Next week, the Senate will begin debate on whether it should give President Obama sweeping new "fast-track" powers and surrender its constitutional authority to amend an international agreement the White House has been negotiating in secret for the past six years.
The agreement does not involve Iran's nuclear program, but the Transpacific Partnership, or TPP, an international regulatory agreement involving 12 countries in Latin America and Asia.
But the question is the same: Given his foreign-policy record, should Congress trust Barack Obama with fast track-trade promotion authority?
Fast track will strip Congress of its ability to amend the agreement that Obama has been secretly negotiating for the past six years. It lowers the vote threshold for treaty approval from a two-thirds vote in the Senate to a simple majority in the Senate and House of Representatives. And it prevents a filibuster in the Senate.
Obama has said he will use a fast-tracked TPP to write "rules for the world's economy." Considering how well he and his wife have done writing rules for a school lunch menu, this could not end well.
Make no mistake – the TransPacific Partnership is not a free-trade deal; it is "a regulatory deal" as Bloomberg News properly calls it – only five out of 25 sections cover the tariffs and quotas traditionally covered in trade agreements.
And as WND has reported, the TransPacific Partnership contains an entire chapter on immigration.
Sen. Jeff Sessions doesn't trust Obama won't use this phony "trade" agreement to rewrite immigration law.
The senator from Alabama has told his colleagues, "Before the ink is dry on TPA, and at any time during the life of TPA, any president can negotiate changes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and any other new agreement and agree to changes in our immigration laws." He explained in a radio interview that the treaty is viewed as a "living document, so the treaty signatories can change it at any time if we authorize it to go through …"
On the other hand, Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Finance Committee, who, along with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, supports empowering Obama, admitted he has faith in President Obama, enough faith to give him fast track power. Hatch told the Washington Times, "There's an element of trust here, no question about that, and I expect the president to live up to it."
Washington, D.C., legalized marijuana, and you have to wonder how much of it these Republicans must be smoking to believe they can trust Obama.
Pot is associated with short-term memory loss, and it seems they've forgotten their own party's rhetoric slamming this president's power grabs on everything from the EPA's cap-and-trade regulations to Obama's executive amnesty and his Iranian nuclear deal.
Incredibly, Chairman Hatch's Finance Committee codified another disturbing aspect of the secret TPP: After ratification, other nations can join it without congressional assent. The Finance Committee specifically rejected an amendment that would require congressional approval if China seeks to join TPP in the future.
The stakes are high, and a vote is near.
Act now, and tell Congress to say no to fast track.