UNITED NATIONS – President Obama says his is the most transparent administration in history. Yet he is ready to use the most underhanded legislative maneuver to subjugate the U.S. to an international governing authority. And GOP congressional leaders are actively encouraging this duplicity.
Politico reports Republican leaders in the House and Senate want to vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a lame duck session of Congress – after the November 2016 general election.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, also known as Obamatrade, is sweeping regulatory pact involving 12 countries on four continents. It creates an international authority that will, as Obama says, “write rules for the world’s economy.” These rules will impact immigration, food, energy, medicine, Internet, copyright, patents and businesses within our borders as well as across our borders.
Obamatrade is so unpopular all the leading presidential candidates in both parties oppose it: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Poll after poll shows the majority of Americans across the political spectrum rejects it.
The establishment nabobs backing it know Obamatrade is pure political poison. That is why they want to sweep it under a rug until the election is over.
Because if Congress takes up Obamatrade before the election, it becomes a campaign issue. Every congressional candidate along with the presidential hopefuls will be forced to take a stand – and those that support it are signing their own death warrant with voters.
It’s notable that Wednesday’s CNBC Republican debate that was supposed to address economic issues did not ask the candidates about this unpopular “trade” deal.
Now it seems the bipartisan Washington-Wall Street establishment wants to stuff this toxic political poison into a lame duck.
The lame duck session of Congress is a biennial affair when the un-elected and least popular politicians in America are given the power to determine the fate of the nation.
Fresh from defeat at polls or having willingly chosen retirement, soon-to-be-ex-members of Congress cast their votes, or more accurately, trade their votes for their next job on K Street. As for those members who were re-elected, they won’t have to face the voters again for two years, and by that time people won’t remember the crap these so-called representatives supported.
Past lame duck sessions have spawned such horrors as NAFTA and the Department of Homeland Security.
Lame ducks are so dangerous the states approved a constitutional amendment in the 1930s to kill them. The 20th Amendment terminates the old session of Congress in January. Before air travel, this made it impossible to convene a lame duck session between the election and the holidays. But, like a hated in-law on life support, technology has resuscitated the lame duck.
An unaccountable, unrepresentative lame duck Congress should not be voting on a binding international treaty.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., read the Obamatrade agreement and says, “It’s going to put us in an international commission that allows the sultan of Brunei to have the same vote as the president of the United States.”
“If it’s such a good deal, then why do they want to keep the American people from having an influence on it?” Sessions questions. “Why don’t they bring it up during the election [campaign] so people can vote and evaluate their representatives on how they vote?”
Paul Ryan pushed Congress to give the president fast track power and greased the skids for Obamatrade. He has been Obama’s intimate bedfellow on trade and immigration.
Speaker Ryan must now get out of bed and tell Obama he will not stuff Obamatrade into a lame duck.
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