Fast Track.”.

                   Members of a coalition of groups working to defeat the trade measures gathered on McLevy Green last weekend to denounce the legislation as a corporate giveaway and urge Himes to join the rest of his colleagues in the Connecticut congressional delegation in opposing both Fast Track and TPP, as now written.

      The fast track bill would give President Obama the authority to demand that Congress vote on the trade treaty within 60-90 days, and with only limited debate and with no allowance for amendments.

          Doug Sutherland, chairman of the Fairfield County chapter of Democracy for America, a liberal advocacy group, said the granting of trade promotion authority would speed the passage of TPP, an agreement which he said “could be very bad for American workers, workers around the world, bad for the environment and bad for the sovereignty of our democracy.”

   Sutherland added that “Our mission today is a very simple one. We’re asking our elected representative in Congress, Jim Himes, to vote ‘no’ on fast track.”

   Himes, a centrist Democrat who lives in Stamford and has served six years in Congress after working on Wall Street,  has been under pressure from both sides in the trade treaty battle. Obama, whose election victory in Connecticut in 2008 certainly helped Himes win the congressional seat in the 4^th District --- which has often sent Republicans to Congress --- has been pressing Himes to vote yes. But people from labor, environmental and consumer groups have been urging him to oppose the bills.

  The U.S. Senate recently approved fast track. Now it comes down to the House, where the vote is expected to be close.

  Some of the same people who gathered in Bridgeport last Saturday had rallied against TPP and fast track last February. That rally drew about 50 people. Last weekend’s press conference, however, only drew a handful of people, and no one showed up from the local paper, the Connnecticut Post, to cover it. Sutherland said the sunny weather might have been the reason for the low turnout.

  Nonetheless, members of the coalition got up and made their case against the trade bills.

  Several of the speakers said the TPP, as now written, will broadly expand the power of corporations to get around regulations designed to protect workers rights, the environment, consumer rights and food safety. The trade treaty is being negotiated in secret with 11 other nations bordering the Pacific Ocean.

Activists opposing the Transpacific Trade Partnership and the fast track bills make their case in Bridgeport.

 

  Provisions dealing with investor rights are being written into the trade bill which will give the power to corporations to challenge a nation’s regulations, if the companies believe that the laws are hurting their profits. Those legal challenges would be heard by special tribunals --- separate from a national court system. Decisions by the tribunals would not be reviewable.

  This means regulations set forth in the U.S. on the federal and state level covering environmental safeguards, workplace safety guidelines, food safety, could all be challenged by foreign investors as damaging to their profits. If the tribunal rules in their favor, there would be no room for appeal. Case closed.

  Pam Lupfer, a representative of the Presbyterian Church in New York, which has been working on trade issues, said laws aimed at controlling climate change would be threatened. “Multi-national fossil fuel companies could sue member countries who take action on climate change,” she said, mentioning rules restricting natural gas or coal extraction.

   Jennifer Siskind, Connecticut Coordinator of the organization Food and Water Watch, said food safety rules could be undermined if TPP is passed.

  “If the TPP is fast tracked, even GMO food labels are illegal trade barriers….There is a national grassroots effort pushing for GMO labeling laws, and Connecticut’s law grew out of efforts started by Congressman Himes’ constituents. But this trade deal just throws the movement for GMO labels under the TPP bus,” she said.

  A number of speakers blasted the secret manner in which the TPP is being worked out. The text of the draft agreements is not being released, and even members of Congress have limited access to see the text. Lobbyists for corporations, meanwhile, are directly participating in the trade talks with different nations.

Diane McKenna of Stratford states her oppostion to TPP

  Jim Dean, the national chairman of Democracy for America --- an organization begun by his brother, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean --- implored Himes to vote no on fast track and TPP.

   “Support the will of the people of the United States of America, not the United States of Morgan Stanley, not the United States of Goldman Sachs, Exxon, or any sovereign wealth fund of the eleven countries we’re negotiating with,” he said. 

  Other speakers said past trade treaties, such as NAFTA, have really hurt workers, and they don’t want a repeat.  Some 96,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Connecticut since 1994, when NAFTA (standing for the North American Free Trade Agreement) and the World Trade Organization agreements were passed, according to a graph passed out at the press conference.

   “So many of us, Democrats in the labor movement, have been burned so many times in the past by these agreements, we’ve finally said, enough is enough. O.K.,” said Tom Moore of the Carpenters Union.

 

             

Pushing Congress on TPP

By Reginald Johnson

                  BRIDGEPORT ---- A coalition of activist groups is pressuring Congress to stop the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, which critics claim would allow corporations to thwart state and local regulations covering health, safety, the environment and labor rights.

     Recently-leaked documents from the TPP secretly negotiated by the Obama administration and 11 other nations on the Pacific Rim, disclosed that new power could be given to companies based in foreign countries to sue states like Connnecticut or cities like Bridgeport to block legal requirements they believed were cutting into their profits. The cases would be decided before special tribunals, and not the traditional court system.

   Not only could local laws be challenged, but companies could be awarded financial damages.

   The proposed rules, in the investment chapter of TPP, are being characterized as a threat to democracy.

   The treaty would have a “very chilling effect on democracy in action,” said Patrick Woodall, from the group Food and Water Watch, speaking recently on the Counterpoint Radio show on WPKN in Bridgeport. (http://www.btlonline.org/2015/seg/150410af-btl-woodall.html)  Woodall said regulations passed by local city councils or state legislatures dealing with say, hydraulic fracking or GMO labeling on foods, could be affected.

   “All these things are liable to be challenged by foreign companies for damages as barriers to trade,” Woodall said.

   The opponents are targeting both the TPP and companion legislation, called trade promotion authority, or “fast track.”  As the name implies, fast track would mandate that Congress vote on the trade treaty within 60-90 days.  Also, only limited debate could take place on the treaty as negotiated and no amendments would be allowed.

     A vote on fast track could come soon after Congress returns from their Easter recess on April 13.

     A number of Democrats in the House and some Republicans have come out against fast track. In Connecticut, where there are five members of the House --- all Democrats --- four of the five are opposing fast track. U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, of the 4^th congressional district, however, is still sitting on the fence.

   Groups like Moveon.org are lobbying Himes to join his House colleagues and oppose the trade promotion authority, as well as the TPP, especially in the light of the newly-revealed provisions dealing with the power of foreign companies.

   Mary Levine, of Danbury, a coordinator for Moveon.org in Fairfield County, showed up at Himes’ office in Bridgeport recently to speak with Himes’ staff to urge the congressman to oppose the legislation. She and others have been there before.

   “Whenever we’ve spoken to him, he’s very gracious, and said he’d look into it,” she said. “Everytime we come, we give them more documents.”

   Levine said she thinks many of Himes' constituents feel positive about his work, and that he represents their interests.

   "We expect he will come around on this," she said.

   Himes said in a statement that “as a rule” he doesn’t take positions on legislation that he hasn’t read yet, and the fast track bill has still not been submitted.  “If and when a new Trade Promotion Authority bill is introduced, I will review it and see whether the labor and environmental negotiating objectives are worthy of my support and what level of input congress is afforded in considering trade agreements.”

  “Regarding TPP, I have begun to review the text, and I have emphasized to the Administration the need to raise labor, environmental and IP standards in other countries,” Himes said. “I will review the final text and see whether the deal will benefit American workers by expanding access to key markets and eliminating barriers, supporting job creation, our values and our standard of living.”

   Critics have charged that TPP will cause job losses, similar to a previous trade treaty, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Officials of the AFL-CIO, the federation of labor unions, contend that the elimination of trade barriers for imports, specifically tariffs, caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S., when manufacturing plants decided to relocate to Mexico, where labor rates are much lower.

  But the administration argues that TPP will boost U.S. exports and lower tariffs for American goods in the fast growing Asia-Pacific region, where the U.S. is facing strong competition from China.

  “Those who oppose these trade deals ironically are accepting a status quo that is more damaging to American workers,” President Obama said at a meeting of the Business Roundtable in December, according to a story in The Washington Post.

  Obama said people shouldn’t view the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the same way as NAFTA. The president said the TPP aims to boost workers’ rights and environmental standards in some Asian nations, the Post story said.

  “Don’t fight the last war,” Obama said.