Tag: fast-track

TPA Senate Showdown Tuesday.

This should be interesting.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is daring Senate Democrats to vote against fast-track trade legislation they supported less than a month ago.

The GOP leader has scheduled a procedural vote on fast-track for Tuesday, and is signaling he’s through offering concessions.

…especially since TAA (read: Big Labor subsidies) has been removed from the TPA (read: fast-track) Senate bill. If TPA goes through, TAA will be allegedly added to another bill later, and never mind that the House isn’t particularly interested in passing TAA if they don’t absolutely have to.  And lo! – they don’t particularly have to, largely due to House Democrats’ decision to torpedo TAA earlier. Whether or not you actually want TPA to pass, surely we can all agree that it’s a bit of a pleasure to watch progressive Democrats sign off on burning down their own little darlings…

Moe Lane

PS: Even if you can’t, humor me on this. I’m typing this out with one eye closed (and the dominant one, at that): turned out that I really did have pinkeye…

Quote of the Day, So What DOES Hillary Clinton Think About Fast-Track? edition.

By the way: it’s going to pass. It was always going to pass. These things happen when the party controlling Congress, and the President, broadly agree on something. So maybe you should concentrate not so much on that, and focus instead on the delicious DEEP HURTING that will now commence:

Obama’s aggressive defense of fast-track has put him at odds with the left wing of the Democratic Party, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, a leading liberal voice, and Bernie Sanders, who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

On Sunday, Sanders called on Clinton, who was an outspoken supporter of the trade pact as Obama’s secretary of state, to take a stand on Obama’s deal.

“You’re either for it or you’re against it. No fence-sitting on this one,” he said on CNN.

Yes. I cannot wait to hear what Hillary Clinton thinks about fast-track. It should be… ah, ‘highly nuanced?’ Sure, we’ll go with that.

Via @Drudge_Report.

Let’s You and Him fight: Elizabeth Warren v. Barack Obama.

(H/T: @exjon) Ooh, this should be entertaining: “The feud between Obama and the left continued Saturday, when Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called on the president to immediately declassify the negotiating terms of a pending trade deal with a host of nations known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Not least because you have to sit for a moment and think before you can figure out who is being more petty. Is it Barack Obama, for suggesting that Elizabeth Warren is like one of those people who believe in death panels*? Or is it Elizabeth Warren, because she is apparently physically incapable of understanding that Election Night 2014 has noticeably changed the relative relevance of her opinions?

Moving onto Warren’s demand (Sen. Sherrod Brown is, as usual, merely there to be seen): the President will of course ignore her ultimatum, because Barack Obama would like a trade deal and the progressive wing of the Democratic party does not. More to the point, thanks to the aforementioned Election Night the Senate is now run by the political party that officially likes the idea of increased trade. The most likely scenario, then, is one where the GOP largely forces through fast-track legislation with whatever support Barack Obama scrounges up: which means that the Democrats will be the ones having a bruising internal fight for a change.

What’s not to like?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Democrats hoping beyond hope that a sufficient number of Republicans may be persuaded to vote no on fast-track simply to spite President Obama should note two things. One, the GOP knows that Barack Obama will not be President in 2017. Two, the GOP pretty much despises all progressive politicians on sight.  Particularly all the ones that call us names – and, lo! All the name-callers hate fast-track.

PPS: If Senator Warren does not like the final details of the TPP deal when they become available to her, Senator Warren is perfectly free to vote no. Which she will, of course (I will not assume that she will even bother to read it, first).  If Senator Warren does not like being relegated to this position, then I suppose Senator Warren should have done a better job at helping the Democrats keep their Senate majority.

*Yes. I know, I know: the current system for rationing health care will in fact lead to situations where your health care decisions may in fact be subject to a formal bureaucrat’s veto.  But it’s like ‘swift-boating:’ the fact that it doesn’t register as an insult to us doesn’t mean that it’s not a fairly vicious one to members of the Left. Or that the person being insulted won’t take major offense, either.