CAFTA Should Be Rejected, Just Like the EU Constitution

Eco Logic Powerhouse ^ | 15 Jul 05 | Phyllis Schlafly

[datura]

Since democracy is the worldwide goal of the Bush Administration, we must face the stunning fact that the integration of different nationalities under a common European Union (EU) Constitution was rejected by decisive democratic votes. President Bush can thank conservative leaders for saving him from the embarrassment of endorsing the EU Constitution, shortly before it was so soundly defeated in France and the Netherlands.

The EU Constitution was defeated, because Western Europeans don't want to be politically, economically, or socially integrated with the culture, economy, lifestyle, or history of Eastern Europe and Muslim countries. Western Europeans recognized in the proposed EU Constitution a loss of national identity and freedom, to a foreign bureaucracy, plus a redistribution of wealth from richer countries to poorer countries.

Will the political and business elites in America hear this message, and stop trying to force CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement) on America?

The Senate Republican Policy Committee appears to be tone deaf. Its just-released policy paper argues that CAFTA should be approved, because its purpose is "integrating more closely with 34 hemispheric neighbors - thus furthering the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)," which the 2001 Quebec Declaration declared would bring about "hemispheric integration."

Americans don't want to be "integrated" with the poverty, corruption, socialism, and communism of our hemispheric neighbors, any more than the French want to be integrated with the Turks and Bulgarians.

Just as the French and Dutch were suspicious of the dangers lurking in the 485-page EU Constitution, Americans are wary of the dangers hiding in the 92-page CAFTA legislation, plus the 31 pages that purport to spell out the administrative actions the U.S. must take in compliance. No wonder CAFTA's supporters are bypassing our Constitution's requirement that treaties can be valid only if passed by two-thirds of our Senators.

The Senate Republican policy paper argues that CAFTA "will promote democratic governance." But, there is nothing democratic about CAFTA's many pages of grants of vague authority to foreign tribunals, on which foreign judges could force us to change our domestic laws to be "no more burdensome than necessary" on foreign trade.

We have had enough impertinent interference with our lives and economy from the international tribunals Congress has already locked us into, such as the WTO (World Trade Organization) and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Americans don't want decisions from another anti-American tribunal any more than the French and Dutch wanted their lives micro-managed by Belgian bureaucrats.

The EU political elite ridiculed the French and the Dutch for not realizing that globalism is on the march, and we should all get on the train before it leaves the station. The French and Dutch woke up to the fact that the engineers of the EU train are bureaucrats in Brussels and judges in Luxembourg, who invent regulations and judge-made laws, without so much as tip of their hats to democracy.

The pro-EU political bosses blamed the "non" vote by the French on worry about losing their jobs to the cheap labor of Eastern Europe and Turkey. But the worry was grounded in reality, and Americans are likewise correct, to worry about how CAFTA will put U.S. jobs in competition with low-wage Central America, where the average factory worker is paid about one dollar an hour.

CAFTA would even prohibit U.S. states from giving preference to American workers when taxpayer-funded contracts are granted.

CAFTA is not about free trade; it's about round-trip trade. That means multi-national corporations sending their raw materials to poor countries, where they can hire very cheap labor and avoid U.S. employment, safety and environmental regulations, and then bringing the finished goods back into the United States duty-free, to undersell U.S. companies that pay decent wages and comply with our laws.

The promise that CAFTA will give us 44 million new customers for U.S. goods is pie in the sky, like the false promise that letting Communist China into the WTO would give us a billion-person market for American agriculture. Or, the false promise that NAFTA would increase our trade surplus with Mexico to $10 billion when, in fact, it nosedived, to a $62 billion deficit.

Knowing that Americans are upset about Central America's chief export to the U.S., which is the incredibly vicious MS-13 Salvadoran gangs, the Senate Republican policy paper assures us that CAFTA will diminish "the incentives for illegal immigration to the United States." That's another fairy tale, like the unfulfilled promise that NAFTA would reduce illegal aliens and illegal drugs entering the U.S. from Mexico.

By stating that CAFTA means the implementation of a "rules-based framework" for trade, investment, and technology, the Senate Republican policy paper confirms that free trade requires world, or at least hemispheric, government. You can't have a single economy, without a single government.

CAFTA may serve the economic interests of the globalists and the multinational corporations, but it makes no sense historically, Constitutionally, or democratically. Americans will never sing "God Bless the Western Hemisphere" instead of "God Bless America."

[inquest]

But they most likely aren't being honest...or else those "trade in services" clauses wouldn't be there.

Good point. It's getting almost comical to see CAFTA proponents constantly insist that we won't actually be required to obey any of the obligations that the agreement imposes. But then like you said, why are they there?

[RightDemocrat]

Where did you get your "facts" from ? The Cato Institute ? The trade deficit after 12 years of free trade policies speaks for itself. I suppose that you think open borders is a great idea too. And I am taking the old-line Republican position on the trade issue ! Nearly all Republicans supported protective tariffs until Eisenhower was conned by the Rockefeller internationalist, free trade arguments. The original "Mr. Conservative" Bob Taft would be turning over in his grave if he knew that so-called conservative politicians were destroying our manufacturing capacity and national security. Fortunately, many Republicans seem to be coming to their senses and recognizing that fair trade, not free trade is our nation's best interests. Economic patriots of all types from labor Democrats to thoughtful moderates to nationalist conservatives need to band together and kill CAFTA. If we can stop CAFTA, the trend of toward globalism and free trade at all costs can be reversed. The free traitors must be defeated !

[Mase]

Where did you get your "facts" from ? The Cato Institute?

I'll be glad to consider your facts should you ever decide to post any.

The trade deficit after 12 years of free trade policies speaks for itself.

We've had a trade deficit for 30 years now. The last time we had a surplus was during a recession. Japan and Germany have trade surpluses, would you like to trade economies with them?

Nearly all Republicans supported protective tariffs until Eisenhower was conned by the Rockefeller internationalist, free trade arguments

Yeah, right. And we are so much poorer now than we were in the 50's because of it. (derisive sarcasm)

Bob Taft would be turning over in his grave if he knew that so-called conservative politicians were destroying our manufacturing capacity and national security

More fact-free hyperbole.

Fortunately, many Republicans seem to be coming to their senses

This, coming from a democrat? I find you are uniquely unqualified to lecturing anyone here about Republican values.

the trend of toward globalism and free trade at all costs can be reversed. The free traitors must be defeated !

Workers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains.

[Stellar Dendrite]

As someone else stated: I am all for free trade as long as its FAIR!

[RightDemocrat]

As you point out, we have had a trade deficit for a long time and it is increasing. The purchasing power of the middle and working classes has been stagnating since the 70's. There is more wealth but it is concentrated in the hands of a few. The high tech jobs that were supposed to replace the old manufacturing jobs have failed to materialize.

I have made no secret that I am a labor Democrat who is a friend of the right on social issues and believes in old fashioned concepts like national soverignty. I consider myself to be a fiscal conservative, but don't buy into "trickle down" economics. While I obviously can't speak for the Republican Party, I do know that Republicans used to favor economic nationalism and tariffs and I think your party would benefit if it returned to that postion.

One of the reasons that the Democratic Party has lost ground among working class voters is that Bill Clinton and Al Gore sold them out on free trade. As a result, these voters have been voting Republican because they find the GOP more in line with their values on issues like gun control, abortion and gay marriage. For a long time, I have been lecturing my fellow Democrats on the need to get back to economic populism and a more traditional value system.

Likewise, it made me sick to see Pat Buchanan practically excommunicated from the Republican Party by the small "l" libertarians and neo-cons because he took a position on trade issues that was once a mainstay of the Republican Party.

CAFTA will be defeated because the American people across political and ideological lines are waking up and recognizing that we have been lied to by the one worlders and big business interests. The sleeping giant is finally awakening and the political party that ignores it will do so at their peril.

[Paul Ross]

Workers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Ah, we finally see your real sentiments. We are not falling for the claim this was mere sarcasm or tongue-in-cheek. You have evinced your real thinking.

You regard Nations, and Sovereignty, and their essential Borders...as "chains". Unless the Nation, Sovereignty, and Border belongs to Communist China...then of course you sing a different tune or duck and cover.

[Paul Ross]

Of course it is in our national interests to have more prosperous economies in our hemisphere, and we should be as responsible for it as possible

Stay Out of My Wallet, Thieving Redistributionists!

Any rate you continue to blow off the issue that in fact, the misery in the Latin Americas is not due to lack of trade by America. But the corrupt kleptocracy regimes already in place...which will only be strengthened. And in exchange, America's Constitution, what is left of it, is shredded still further, its currency is debauched and our society loses its middle class. Wow. What a deal.

"Win-Win" If you are a Communist or an importing CEO.

[Paul Ross]

The Constitution ought to be paramount in all that it governs

So let's act like it is, and enforce it here ruling NAFTA/CAFTA/WTO-Courts unconstitutional, and stop giving it mere lip-service! The Court's must once again enforce the excess delegation doctrines of Schechter and Panama.

Section 8 - Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

[Note: This, as Congressman Ron Paul says, is a non-delegable power. Certainly so before FDR's court-packing plan attack on the Court to neuter its willingness to defend the Constitution. See CATO's own discussion below...which is largely contradictory of its CAFTA position]

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

[Note, not superior, not equal, but inferior. Subordinate. Congress cannot make a Court that is superior to the Supreme Court. Tell us how, with an International Court or Tribunal telling us how it will be, under threat of trade war, just what the U.S. Court can do on trade issues to demonstrate that theoretical superiority under your "agreements"? ]

4. The Delegation of Legislative Powers

Congress should

• require all "lawmaking" regulations to be affirmatively approved by Congress and signed into law by the president, as the Constitution requires for all laws; and
• establish a mechanism to force the legislative consideration of existing regulations during the reauthorization process.

Separation of Powers: The Bulwark of Liberty

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty. --Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

Article I, section 1, of the U.S. Constitution stipulates, "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.'' Article II, section 3, stipulates that the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'' Thus, as we all learned in high school civics, the Constitution clearly provides for a separation of powers between the various branches of government.

The alternative design--concentration of power within a single governmental body--was thought to be inimical to a free society. John Adams wrote in 1776 that "a single assembly, possessed of all the powers of government, would make arbitrary laws for their own interest, and adjudge all controversies in their own favor.'' James Madison in Federalist no. 47 justified the Constitution's separation of powers by noting that it was a necessary prerequisite for "a government of laws and not of men.'' Further, he wrote, "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.''

For the first 150 years of the American Republic, the Supreme Court largely upheld the original constitutional design, requiring that Congress rather than administrators make the law. The suggestion that Congress could broadly delegate its lawmaking powers to others--particularly the executive branch--was generally rejected by the courts. And for good reasons. First, the Constitution was understood to be a document of enumerated and thus limited powers, and nowhere was Congress either explicitly or even implicitly given the power to delegate. Second, the fear of power concentrated in any one branch still animated both the Supreme Court and the legislature. Third, Americans believed that those who make the law should be directly accountable at the ballot box.

The upshot was that the separation of powers effectively restrained federal power, just as the Founders had intended. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, "The nation participates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, and in the execution of them by the choice of agents of the executive government.'' He also observed that "it may also be said to govern itself, so feeble and so restricted is the share left to the administrators, so little do the authorities forget their popular origins and the power from which they emanate.''

The New Deal: "Delegation Running Riot''

The sense of political crisis that permeated the 1930s effectively buried the nondelegation doctrine. In his first inaugural address, Franklin Roosevelt compared the impact of the ongoing economic depression to a foreign invasion and argued that Congress should grant him sweeping powers to fight it.

Shortly after taking office, Congress in 1933 granted Roosevelt virtually unlimited power to regulate commerce through passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (which authorized the president to increase agricultural prices via administrative production controls) and the National Industrial Recovery Act (known as the NIRA), which authorized the president to issue industrial codes to regulate all aspects of the industries they covered.

The Supreme Court, however, temporarily arrested the tide in 1935 in its unanimous opinion in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States. The Court overturned the industrial code provisions of the NIRA, and, in a separate opinion, Justice Benjamin Cardozo termed the NIRA--and thus the New Deal--"delegation running riot.'' That same year, the Court struck down additional NIRA delegations of power in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan.

Largely because of the Schechter and Panama Refining decisions, President Roosevelt decried the Court's interference with his political agenda and proposed legislation enlarging the size of the Court so that he could appoint additional justices--the so-called Court-packing plan. He lost that battle but won the war. Although the Court never explicitly reversed its 1935 decisions and continues to articulate essentially the same verbal formulas defining the scope of permissible delegation--indeed, Schechter and Panama Refining theoretically are good law today--it would be nearly 40 years before the Court again struck down business regulation on delegation grounds.

As long as Congress articulates some intelligible standard (no matter how vague or arbitrary) to govern executive lawmaking, courts are prepared today to allow delegation, in the words of Justice Cardozo, to run riot. John Locke's admonition that the legislature "cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands, for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others'' is a forgotten vestige from an era when individual liberty mattered more than administrative convenience. As Federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson wrote in United States v. Mills in 1989, "A delegation doctrine which essentially allows Congress to abdicate its power to define the elements of a criminal offense, in favor of an un-elected administrative agency such as the [Army] Corps of Engineers, does violence to this time-honored principle. . . . Deferent and minimal judicial review of Congress' transfer of its criminal lawmaking function to other bodies, in other branches, calls into question the vitality of the tripartite system established by our Constitution. It also calls into question the nexus that must exist between the law so applied and simple logic and common sense. Yet that seems to be the state of the law.''

Delegation: The Corrosive Agent of Democracy

The concern over congressional delegation of power is not simply theoretical and abstract, for delegation does violence, not only to the ideal construct of a free society, but also to the day-to-day practice of democracy itself. Ironically, delegation does not help to secure "good government''; it helps to destroy it.

Delegation Breeds Political Irresponsibility

Congress delegates power for much the same reason that Congress continues to run budget deficits. With deficit spending, members of Congress can claim credit for the benefits of their expenditures yet escape blame for the costs. The public must pay ultimately, of course, but through taxes levied at some future time by some other officials. Likewise, delegation allows legislators to claim credit for the benefits that a regulatory statute airily promises yet escape the blame for the burdens it will impose, because they do not issue the laws needed to achieve those high-sounding benefits. The public inevitably must suffer regulatory burdens to realize regulatory benefits, but the laws will come from an agency that legislators can then criticize for imposing excessive burdens on their constituents.

Just as deficit spending allows legislators to appear to deliver money to some people without taking it from others, delegation allows them to appear to deliver regulatory benefits without imposing regulatory costs. It provides, in the words of former Environmental Protection Agency deputy administrator John Quarles, "a handy set of mirrors--so useful in Washington--by which politicians can appear to kiss both sides of the apple.''

Delegation Is a Political Steroid for Organized Special Interests

As Stanford law professor John Hart Ely has noted, "One reason we have broadly based representative assemblies is to await something approaching a consensus before government intervenes.'' The Constitution was intentionally designed to curb the "facility and excess of law-making'' (in the words of James Madison) by requiring that statutes go through a bicameral legislature and the president. Differences in the size and nature of the constituencies of representatives, senators, and the president--and the different lengths of their terms in office--increase the probability that the actions of each will reflect a different balance of interests. That diversity of viewpoint, plus the greater difficulty of prevailing in three forums rather than one, makes it far more difficult for special-interest groups or bare majorities to impose their will on the totality of the American people. Hence, the original design effectively required a supermajority to make law as a means of discouraging the selfish exercise of power by well-organized but narrow interests.

Delegation shifts the power to make law from a Congress of all interests to subgovernments typically representative of only a small subset of all interests. The obstacles intentionally placed in the path of lawmaking disappear, and the power of organized interests is magnified.

That is largely because diffuse interests typically find it even more difficult to press their case before an agency than before a legislature. They often have no direct representation in the administrative process, and effective representation typically requires special legal counsel, expert witnesses, and the capacity to reward or to punish top officials through political organization, press coverage, and close working relationships with members of the appropriate congressional subcommittee. As a result, the general public rarely qualifies as a "stakeholder'' in agency proceedings and is largely locked out of the decisionmaking process. Madison's desired check on the "facility and excess of law-making'' is thus smashed.

Delegation Breeds the Leviathan State

Perhaps the ultimate check on the growth of government rests in the fact that there is only so much time in a day. No matter how many laws Congress would like to pass, there are only so many hours in a session to do so. Delegation, however, dramatically expands the realm of the possible by effectively "deputizing'' tens of thousands of bureaucrats, often with broad and imprecise missions to "go forth and legislate.'' Thus, as columnist Jacob Weisberg has noted in the New Republic, "As a labor-saving device, delegation did for legislators what the washing machine did for the 1950s housewife. Government could now penetrate every nook and cranny of American life in a way that was simply impossible before.''

The Threadbare Case for Delegation

Although delegation has become so deeply embedded in the political landscape that few public officials even recognize the phenomenon or the issues raised by the practice, political observers are becoming increasingly aware of the failure of delegation to deliver its promised bounty of good government.

The Myth of Technical Expertise

It was once maintained that delegation produces more sensible laws by transferring lawmaking from elected officials, who are beholden to concentrated interests, to experts, who can base their decisions solely on a cool appraisal of the public interest. Yet most agency heads are not scientists, engineers, economists, or other kinds of technical experts; they are political operatives. Since the EPA's inception in 1970, for example, seven of its eight administrators and seven of its nine assistant administrators for air pollution have been lawyers. As MIT professor Michael Golay wrote in a recent issue of Science, "Environmental protection policy disagreements are not about what to conclude from the available scientific knowledge; they represent a struggle for political power among groups having vastly differing interests and visions for society. In this struggle, science is used as a means of legitimizing the various positions . . . science is a pawn, cynically abused as may suit the interests of a particular protagonist despite great ignorance concerning the problems being addressed.'' Perhaps that's why the EPA's own Science Advisory Board was forced to concede in a 1992 report that the agency's science "is perceived by many people both inside and outside the agency to be adjusted to fit policy.''

We should not necessarily bemoan the lack of agency expertise, for it is not entirely clear that government by experts is superior to government by elected officials. As political scientist Robert Dahl has pointed out, there is no reason to believe that experts possess superior moral knowledge or a better sense of what constitutes the public good. Indeed, specialization often impairs the capacity for moral judgment and often breeds professional zealotry. Likewise, specialized expertise provides too narrow a base for the balanced judgments that intelligent policy requires.

Although both agency administrators and legislators often lack the expertise to evaluate technical arguments by themselves, they can get help from agency and committee staff, government institutes (like the Centers for Disease Control or the General Accounting Office), and private sources such as medical associations, think tanks, and university scientists. After all, that is what the hearings process is supposed to be all about.

And only someone naive about modern government would seriously allege today that the winds of politics blow any less fiercely in administrative meeting rooms than they do in the halls of Congress. As Nobel laureate economist James Buchanan and others have observed, public-choice dynamics provide a multitude of incentives for public officials to pursue both private and political ends that often have little to do with their ostensible mission.

Is Congress Too Busy?

New Dealers once argued that "time spent on details Congress] must be at the sacrifice of time spent on matters of the broad public policy.'' Congress today spends little time on "matters of broad public policy,'' largely because delegation forces Congress to spend a large chunk of its time constructing the legislative architecture--sometimes over a thousand pages of it--detailing exactly how various agencies are to decide important matters of policy. Once that architecture is in place, members of Congress find that a large part of their job entails navigating through those bureaucratic mazes for special interests jockeying to influence the final nature of the law. Writing such instructions and performing agency oversight to ensure that they are carried out would be unnecessary if Congress made the rules in the first place.

Moreover, delegation often works to prolong disputes and keep standards of conduct murky because pressures from legislators and the complicated procedures imposed upon agencies turn lawmaking into an excruciatingly slow process. Agencies typically report that they have issued only a small fraction of the laws that their long-standing statutory mandates require. Competing interests devote large sums of money and many of their best minds to this seemingly interminable process. For example, it took the EPA 16 years to ban lead in gasoline despite the fact that the 1970 Clean Air Act explicitly gave them the authority to do so. Simply making the rules the first time around in the legislative process would take less time than the multiyear regulatory sausage machine requires to issue standards.

Complex Rules for a Complex World

Perhaps the most widely accepted justification for some degree of delegation is the complex and technical nature of the world we live in today. As the Supreme Court argued in 1989, "Our jurisprudence has been driven by a practical understanding that in our increasingly complex society, replete with ever changing and more technical problems, Congress simply cannot do its job absent an ability to delegate power under broad general directives.''

Yet the vast majority of decisions delegated to the executive branch are not particularly technical in nature. They are instead hotly political, for the reasons mentioned above. If Congress must regulate, it could (and probably should) jettison micromanagerial command-and-control regulations that make up the bulk of the Federal Register and instead adopt regulations that are less prescriptive and more performance based or market oriented. Most regulatory analysts on both the left and the right agree that this would also have the happy consequences of decreasing regulatory costs, increasing regulatory efficiency, and decreasing the burden on regulators. In addition, a Congress not skewed toward regulation by delegation would rediscover practical reasons for allowing many matters to be left to state and local regulators.

Conclusion

Forcing Congress to vote on each and every administrative regulation that establishes a rule of private conduct would prove the most revolutionary change in government since the Civil War--not because the idea is particularly radical, but because we are today a nation governed, not by elected officials, but by unelected bureaucrats. The central political issues of the 105th Congress--the complex and heavy-handed array of regulations that entangle virtually all manner of private conduct, the perceived inability of elections to affect the direction of government, the disturbing political power of special interests, the lack of popular respect for the law, the sometimes tyrannical and self-aggrandizing exercise of power by government, and populist resentment of an increasingly unaccountable political elite--are but symptoms of a disease largely caused by delegation.

"No regulation without representation!'' would be a fitting battle cry for the 105th Congress if it is truly interested in fundamental reform of government. It is a standard that both the left and the right could comfortably rally around, given that dozens of prominent constitutional scholars, policy analysts, and journalists--from Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, to former judge Robert Bork--have expressed support for the end of delegation. Several pieces of legislation (H.R. 47, H.R. 2727, and H.R. 2990, with a total of nearly 100 cosponsors) were introduced in the 104th Congress to accomplish exactly that.

Of course, forcing Congress to take full and direct responsibility for the law would not prove a panacea. The legislature, after all, has shown itself to be fully capable of violating individual rights, subsidizing special interests, writing complex and virtually indecipherable law, and generally making a hash of things. But delegation has helped to make such phenomena, not the exception, but the rule of modern government. No more crucial--and potentially popular--reform awaits the attention of the 105th Congress.

Suggested Readings

Breyer, Stephen. "The Legislative Veto after Chadha.'' Thomas F. Ryan lecture. Georgetown Law Journal 72 (1984): 785-99.

Lawson, Gary. "The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State.'' Harvard Law Review 107 (1994): 1231-54.

Schoenbrod, David. Power without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People through Delegation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993.

Schoenbrod, David, and Gene Healy. "Regulation without Representation: The Case against the Administrative State.'' Cato Institute Policy Analysis, forthcoming.

Smith, Nick. "Restoration of Congressional Authority and Responsibility over the Regulatory Process.'' Harvard Journal on Legislation 33 (1996): 323-37.

--Prepared by David Schoenbrod and Jerry Taylor

[mbraynard]

It's decided more than that. It's decided to give authority to supranational bodies, as you acknowledged. The fact that it voluntarily cedes sovereignty doesn't alter the fact that it's ceding sovereignty.

Look - you can't have an agreement without somekind of arbitration built in to settle disputes. Using your logic, the US should never have joined NATO or have treaties with anyone. Keep in mind that the US can withdraw from CAFTA or NAFTA any time it wants - it's not like a Constitutional amendment.

And no, it's not political consolidation. In the years that we have had free trade with Jordan - while US relations have improved with Jordan - do you think there has been any political consilidation whatsoever?

Look, if you are determined to oppose this treaty, you will always find weenie ways to spin things and see them as you would like to. Tarrifs are taxes - as Rs we should oppose them here and abroad - and this treaty does both.

[Paul Ross]

And no, it's not political consolidation.

Oh yes it is. You have seen the 'blocs' the internationalists are bent on creating? Isn't it interesting how similar the proposals are?

And then tell us why the preambles to all these agreements include the term "justice"--a red flag socialist buzzword if ever there was one.

In the years that we have had free trade with Jordan - while US relations have improved with Jordan - do you think there has been any political consilidation whatsoever?

Bilateral free trade treaties are not the same as these massive multilateral structures. Bilateral treaties are the constitutional way to go.

And your NATO argument is a red herring. We were confronted with a military threat, and we are entitled to join and set up alliances to deal with those threats. And those were done by TREATY (Hence North Atlantic Treaty Organization), not simple agreement.

[mbraynard]

Your contradict yourself and make several errors.

It's silly to compare NAFTA/DR-CAFTA with the EU. I guess there are some similarities regarding trade, but that's it and that isn't enough to condemn the whole agreement.

Second, you say that being confronted with a military threat in the past was reason enough to have a TREATY that entailed much POLITICAL association, but now being confronted with a MILITARY THREAT is not reason enough to agree to a simple TRADE AGREEMENT that isn't a TREATY and can be withdrawn from if deemed too cumbersome.

So tell me, how much soveriegnty has been lost due to NAFTA? Can you name any specific examples? Has Canada foisted it's healthcare system on us or has Mexico compelled us to start having ciestas?

And while NAFTA made it easier for exports to get into the US Market, costing some manufacturing jobs that will be replaced by machines in a generation anyway, DR-CAFTA is about getting these foreign governments to remove THEIR trade barriers as nearly all of their products come into the US tarriff free as it is now.

Your argument might be stronger if DR-CAFTA was a real treaty, but it is a simple agreement that our government is going to do certain things, none of which you or I can object to and, should they become burdensome, it can simply withdraw.

[n-tres-ted]

Those who know my views would get quite a laugh out of the name-calling you are throwing in my direction. My politics began with support of Barry Goldwater, who I think would agree that extremism in pursuit of nonsense is no virtue.

[inquest]

Look - you can't have an agreement without somekind of arbitration built in to settle disputes.

Pure nonsense. Treaties have been entered into throughout history, and only very recently have treaties involved of any kind of independent body to oversee disputes. That's just an embryonic government, plain and simple.

Using your logic, the US should never have joined NATO or have treaties with anyone.

Treaties I already dealt with. As for NATO, does it involve a separate body for "resolving disputes"? If it does, then it probably would have been better not to join up and set that precedent. What exactly did it enable us to do that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise? Would the nations of Western Europe have not allowed us to station troops there without us all being in some kind of formal alliance? Would they have preferred instead to let themselves be exposed to Soviet attack?

In the years that we have had free trade with Jordan - while US relations have improved with Jordan - do you think there has been any political consilidation whatsoever?

Was the FTA with Jordan attempted to be justified on the grounds of national security the way you're trying to justify CAFTA? And in either event, CAFTA goes further, according to the USTR's own website.

Tarrifs are taxes - as Rs we should oppose them here and abroad - and this treaty does both.

The taxes you refer to are minuscule compared to the overall tax burden. Sure it would be nice to get rid of them, but it's not such an emergency that we need to compromise our sovereignty in any way whatsoever in order to do it. If it really is "taxes" that you're concerned about, we can more than make up for both our own tariffs and theirs by cutting the income tax back down to civilized levels.

[Mase]

The purchasing power of the middle and working classes has been stagnating since the 70's.

More assertions with no basis in fact. Look here for comparative household income, by quintile, since 1970. (it's increasing)

There is more wealth but it is concentrated in the hands of a few.

Really? Just more DNC talking points trying to gin up class envy and class warfare.

The Gap between Rich and Poor
The Middle Class is Expanding
Musty Old Lies About Income Inequality

The high tech jobs that were supposed to replace the old manufacturing jobs have failed to materialize.

Whatever are you talking about? We've created more than 21 million new jobs since 1994 and real incomes have risen. Do you live in John Edwards' other world? Here is a breakdown, by job category, from 1990-2000. Notice that all categories, other than manufacturing and mining, have increased substantially.
Total U.S. Employment by Industry

Now, since 1994 (NAFTA) we've created more than 21 million new jobs.
BLS Stats 1994-2005

Since 1994 (NAFTA), real incomes for all workers have risen more than 11%. Notice that, in the decade prior to NAFTA, real incomes for all workers shrank more than 8%.
Real Incomes for All Workers

Finally, since 1992 manufacturing production has increased 50%. We produce and export more now than at any other time in our history.
Chart

I do know that Republicans used to favor economic nationalism and tariffs and I think your party would benefit if it returned to that postion.

Why, because our party has done so poorly the last 25 years? Because our economy has done so poorly in the past 25 years? Are you serious? We are the economic engine and envy of the world and the only remaining superpower. Do you know anything about the correlation between economic freedom and wealth? In case you missed it on this thread, here it is again.
Economic Freedom and Per Capita Income

Bill Clinton and Al Gore sold them out on free trade

There is no doubt that Bill Clinton and Al Gore sold out working class voters but it had nothing to do with free trade. NAFTA was the vision of Ronald Reagan.

Pat Buchanan practically excommunicated from the Republican Party by the small "l" libertarians and neo-cons because he took a position on trade issues that was once a mainstay of the Republican Party.

Buchanan is an isolationist and a protectionist (if there is a difference). If his message had an audience, he'd have received more than 450,000 votes in 2000. Can you tell me the last time this country rejected a free trade agreement? Fact is free trade has never been the issue you think it is. The people know better than the demagogues and protectionism will be a hard sell in these exceptional economic times.

The one-worlders are in your party. You guys are the ones who are cozy with the U.N. - not my president. Globalization is an economic phenomenon driven by the speed of information and the use of talent. Nothing can stop it. That's the real giant and he hasn't been sleeping.

Maybe if you learned a little more about economics, did a little more homework and stopped buying into the MSM doom and gloom you'd leave the party of negativism. The best example of your naivete is your belief that CAFTA won't pass because people are waking up to the evils of freer trade. That's just absurd.

There are just two reasons CAFTA may not pass: First, usually reliable free trade democrats have been intimidated by their party into delivering Bush a defeat which will, hopefully, establish him as a lame duck early. Second, the sugar cartel is using their influence to protect their welfare payments. Reps from states that produce cane sugar and sugar beets are scared to death to vote against them. That's it. No idealogical swing. Just politics as usual.

[Paul Ross]

The only name you have been called is "redistributionist."

And you haven't denied it.

I frankly doubt your averment of Goldwater support. Extremism in pursuit of liberty, assumes, there is a country that defends those liberties.

Your extremism in pursuit of supranational nonsense is precisely what Goldwater would object to, and especially the phony free trade edifice.

You do recall some history from my era, don't you?

As Buchanan has noted, For Sen. Prescott Bush stood with Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond to oppose the free-trade policies of JFK that started the de-industrialization of America. Goldwater opposed JFK when it came to tariff reduction and free(r) trade.

Your pushing the doctrinnaire CAFTA/NAFTA/WTO is inimical to everything the champions of liberty stood for. The U.S. is outvoted 38-1 in the WTO.

And you still haven't proven anything with regard to prosperity of latin america, nor have you proven it isn't coming out of my pocket. All evidence points to CAFTA and NAFTA failing to ameliorate the conditions you are wanting to address with my pocketbook. And as Duncan Hunter said back in 1996:

"Conservatives opposed free trade because we thought that, if you gave away pieces of the American market and did not get anything in return, you were disserving millions of American working people and small businesses, and that is exactly the case today. And Pat Buchanan has been exactly right about NAFTA, and President Clinton, who fathered NAFTA, has been exactly wrong.

There was a $3 billion trade surplus over Mexico before NAFTA. Today there is a $15 billion trade deficit. That means billions of dollars gone that would have been coming to Americans who are working in America making those components and those products that now are made in Mexico. We have now a $30 billion trade deficit with Communist China, which even now is building short-range and long-range missiles, has a big weapons market in the Third World, selling weapons to Libya and Iraq and other nations."

Of course, all those numbers are vastly worsened today. Our annual trade deficit with China is approaching $300 billion. Our annual trade deficit with Canada and Mexico is now over $94 billion. And you don't think there are sovereignty impacts???

[mbraynard]

Pure nonsense. Treaties have been entered into throughout history, and only very recently have treaties involved of any kind of independent body to oversee disputes. That's just an embryonic government, plain and simple.

Treaties always have mechanisms for enforcement - be it a third party or the ability to simply leave. As CAFTA is not going to be approved as a treaty, it has even less potentcy. This is a no-brainer - the agreement opens up foreign markets to our exporters.

If you really disagree with the creatoin of NATO there really is no point in continuing this discussion. This is merely about an agreement to open foreign markets in the face of an agressive enemy who would rather they stay shut to us.

The Jordan agreement has many justifications - all equal - and involving both SECURITY and ECONOMICS.

And this conversation will not continue unless you give me one example of our soveriengnty being lost to Canada or Mexico due to NAFTA. You guys made the SAME ARGUMENTS back then about a North American superstate. I don't see it.

[Paul Ross]

Look here for comparative household income, by quintile, since 1970. (it's increasing)

No, you have failed to prove its increasing either for real, or in any good category because of the negative trade imbalance which you continue to evade. How much of the economy is now actually sustained by too much debt, masking off the adverse fundamentals?

[Paul Ross]

As CAFTA is not going to be approved as a treaty, it has even less potentcy.

It has even less constitutionality. But that hasn't been stopped by this Supreme Court yet. Hence the "potency" is derived from the trade war threat. Which is something we should simply take on forthrightly rather than drink the Kool Aid, and allow it to proceed by subterfuge.

[Paul Ross]

but now being confronted with a MILITARY THREAT is not reason enough to agree to a simple TRADE AGREEMENT that isn't a TREATY and can be withdrawn from if deemed too cumbersome.

There is no military threat that this agreement is addressing. And give up on the prosperity crap. I am worried about OUR prosperity, not any other countries. And if they can't simply trade on a bilateral basis as before, then they are being subsidized and assisted by a tilted juridical regime. And you still have evaded the unconstitutional implications for the U.S. Supreme Court.

And as for withdrawal, we have already had the claim by GWB's Secretary of Commerce and also the Treasury, that if we were to turn it down, that a lot of the governments we have been negotiating with will be extremely mad, and will take retaliatory measures...

H'mmmm. Sounds like more than smoke. Sounds like they have already conceded sovereignty out of duress by foreign adversaries...and don't want to have to face the music of the betrayals they launched us down.

[Paul Ross]

My politics began with support of Barry Goldwater,

Too bad it didn't finish there. You would have remained a patriot. Who knows where you are today.