TED CRUZ HQ: A Note to Conservatives on Trade Agreements

Ted Cruz for President ^ | June 12, 2015 | Staff

[2ndDivisionVet]

So everything I’ve done in life is disreputable, including military intelligence? Should I go grab a gun and blow my brains out? Would you even criticize me after that?

[boomop1]

Cruz has jumped the shark on this and is not a credible candidate.

[central_va]

Would you even criticize me after that?

No.

[cripplecreek]

Don’t waste your time. Others at FR and in other places are far more rational.

I’m finished dealing with the dead enders. I just won’t respond to them any more.

[Will88]

All the time thinking that people will ignore the fact that he pulled a John Kerry "I voted for the bill before I voted against it" move by voting away the ability to filibuster it by supporting TPA.

That's just incredible. I take it that it's true because I've seen if posted several times. If TPA removes the 60 vote hurdle in the Senate for passage of subsequent trade agreements (such as TPP), then any senator who supports TPA is just playing a game with the public when it comes to the final, 51 majority vote to pass a major trade deal.

Haven't heard many, or any senators getting up and pointing out that handy little feature of TPA to the voters.

[tanknetter]

If the TPA had passed we could push through a Trade a Bill to our liking in 2017.

If TPA passes (future tense, since it will be brought up again next week), TPP WILL pass as well. The idea of going back and revisiting it in 2017 will be moot.

Read some of the stuff that's alleged to be in it and ask yourself whether, if true, it should be subject to simple majority or a 60 vote Senate super-majority.

ALL Cruz had to do here was put in an amendment restoring the filibuster to TPA. Then voted no on TPA if it wasn't included. That's it. Everything else in TPA could have stayed the same and we'd be having a VERY different discussion here.

[Rusty0604]

Thanks for posting, clears up a few things.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Nobody wants to discuss why the new majority in both houses that we all slogged through a rainstorm to get there won’t even pass legislation lowering the highest corporate tax rate in the world to put our business’s on a level playing field and bring billions of offshore money back into the US. No they just want a NWO trade bill that puts 750 thousand people out of work.

[Will88]

Lol, why are showing me Sessions voting record? I’ve never said I agree with him or anyone else on every issue. But he’s right on immigration and on this particular TPA and the TPP.

[tanknetter]

Haven't heard many, or any senators getting up and pointing out that handy little feature of TPA to the voters.

TPA is remarkably similar to another legislative process called "Reconciliation". It's where budget bills are rammed through the Senate by defining a process ahead of time that strips out the filibuster.

It's how ObamaCare passed into law. A lot of people think that the Democrats had a 60-seat Senate supermajority. They didn't, Scott Brown had just won Teddy Kennedy's seat. So Harry Reid ordered that ObamaCare be considered a Budget bill and handled through Reconciliation to make sure it passed with only Democrat support.

[CatherineofAragon]

I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s as though they were waiting with bated breath for something, anything, to give them the opportunity to launch into their outraged keening.

[right way right]

I predict a purge soon.

[lysie]

For later. Thanks.

[lodi90]

For the past 80 years, it has proven virtually impossible to negotiate free-trade agreements without the fast-track process.

And according to Senator Sessions and others, it's also proven impossible to defeat any so-called free trade agreement WITH the fast track process.

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As an "opponent" of TPP why is Cruz enabling it's passage with his strong advocacy for TPA? The answer to that question is he really doesn't oppose TPP but doesn't want his fingerprints on its passage. Cruz is playing here the worst sort of McConnell two step. After supporting him without hestitation for the past two years this gives me a feeling of betrayal. Was Cruz really fighting the good fight for us the past two years or was he just strutting about trying to create a donor list?

We should be very, very troubled by the half truths in this piece. This isn't debate club here. This trade deal is an historic event unworthy of such talking points. Cruz is destroying his credibility with this incessant Boehneresque dissembling.

Cruz needs to stop this "moderate" preening and pandering to big donors or he can forget being POTUS.

[Yardstick]

Nicely argued by the Cruz team. Would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall as they were putting this release together.

[TangoLimaSierra]

I can pretty much guarantee most of the anti-Cruzers won’t read this. Settled science and all.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I’ve dealt with several of his people as a bundler and haven’t run across a dullard yet.

[spacejunkie2001]

VERY helpful

[Will88]

The answer to that question is he really doesn't oppose TPP but doesn't want his fingerprints on its passage. Cruz is playing here the worst sort of McConnell two step.

Yep, and he has recently said that the real vote in the senate is the 60 vote hurdle to end debate. He even used that to explain why it didn't matter that he had left town before a final, majority only vote on a recent bill.

If he eventually votes no on TPP as if it's some principled opposition, he will really look like the hypocrite of the year, or maybe the decade.

We should be very, very troubled by the half truths in this piece.

I could comment on several other assertions in this Cruz staff paper, but there are other things to do.

[sauropod]

My understanding is that there is a nasty section of either the TPA or the TPP that would give Obama vastly expanded executive powers with regard to immigration. Is this part of TPA and if so then why is Cruz voting for it?