In response to people who are afraid that he voted to give more power to Obama, he said that he didn't trust Obama at all. Obama won't be in the office in 19 months. He looked into the future for the next president to have an authority to negotiate. Hopefully, the next president will be a Republican, especially him. Now is the time to get it passed with Democrats. If we wait for the next administration (Republican), Democrats in Congress will vote it down no matter what.
For TPP, he said it was stupid to have the text classified. He READ the TPP. It was relatively a straightforward trade agreement. He didn’t have weeks to study each paragraph closely. Unfortunately, from the past history of the administration’s abuse of power, the secrecy gives the impression that they are hiding something horrible in the bill. Fortunately, under TPA they have to make any trade agreement, including TPP, public for 60 days before the Congress can vote on it. People can study closely at this time. But personally he wanted the text public right now.
1. He doesn't trust giving Obama more power but is willing to compromise here. 2. He doesn't believe TPP should be secret but will compromise this too.
I don't have an issue with free trade per se. But I also realize it doesn't require 700+ pages to codify free trade. I suspect this has about as much to do with free trade as the freedom act has to do with freedom. In fact it has been commonly reported that only 5 of the 29 chapters deal with trade.