Posted on 05/03/2015 11:28:10 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
President Obama's bid for fast track trade authority along with a huge Asian trade deal fell into further trouble Sunday night when a key Republican senator charged that the deals open the door to more immigration and let the administration make future changes without congressional approval.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions delivered the bruising blow when he raised five questions about the Trade Promotion Authority speeding through Congress and the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal that TPA would help push.
"The president has circumvented Congress on immigration with serial regularity. But the TPA would yield new power to the executive to alter admissions while subtracting congressional checks against those actions," said a "critical alert" dispatched by the senator's office. It was provided in advance to Secrets.
Despite promises by the administration and two House committee chairmen pushing TPA and TPP that immigration would not be changed, Sessions and several outside groups said Obama could change immigration policies between trading partners at will without any congressional oversight.
[twitter snips] Reps. Paul Ryan and Bob Goodlatte said immigration are not part of the trade deals.
"The plain language of TPA provides avenues for the administration and its trading partners to facilitate the expanded movement of foreign workers into the U.S. -- including visitor visas that are used as worker visas," said the Sessions alert.
The bases of that charge is a phrase in TPP calling it a "living agreement." Sessions and others contacted by Secrets said that means that they can be changed after Congress approves them, and also that countries can be added in the future, including China.
"It leaves it open for a president to change it without congressional approval," warned Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. "Congress should not surrender its authority to write immigration laws to either the executive branch, to trade negotiators, and definitely not to international trade tribunals," she added.
"It's really troubling," said Kevin L. Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council. He called it "another power grab" that will let Obama and his administration make changes to supposedly air-tight trade deals with executive actions.
The Sessions alert said, "Promoters of TPA should explain why the American people ought to trust the administration and its foreign partners to revise or rewrite international agreements, or add new members to those agreements, without congressional approval."
Other questions raised by Sessions over the trade pacts included whether currency manipulation will be stopped and fears trade deficits will surge.
His voice is one of the loudest from the GOP that was thought to be Obama's biggest ally in winning TPA and TPP.
Democrats, labor groups and environmentalists oppose the deals and Kearns, whose group represents U.S. businesses, said it will lead to further job cuts. He also warned that in the upcoming elections, Democrats will slap Republicans for voting to OK trade deals that cut jobs.
Sessions called on Obama to rewrite the deal, make it simpler and provide much more transparency.
"Our government must defend the legitimate interests of American workers and American manufacturing on the world stage. The time when this nation can suffer the loss of a single job as a result of a poor trade agreement is over.
"The American people want us to slow down a bit. The rapid pace of immigration and globalization has placed enormous pressures on working Americans. Lower-cost labor and lower-cost goods from countries with less per-person wealth have rushed into our marketplace, lowering American wages and employment. The public has grown increasingly skeptical of these elaborate proposals, stitched together in secret, and rushed to passage on the solemn promises of their promoters. Too often, these schemes collapse under their own weight. Our job is to raise our own standard of living here in America, not to lower our standard of living to achieve greater parity with the rest of the world. If we want an international trade deal that advances the interests of our own people, then perhaps we don't need a 'fast-track' but a regular track: where the president sends us any proposal he deems worthy and we review it on its own merits." [full text of Sen. Sessions' letter at source]
Outlines of TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership)
.......
"Key Features.....
"......
o Living agreement: to enable the updating of the agreement as appropriate to address trade issues that emerge in the future as well as new issues that arise with the expansion of the agreement to include new countries.
............"
"Generation Vexed: The downwardly mobile Millennials may be waking up at last"
"...............Conservatives will never out-snark, out-mock, or out-tweet the popular culture that embraced Barack Obama as a semi-religious icon. But Millennials are right at the beginning of what promises to be an unpleasant, extended encounter with the facts of life, and it may be that they will soon figure out that there is more to understanding those facts than snark and emojis. Mocking them would be easy, while persuading them will prove difficult and frustrating, because conservatism, unromantic disposition that it is, is in the end an exercise in calculating a balance of human imperfections. The Millennials do not understand that — not quite yet."
and let the administration make future changes without congressional approval//
We need to know if this is true or not. I cant imagine Cruz approving anything that would let this happen.
I already sent him an email to explain the agreement and I am confidant he will, as he always addresses the major issue people are concerned about.
I put my trust in him. But I would like to hear about this trade agreement from him.
It shouldn't be either. We are a nation of citizens not foreign agents..
Let's pull out the neglected, dog-eared recipe book, read the ingredients and understand how to mix them, so that the outcome again is good.
Cruz is another corporatist fraud.
Sen. Sessions bump!!!
It’s blueprint, Spengler ‘caesarism’
When will this nightmare end?
I get killed sometimes for saying I’m not quite sure brining in millions of H 1b’s is a good idea. Im anti capitalism, afraid of losing my white color job etc. Actually, they opened graphics department in India to replace us. It closed after two tears of HORRIFFIC work output.
Another time, an employee came up to me to make a change to her document. She said she had been with the guys In tech for an hour and they couldn’t help her. It took me about45 seconds to fi it.
She just wanted pages in the middle of her document to start at 1 and end at 4. I know Microsoft Word like the bck of my hand. It’s part of my job. But they couldn’t admit that the gringo could do something an Indian superman couldn’t.
good post. But there are those who will destroy you if they catch you saying this. The say unlimited legal white collar work is great and I’m afraid because I’ll lose my job. I wont lose my job as they suck as workers. What will happen is they will take jobs of those deemed unfit for some reason or old, not good enough, etc.
But many of the graphics dept are overseas. The suck but corporate doesn’t care as long as the work is done.
The free markets n here don’t seem to care HOW FAR that phrase goes, maybe back to the days of “the jungle”
one guy told me to start my own computer business if I couldn’t hack it. I’m assuming these people are old and retired or doing something that no immigrant can do, at least for now.
I’m not sure what Walker will do with the illegals here who are taking jobs from Americans. He has said they should pay a fine and then proceed on a path to citizenship. In another speech he said they should go home and get in line. Surely he doesn’t think they are going to do that voluntarily.
I think legal immigration should be very limited and very selective, with high standards that only allow people who will be substantial assets to the country. I think there should be temporary asylum for Christians fleeing persecution, also. Surely, this of all nations, can identify with that persecution and offer refuge.
then someone berated me an then told me h b1’s cant vote because they aren’t citizens. IF that’s true than he was right and I was wrong. I don’t know. Do they ever get to be citizens
Boehner is pushing this so you have to know its a bad deal.
lol. I don’t know why there are those that are terribly for taking in as many Asian, indian etc. workers as possible. If there is shortage of Americans to fill the jobs, let google and twitter and facebook pay the tuition of those who take the major.
But that’s not what they want. they want CHEAP labor.
I dont care if I’m called a troll or traitor or whatever, clean up h 1b so congressmen stop getting bribes for it and other crooked things about it and then lets talk.
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