Obama’s New Campaign for the TPP Could Drag Down Democrats
How much is
President Obama willing to harm the Democratic Party in order to win
approval for the deeply unpopular Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
“trade” agreement? We may soon find out.
On Tuesday, Politico broke the story
that the White House will be “making an all-out push to win passage of
the deal in the lame duck session of Congress, organizing 30 events over
the congressional recess.” The effort will be designed to put pressure
not only on Democratic members of Congress, but also on swing Republican
votes, by lobbying important business interests in their districts.
This is pretty
big news for the 2016 elections but it seems to have gotten little to no
coverage in major media outlets. The TPP has become a major issue in
these elections, with Donald Trump highlighting his opposition, and
Hillary Clinton — who had previously supported the agreement — vowing to
oppose it “before and after” the election. (Bernie Sanders also had a
major impact
on the debate, and possibly on Hillary’s change of position, during the
primary season). This agreement is especially despised among the white
working class voters who have made up the major swing vote in most of
the presidential elections of the past four decades.
Trump is far
behind Hillary in the polls, and it seems unlikely that President Obama
would have launched a public campaign of this magnitude for the TPP in
the heat of an election season, if the race were looking like a serious
contest. But there is more at stake: millions of potential Republican
voters will stay home in November if Trump is losing by a wide margin.
Many others will stay home simply because they don’t like him. But many
of these disaffected voters could be rallied to the polls if they think
that Hillary, and her party, are going to bring them another failed
“trade” agreement. (On the other side, some potential Democratic voters
could abstain or switch sides for the same reasons). All this could make
the difference between the Democrats taking the Senate, and in a big
enough landslide, even the House of Representatives.
Why is Obama
willing to risk so much to get the TPP passed this year? Many press
reports insist that it is because he wants it for his legacy. It is
strange to think that he would want such an unpopular agreement for his
legacy. There are less flattering reasons that seem much more plausible.
The “fast-track” legislation that allows Congress only an up-or-down vote on the TPP, considered essential to its passage, was approved in June 2015 by
just a 10 vote margin in the House of Representatives. Only 28
Democrats voted with their president, and they have since come under
increasing pressure not to repeat their vote for the TPP. Meanwhile, nine Republicans who voted for fast-track have publicly stated that they will vote against the TPP.
So it is looking
like a very close vote. (For procedural and political reasons, Obama
will not bring it to a vote unless he is sure he has the necessary
votes). Now let’s look at one special group of Representatives who can
swing this vote: the actual lame ducks, i.e., those who will be in
office only until January 3rd. It depends partly on how many lose their
election on November 8, but the average number of representatives who
left after the last three elections was about 80.
Most of these people will be looking for a job, preferably one that can pay them more than a million dollars a year. From the data provided by OpenSecrets.org,
we can estimate that about a quarter of these people will become
lobbyists. (An additional number will work for firms that are clients of
lobbyists).
So there you
have it. It is all about corruption, and this is about as unadulterated
as corruption gets in our hallowed democracy, other than literal cash
under a literal table. These are the people whom President Obama needs
to pass this agreement, and the window between November 9 and January 3
is the only time that they are available to sell their votes to future
employers without any personal political consequences whatsoever. The
only time that the electorate can be rendered so completely irrelevant,
if Obama can pull this off.
But that is
still a big “if,” because we still have elections, and Obama has to
consider what his campaign to pass the TPP will do to the Democratic
Party — or at least he should. On the other side he has most likely
gotten the message that a failure to go all out for the TPP would cause
some big money to shift from the Democratic to the Republican party. The
most powerful corporations in the country, as well as many actors in
the “national security state” want this agreement very badly. It is a
coalition of everybody who is anybody. Except for the people.
It’s ironic
because one of the main purposes of the TPP, like previous “trade”
agreements including the World Trade Organization, is to bind the United
States to a set of rules that our political leaders would have
difficulty putting into law in the US. These include raising
pharmaceutical prices by strengthening and lengthening patent
protection; allowing corporations to sue the government for regulation
that infringes on their profits; and undermining public health and
environmental protection, and financial regulation. So by corrupting
democracy for this one big, lame-duck vote, our politicians can
undermine and limit democracy for many years and even decades to come.
In the next few months, we will see who wins this historic battle.
Originally published st CEPR.Org
interesante artículo!
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