Free Republic

Republican leaders will try to resurrect the trade deal Democrats sank less than a week ago, planning a new vote Thursday and insisting they will corral enough votes to approve fast-track negotiating powers President Obama needs to complete a legacy-building Pacific Rim trade deal...“We are committed to ensuring both TPA and TAA get votes in the House and Senate and are sent to the president for signature,” House Speaker John A. Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a joint statement, pushing back against claims that the issue is dead after last week’s embarrassing failure...The White House has...

An injunction issued against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by federal judge Leigh Martin May could spell the beginning of the end for Administrative Law Courts and with them, 80 years of unconstitutional abuse of power by the Executive branch. Administrative Law “…allows for the creation of public regulatory agencies and contains all of the statutes, judicial decisions, and regulations that govern them.” These regulatory bodies include the EPA and the SEC. Many came into being during the reign of Franklin Roosevelt, the one president more arrogant and power hungry than Barack Obama. The law itself “…is created by...

Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger this week blamed misinformation from sites like ObamaTrade.com and other sites like Drudge Report that pass along those links for distorting information about trade legislation, including bills on trade promotion authority, trade adjustment assistance and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the massive trade deal that has yet to be finalized. (emphasis mine)

House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) joined NPR Wednesday with Steve Inskeep to stress why he says it’s important for Congress to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which grants President Obama fast-track trade authority. With TPA, Congress cannot issue any amendments to trade agreements and merely gets an up or down vote on a final trade deal. Ryan’s go to remark when first questioned about TPA or the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) – which is part of three trade deals currently being negotiated – is he needs to clarify “misperceptions.” “We’re not considering the TPP, the Trans-Pacific...

According to Public Citizen, a non-profit organization, President Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) would drastically extend President Bill Clinton’s North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) from 1994 — which has been widely criticized for costing millions of Americans their jobs.

Establishment Republicans desperately trying to secure the passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which would give President Obama fast-track authority to secure congressional approval of at least three secretive trade deals, are now willing to increase taxes on small businesses in a way that would violate a pledge almost every Republican Congressman has taken when elected into office. To secure final passage through Congress of a package that would include TPA fast-track authority—which would ensure finalization of the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), among other deals—the House would...

WikiLeaks is releasing another part of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The Healthcare Annex, according to WikiLeaks, “seeks to regulate state schemes for medicines and medical devices. It forces healthcare authorities to give big pharmaceutical companies more information about national decisions on public access to medicine, and grants corporations greater powers to challenge decisions they perceive as harmful to their interests.”

Discovered inside the huge tranche of secretive Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically any Republican voting for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically also be voting to massively expand President Obama’s executive authority when it comes to immigration matters. The mainstream media covered the Wikileaks document dump extensively, but did not mention the immigration chapter contained within it, so Breitbart News took the documents to immigration experts to get their take on it. Nobody has figured how big a deal the documents uncovered...

In the final hours before the House votes on a new leadership-concocted scheme to sneak Obamatrade past the American public, it’s been revealed that pro-Obamatrade forces are now aiming to sneak a renewal of the highly controversial Export Import Bank into the deal to secure Senate passage later if the House passes it on Thursday. “I and all the other members there are looking for a guarantee … for a deal to be good it’s got to have enforcement, TAA, I think it’s got to have Ex-Im reauthorization,” Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who’s angling for this in the deal,...

Paedophiles This one seems like a particularly dark and grisly thriller. At first it was just a few rubbish light entertainers. Then it was a lot more entertainers. Then we had people muttering about the political establishment – and others counter-muttering don’t be ridiculous, that’s a conspiracy theory. But it wasn’t. Now, it’s a slow-motion train crash and an endless series of glacial government inquiries.

GOP presidential candidate and billionaire businessman Donald Trump slammed President Obama’s trade agreements – especially the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) – which Obama argued the United States needs in order to better compete with China. However, according to a recent report by Politico, China may be trying to enter the TPP – defeating Obama’s main argument for finalizing the deal. “Of course China wants to join the trade negotiation because the deal is so pathetic and so bad,” Trump told Breitbart News. He added that China would continue to take advantage of America’s stupid politicians, who don’t know what they’re...

WikiLeaks is in the process of publishing more than 500,000 Saudi diplomatic documents to the Internet, the transparency website said Friday, a move that echoes its famous release of U.S. State Department cables in 2010. WikiLeaks said in a statement that it has already posted roughly 60,000 files. Most of them appear to be in Arabic. There was no immediate way to verify the authenticity of the documents, although WikiLeaks has a long track record of hosting large-scale leaks of government material. Many of the documents carried green letterhead marked "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" or "Ministry of Foreign Affairs." Some...

Saudi Arabia on Saturday urged its citizens not to distribute "documents that might be faked" in an apparent response to WikiLeaks' publication on Friday of more than 60,000 documents it says are secret Saudi diplomatic communications. The statement, made by the Foreign Ministry on its Twitter account, did not directly deny the documents' authenticity. The released documents, which WikiLeaks said were embassy communications, emails between diplomats and reports from other state bodies, include discussions of Saudi Arabia's position regarding regional issues and efforts to influence media. Saturday's statement is the only official government response since the release, which WikiLeaks says...

Hillary Clinton said she would vote against the "Fast Track" trade bill passed by the House on Thursday if she were still in the Senate, unless she was "absolutely confident" trade adjustment assistance would be provided. Clinton's comment that she would not approve "Fast Track," which is a tool for negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, came during an interview with Jon Ralston on Thursday night, following her appearance at the NALEO conference in Las Vegas, Nev. "At this point, probably not because it's a process vote and I don't want to say it's the same as TPP," Clinton...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unveiled its proposal for new fuel-economy standards that apply to big rigs and other heavy-duty trucks, marking another step in the Obama administration’s push for stricter climate regulations. Based on a draft released Friday, the federal rules will require that tractors use 24% less fuel compared to projected 2018 levels. Heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans must achieve a 16% reduction. The pending rules impact large diesel-powered vehicles like 18-wheelers, buses, garbage trucks and heavy-duty pickups. These commercial vehicles account for roughly 7% of all vehicles on U.S. roads but 25% of fuel consumption. Friday’s draft...

The House on Thursday took the first step toward resuscitating the White House’s trade agenda by passing legislation granting President Obama fast-track authority. The bill now goes to the Senate, where the White House and GOP leaders are seeking to strike a deal with pro-trade Democrats. The House vote was 218-208, with 28 Democrats voting for it. This is the second time in a week the House has voted to approve the controversial fast-track bill. On Friday, the House voted 219-211 in favor of fast-track, which would make it easier for Obama to complete a sweeping trans-Pacific trade deal. In...

RAND PAUL WAS PUSHING OBAMA ON TPP 6 MONTHS AGO, FORGET ABOUT TPA! (With video)

If the largest trade deals in U.S. history have any chance of becoming law, they will require an unusual alliance between the Obama administration and pro-trade Republicans. An emerging consensus is that this union could be tested soon, with the upcoming “lame duck” session of Congress considering a procedural bill called “Trade Promotion Authority” that would smooth both negotiation and congressional consideration of U.S. free trade agreements. For TPA to pass (now or next year), President Obama and Republicans will need to work together to overcome opposition from Democrats allied with traditional anti-trade groups, like environmentalists and labor unions. But...

The left and even some Republicans have argued that the procedures for agreeing to the Trans Pacific Partnership are undemocratic. A leading argument is that voting for “fast track” for the TPP violates democratic principles because Congress is changing its rules now in order to later ratify an agreement it has not yet seen.The arguments are wholly misplaced. “Fast track” simply permits Congress under its ordinary procedures to commit to a future majority vote of Congress to vote up or down on an agreement that the President has negotiated. Representative democracy is thus served by the later vote on an...

On Friday, Congress disrupted President Obama’s plan for a sweeping transfer of U.S. sovereignty to an unaccountable group of foreign busybodies. Hurray for the stalwart Americans who resisted the demands of Obama, the Republican leadership, and the big-donor claque, but Speaker Boehner plans to give Congress another chance this week to make this dangerous mistake. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would turn over to globalists the power to issue regulations about U.S. trade, immigration, the environment, labor and commerce. It’s called a “living agreement” which means the globalists can amend and change the text of the so-called agreement after it has...