A flurry of last-minute political deals and
promises pushed the Bush administration’s Fast Track trade scheme to
a one-vote win in the House of Representatives on December 6, 2001.
"Today we saw the House leadership hit a historic low in bowing
to their billion-dollar corporate backers," said AFL-CIO
President John J. Sweeney. "The Republican leaders and the Bush
administration capped a year of punishment for working families with
one last disgraceful vote before the end of the legislative
session."
"They began the year by rolling back hard-won worker
protections. They continued their attacks with a shameful ‘worker
relief’ package that not only fails to provide relief to unemployed
workers or stimulate our sputtering economy but shamefully lavishes
tax rebates on profitable corporations. Now they have elected to end
the year with a flawed trade measure that will cost more working
Americans their jobs."
More than 800,000 American workers have lost their jobs in the
aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the Fast Track
legislation (HR 3005, sponsored by Bill Thomas, R-CA) only ensures the
accelerated loss of jobs nationwide. The bill will expand NAFTA which
has already caused the exportation of hundreds of thousands of jobs
overseas. In addition, NAFTA has failed to hold corporations
responsible for the exploitation of workers or adhere to environmental
protections in their global operations.
Under Fast Track, the President negotiates trade agreements and
sends them to Congress for approval, but Congress can only vote them
up or down — it can’t amend them. Fast Track trade negotiating
authority was defeated in Congress in 1997 and 1998 when groups
pointed out that despite including hundreds of pages of protections
for business interests, the legislation didn’t include any
enforceable protections for workers’ rights and the environment.
When companies are allowed to exploit workers and the environment in
other countries under trade deals, they have an incentive to move jobs
overseas where they can profit from that exploitation. This
legislation does nothing to remedy these issues.
And the real cost of cheap imports spurred by NAFTA-style
agreements is an alarming rise in U.S. foreign debt, says a report —
Fast Track to Trade Deficits — by the Economic Policy
Institute, a non-profit economic think tank founded in 1986.
"Simple arithmetic makes it clear that the U.S. cannot borrow
forever in order to buy more from the world than it sells," said
Jeff Faux, President of EPI. "With the trade gap structured to
grow faster than U.S. income, it is no surprise that trade agreements
have had the perverse effect of widening the trade deficit and thus
increasing U.S. borrowing from overseas."
Working families flooded Capitol Hill offices with phone calls,
e-mails and faxes urging defeat of Fast Track, but business lobbyists
and strong-arm Republican leaders managed to capture the one extra
vote needed to pass. By threatening loss of committee chairmanships
and promising hundreds of millions of dollars in district projects,
they switched 28 votes from Republicans who opposed Fast Track on
principle in 1998 from No to Yes. The 215-214 vote enabled the
legislation to move to the Senate.
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