It’s up to you now. Call your representative today. Call, call, call.The House of Representatives is getting ready to vote on fast track – any day now. Call and demand they vote NO on fast track. If we swamp them with phone calls, we will deliver a powerful message that can overpower the big corporate money that is pushing fast track and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Fast track trade authority legislation essentially preapproves the TPP even though it is still secret. TPP would be a disaster for our country. Fast track forces Congress to vote on TPP before the pubic has time to fully “get” what’s going on, with little debate and no amendments.
Get Your Representative On The Record
Let your representative know you oppose Fast Track. Call, call, call.
See if you can get her or him on the record.Will he or she vote for fast track?Has your representative read the TPP? (If the answer is no, point out they shouldn’t be voting on something as major as preapproving TPP if they have not read it.)
Does you representative know how big our country’s trade deficit is? (It was $505 billion last year, $51.4 billion in March.)
Public Locked Out
TPP is still secret for We the People, but Congress is about to vote to preapprove it.For example, to make the point Tuesday a faith leader, a nurse, an environmental activist, a veteran, a postal worker and a student walked to the United States Trade Representative’s office to ask to read the text. They were locked out.
Arriving at the office:
“Someone locked the door”
Trying to get in, ringing the bell, knocking on the door, no one answers:
People saying “Show us the text!”
Even non-corporate participants are locked out. There are supposed to be special “advisors” who get to read the text of TPP. But advisors who represent non-corporate interests are complaining that they are not being allowed to read current TPP texts! Mike Wessel is one such advisor, and he wrote in Politico that “I’ve Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is Right to Be Concerned.”
Only portions of the text have been provided, to be read under the watchful eye of a USTR official. Access, up until recently, was provided on secure web sites. But the government-run website does not contain the most-up-to-date information for cleared advisors. To get that information, we have to travel to certain government facilities and sign in to read the materials. Even then, the administration determines what we can and cannot review and, often, they provide carefully edited summaries rather than the actual underlying text, which is critical to really understanding the consequences of the agreement.
It’s About Cutting Our Form Of Government Out Of The Equation
Fast track is about getting our own representatives in Congress out of the equation so the big corporations can slide things through unseen. It is about bypassing the checks and balances that our country has learned are needed.
The arguments for fast track are that Congress and our system of checks and balances will bog down the negotiations with amendments and conditions.They say we need fast track so Congress can’t make changes. They are presenting us with a baked cake that comes from a rigged process and want Congress to vote now to prevent themselves from being able to fix it later. They say the U.S. Congress making changes will just muck things up. Think about how insulting that is to our form of government.
Call Call Call
Click this to call, call, call.Please forward this message to your friends and share this link: http://ClickToCallCongress.org.
Dave Johnson blogs at Campaign for America's Future, where this first appeared.
