"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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