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'This Bill Is a Trojan Horse': GOP Pushes Voter Suppression Under Cover of Insider Trading Ban
"Republicans are trying to pull a trick this week," said US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Jul 21, 2026
Democrats on Capitol Hill and voting rights advocates on Tuesday sounded the alarm about Republicans in the House of Representatives trying to push through voter suppression legislation under cover of passing a ban on congressional stock trading.
According to a Tuesday report from Roll Call, House GOP leaders recently added "unrelated language" to what was a bipartisan bill banning congressional stock trading that would "require voters to produce photo ID at the polls, a signature issue for President Donald Trump."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) hammered Republicans for what she said were underhanded tactics that are undermining what had been a serious bipartisan effort to halt congressional stock trading.
"Republicans are trying to pull a trick this week," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a social media post. "They say we are voting on an 'insider trading' bill, but have snuck in massive SAVE Act-style voter suppression measures to it. This is a GOP effort to sabotage national mail-in voting, disguised as a trading ban. I’m voting NO."
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that the caucus was opposing the GOP's legislation not just for its attacks on voting rights, but because it only forces congresspeople to stop making new stock trades, while not requiring them to divest of their current holdings.
"House Republicans are not serious about enacting a meaningful congressional stock trading ban," said Clarke. "The combined Stop Insider Trading Act and Voter ID Act... would allow members of Congress to continue owning, selling, and, in some cases, purchasing individual stocks while simultaneously imposing stricter voter ID requirements that would make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to vote."
"This bill is a Trojan horse," Clarke added, "using the premise of congressional ethics reform to advance a broader effort to restrict access to the ballot box."
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) on Monday sent lawmakers a letter opposing the GOP-backed legislation, which it said would "impose onerous new requirements on voting."
Among other things, the group said the proposed legislation would "demand Americans provide ID to cast a ballot but only accept an unreasonably narrow list of acceptable types of documentation," excluding the kind of "widely held and reliable forms of ID that young people and voters of color disproportionally rely on."
The CLC also said the bill doesn't provide "sufficient safeguards" for voters wrongly deemed ineligible to prove they are legally allowed to participate in US elections.
A page on congressional contact portal 5 Calls recommended users oppose the GOP-backed bill, which it described as "partisan legislation" that "uses the guise of much-needed ethics reform to sneak through an unpopular and unrelated attack on voting rights."
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CBC Chair Rakes 'Bigoted and Racist Regime' as Trump Refuses to Apologize for Obama Ape Post
"Bigotry has been his brand since day 1," said Congresswoman Yvette Clarke.
Feb 07, 2026
As President Donald Trump refuses to apologize for a now-deleted social media post in which former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama are portrayed as apes, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus on Friday blasted what she called the "bigoted and racist regime" in the White House.
“It’s very clear that there was an intent to harm people, to hurt people, with this video,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-NY) said in an interview with the Associated Press. "Every week we are, as the American people, put in a position where we have to respond to something very cruel or something extremely off-putting that this administration does. It’s a part of their M.O. at this point."
After dismissing the widespread revulsion—including by some Republican lawmakers—over Trump's sharing of the racist election conspiracy video on his Truth Social network as "fake outrage," the White House subsequently claimed that an aide "erroneously made the post," which was deleted after nearly 12 hours online.
The president told reporters aboard Air Force one Friday evening, "I didn't make a mistake" and that he is the "least racist president you've had in a long time."
Trump launched his political career by amplifying the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexicans "rapists." Since then, he has made numerous bigoted statements about racial minorities, immigrants, Muslims, women, and others.
Brushing off the administration's explanation for Trump's post, Clarke said that "they don’t tell the truth."
"If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from," she contended.
"Here we are, in the year 2026, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, the 100th anniversary of the commemoration of Black history, and this is what comes out of the White House on a Friday morning," the congresswoman added. "It’s beneath all of us."
Asked what it means that Trump—who rarely retracts anything—deleted the post, Clarke said, "I think it’s more of a political expediency than it is any moral compass."
"As my mother would say," she added, "'Too late. Mercy’s gone.'"
Civil rights groups also condemned Trump, with Color of Change posting on Facebook that "this is white supremacy expressed from the Oval Office."
"Trump resents what the Obamas represent: A Black family that is accomplished, respected, and widely admired," the group continued. "Their success contradicts the worldview he has spent years promoting. His attacks follow a clear trajectory—from birther conspiracies questioning Obama's legitimacy, to false accusations of treason, to now circulating imagery rooted in centuries of racial dehumanization used to justify slavery, lynching, and violence."
"Republican leadership has been silent," Color of Change added. "Elected officials who refuse to condemn this behavior are choosing to normalize it."
NAACP president Derrick Johnson said in a statement that "Donald Trump's video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable."
Johnson asserted that Trump is attempting to distract from the cost of living crisis and Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
"You know who isn't in the Epstein files? Barack Obama," he said. "You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama."
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Let This Black History Month Remind Us That Progress Is Still Possible
The African American tradition of struggle advances the entire nation. In that spirit, we must continue to build coalitions that address shared socioeconomic challenges across racial and ethnic lines.
Feb 07, 2025
I lead the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, America’s Black think tank. When we opened our doors in 1970, there were only 1,469 Black elected officials in office across the United States. Today, there are over 10,000.
These milestones are historic, yet they also compel us to confront the sad reality that African Americans are still far behind their white counterparts in terms of overall economic well-being and political representation.
This duality—celebrating progress while recognizing the challenges in front of us—defines the spirit of Black History Month for 2025.
While congressional power remains fluid, with the Senate and especially the House narrowly divided, strategic coalition building can help us address persistent disparities and create a more equitable future.
While the growth of Black political leadership is encouraging, representation alone doesn’t guarantee systemic change. And today, even that progress in Black political representation is threatened.
Under the last administration, African Americans held 11% of the highest ranking, commissioned officer positions within the White House—nearly reaching our 14% share of the U.S. population.
The current administration, by contrast, has appointed only one Black cabinet nominee, returning our country to the poor Black representation of the 1980s. And following guidance from the White House, many federal agencies have now canceled their Black History Month celebrations.
But outside the White House, Black political representation has reached historic highs.
Today, we have one Black governor, Wes Moore of Maryland—only the third Black governor elected in U.S. history. We’ve set a new record with five Black U.S. Senators: Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Tim Scott (R-S.C.). The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) now has 62 members—its largest membership yet.
At the local level, Black political leadership is flourishing with a record 143 Black mayors across the country. Black leaders are at the helm of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. These leaders are shaping not only their own cities, but urban policy across the nation.
Economic progress has accompanied these political milestones. Black Americans have achieved record levels of economic well-being in recent years, including historically low unemployment rates, a median income of $56,490, and median household wealth of $44,900.
But while these figures are encouraging, they remain overshadowed by persistent racial disparities. White households, for instance, maintain a median wealth of $285,000, highlighting the country’s deep racial economic divide.
The African American tradition of struggle advances the entire nation. In that spirit, we must continue to build coalitions that address shared socioeconomic challenges across racial and ethnic lines. Economic security, the need for a living wage, access to affordable housing, and moving communities out of asset poverty—these are the battles that our historic number of Black elected officials must continue to fight.
Recent attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) are another area demanding focus. We cannot allow the Trump administration’s witch hunt for those who’ve advocated opportunities for underrepresented communities to turn back the slow, gradual progress in Black political power.
The Joint Center was born from the Black freedom tradition—not from a desire for surface-level diversity, but from the need for true systemic change. As we navigate these challenges, we draw strength from this tradition and our remarkable progress.
The next two to four years present unique opportunities for collaboration and advancement. While congressional power remains fluid, with the Senate and especially the House narrowly divided, strategic coalition building can help us address persistent disparities and create a more equitable future.
Let this Black History Month remind us that progress is possible, even in the face of persistent challenges. Together, we can honor the sacrifices of those who came before us and pave the way for a brighter future for generations to come.
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Why the Congressional Black Caucus Should Boycott Netanyahu’s Speech
Black members of Congress skipped Netanyahu’s 2015 address in defense of Obama; will they do the same in defense of Palestinians?
Jul 24, 2024
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress in 2015, the Congressional Black Caucus skipped the speech. Netanyahu had arrived—with the Republicans’ blessing—to rebuke then-President Barack Obama for pursuing an agreement with Iran over the country’s nuclear program. In defense of Obama, the CBC refused to attend the speech.
But will Black members of Congress do the same in defense of Palestinians?
Israel is in its ninth month of a scorched earth assault on Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli forces have killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and wounded hundreds of thousands—many of whom are permanently maimed. They are systematically targeting medical facilities for destruction, along with mosques, churches, and schools, and they have destroyed every single university campus in Gaza.
It is important that several CBC members were among the progressives who voted against sending more funding to Israel. But there’s much more to be done.
Palestinians rightly call this genocide. Scholars of the subject and the International Court of Justice agree, and are calling on Israel to stop. The U.S. government, on the other hand, has been encouraging Israel’s destruction—supplying the weapons to do it, and vetoing resolution after resolution in the United Nations Security Council calling for a cease-fire.
It is in this isolation on the world stage that Congress has invited Netanyahu to address a joint session—a rare privilege that Congress has extended to Netanyahu more than any other head of state in history.
Make no mistake: This invitation affirms Israel’s genocide. And with the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court calling for Netanyahu’s arrest for crimes against humanity, Congress’ invitation is an affront to international law.
But Black members of Congress can dissent. Not only has the CBC boycotted Netanyahu before, but earlier in its history, it stood on the right side of history by standing against South Africa’s racist apartheid regime. The CBC led the passage of sanctions against apartheid South Africa in 1986.
Israel had a history of deep collaboration with South Africa’s apartheid regime—and Palestinians charge Israel with being an apartheid state today. Palestinian human rights groups like Al Haq, international organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and Israeli groups like B’Tselem have all carried out their own investigations and concluded that Israel is committing the international crime of apartheid.
Black folks in the United States have our own history of appealing to the international community in the face of suffering. In 1951, Black activists presented a case to the U.N. titled “We Charge Genocide,” which called attention to genocidal practices carried out and enabled by the U.S. government against the Black population.
If apartheid is wrong in South Africa, and genocide is wrong when it’s carried out against Black people, then those forms of violence are also wrong when directed at Palestinians.
The history of solidarity between the Black and Palestinian freedom struggles is long and deep. Palestinians spoke up in support of Black Lives Matter activists in Ferguson when that city rose up after the police murder of Mike Brown. The Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) called attention to Israeli violence in the 1960s, and Rev. Jesse Jackson included support for Palestinian rights in his presidential run in 1988.
Given the enormous complicity of Congress in Israel’s genocide—most recently voting to send Israel $26 billion in emergency aid when it’s abundantly clear that Israel is using that support to kill Gaza’s children and destroy its cities—boycotting Netanyahu’s speech is the absolute minimum that Black members should be doing.
They should also be working to stop the genocide. It is important that several CBC members were among the progressives who voted against sending more funding to Israel. But there’s much more to be done.
The next step though is clear and easy. Netanyahu—presiding over the destruction of Gaza, notoriously racist against both Palestinians and Africans, and a figure so polarizing that even prominent Israelis are calling for Congress to disinvite him—should not be welcome in the Capitol.
The Congressional Black Caucus was once called “the conscience of the Congress.” The most minimal—but no less important—way to honor that legacy, and more importantly to affirm the humanity of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, is to boycott Netanyahu’s speech.
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Dems Slam GOP for Trying to Force 'Anti-Immigrant Agenda' Into Government Funding Bill
"House Republicans cannot move their extreme, cruel, unworkable anti-immigrant agenda through the regular legislative process, so they're trying to make an end-run around Congress and hold the American people hostage to force it into law."
Sep 29, 2023
The Democratic chairs of leading congressional caucuses said late Thursday that they oppose any last-minute effort to cram immigration policy changes into government funding legislation as House and Senate Republicans consider doing just that, with a shutdown less than 48 hours away.
"It is not appropriate to establish new immigration and border policy in a bill to keep the government funded," the chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and Congressional Black Caucus said in a joint statement.
"House Republicans cannot move their extreme, cruel, unworkable anti-immigrant agenda through the regular legislative process, so they're trying to make an end-run around Congress and hold the American people hostage to force it into law," they continued. "Even Minority Leader Senator McConnell has said, 'Shutting down the government isn't an effective way to make a point.' We couldn't agree more."
The Democrats' statement came in the wake of news that members of the House and Senate—with the reported backing of some Democrats in the upper chamber—are discussing the possible addition of immigration and border measures to a short-term government funding bill in a bid to win the votes of intransigent House Republicans.
Earlier this week, as the chaos-ridden House failed to make progress, the Senate advanced a legislative vehicle for a continuing resolution that would keep the government through November 17—an attempt to buy time for both chambers to approve full-year funding measures.
Citing two unnamed Republican aides, The Washington Post reported that "by Thursday evening, Senate Republicans were considering an amendment to the continuing resolution that would include $6 billion in funding for border security but no new immigration policy."
According to the Post, Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) "appeared to be involved in the talks."
On Friday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)—who is facing a potential removal plot by far-right House Republicans—is expected to put on the floor a Republican stopgap funding measure that includes major federal spending cuts and border policies.
The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday that the GOP package includes changes that "House lawmakers passed earlier this year in a broader bill that orders construction to resume on the Trump administration's border wall." That bill was dead on arrival in the Senate.
"The border measures, which have broad backing in the conference, would also make it harder for people to remain in the U.S. under the protection of asylum rules," the Journal noted.
House Republicans' latest effort to move ahead with a short-term funding package will come after they passed several appropriations bills Thursday night, including measures to fund the Pentagon and State Department.
But the House voted down the GOP-authored agriculture appropriations bill, which included steep cuts to food aid for low-income families and a rollback of abortion pill access.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that lawmakers "should have spent this week working together to prevent the government from shutting down."
"Instead, we spent it watching House Republicans in chaos, loading up their 2024 funding bills with deeper cuts and dangerous policies that harm the economy and raise the cost of living for American families," said DeLauro. "Another day of Republican dysfunction, two days until they shut the government down."
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House Dems Slam 'Racist Tropes' in New Florida K-12 History Curriculum
Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost led the letter against "bigoted teaching standards in Florida that want kids to learn that Black people received 'benefits' from being enslaved."
Jul 22, 2023
Four Black Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday joined the growing chorus of critics opposing "racist tropes" in Florida's new K-12 history curriculum, which includes teaching middle school students "the resurrection of one of the greatest lies America has ever told itself, that slavery benefited the enslaved."
"Your decision to rewrite history to ingrain white supremacy into the minds of children is a colossal step backward and an insult to Black people, descendants of slaves, and the intellect of the American people," three Florida Democrats—Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, and Frederica Wilson—and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) wrote to the state's Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. and Board of Education Chairman Ben Gibson.
The first-of-its-kind standards approved Wednesday by the Florida board "are not the truth of American history but riddled with falsehoods that minimize the unique racial terror experienced by Black people in America throughout time," the lawmakers argued.
"These standards are out of touch with reality and will leave future generations of Floridians out of touch and disadvantaged in the world outside of Florida," they warned. "Even worse, it plants the sinister thought that enslavement and continued harm toward Black people today is also acceptable and beneficial."
Flordia's mandated instruction that enslaved people developed "skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit" has garnered national attention but "is not the only dangerous falsehood," the quartet highlighted. They pointed out that the curriculum for middle school students "also requires downplaying and tempering the horror of American slavery by requiring it is coupled with teaching, 'how slavery was utilized in Asian, European, and African cultures,' 'the similarities and differences between serfdom and slavery,' and 'comparative treatment of indentured servants of European and African extraction.'"
Additionally, for high schoolers, the standards "list massacres of Black people in America as, 'examples of acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans,' falsely assigning shared responsibility to Black victims," the lawmakers noted.
"We demand the Florida Board of Education immediately reverse its decision," they concluded. "Not repealing these new standards would dig up the corpse of the worst version of our nation and force our children to live in it."
Frost, Cherfilus-McCormick, Wilson, and Horsford aren't the only critics of the Florida curriculum in Congress. U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a Black former teacher and principal, tweeted Friday that "this is an outright attempt to rewrite history and ignore America's past of racial exploitation and violence and the trauma from the impact of slavery on Black Americans."
Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.)—a son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson—thanked Vice President Kamala Harris "for standing up for the truth" by blasting the Florida standards and declared that "we must be true to our history, even when it's painful."
The national alarm over Florida's curriculum comes after the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—now a GOP 2024 presidential candidate—earned widespread criticism earlier this year for rejecting an Advanced Placement course about African American studies for high school students.
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Hillary Clinton's Black Conversion
Feb 17, 2016
Failing to win white voters in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton needs her black firewall like never before. Her speech yesterday in Harlem touched on criminal justice and economic opportunity. Those remarks follow a stop in majority-black Flint, Mich., to decry its lead-water crisis and a debate in segregated Milwaukee, where she pledged to "tackle" discrimination. She also took a shot at Bernie Sanders' criticism of Wall Street with the question: "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism?"
Never mind that Wall Street investors and bankers play a huge role in discriminatory redlining, predatory lending, and foreclosures. Clinton, who earned an estimated $1.8 million in big-bank speaking fees in 2013 and 2014, shamelessly counts on blacks for support while she is engaged with the system that holds back the aspirations of too many black people. She is hoping that no one remembers how her husband Bill put the black poor before the criminal justice firing squad and how she is in bed with the big banks that stole the American dream from black homeowners.
"Clinton, who earned an estimated $1.8 million in big-bank speaking fees in 2013 and 2014, shamelessly counts on blacks for support while she is engaged with the system that holds back the aspirations of too many black people."
The first big test of Clinton's firewall will be the Feb. 27 Democratic primary in South Carolina, where 54 percent of the electorate in 2008 was African-American. While Sanders certainly has his own challenge to show how he would tackle discrimination, the history of the Clintons should cause blacks to press her much harder before automatically supporting her. It must not be forgotten that amid the relative prosperity of the 1990s, which did benefit more well-off African Americans, Bill Clinton sacrificed the poor to conservative welfare policies and the black poor to racist crime laws that Hillary now condemns.
According to the Justice Policy Institute, the Clinton administration oversaw the largest rise in inmates in American history. In 1995, aided by federal crime bill funding, states spent more on prisons than on universities. By the end of the Clinton years, more people worked in the criminal justice system than in social services. According to the Sentencing Project, 13 percent of black men could not vote because of criminal records.
Yet when Clinton was at his most embarrassing hour, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, his firewall was the Congressional Black Caucus and black churches. The Clintons' popularity with the black elite was a massive advantage early in Hillary's 2008 campaign. One CNN poll had Clinton ahead of Barack Obama among black women, 68 percent to 25 percent. The moment the race tightened, Clinton's team racially choked. Her campaign publicly attacked Obama's youthful cocaine use and his appeal to more conservative white voters. When her lead evaporated in South Carolina, Bill famously flipped the racial switch to whine that Hillary couldn't win because she's white. Little remembered is that she failed to win any age category of non-black women in South Carolina.
Eight years later, she is again watching a coronation become a conundrum of her own centrist making. Sanders has begun to campaign seriously in black communities with a brand of democratic socialism that is starting to earn black endorsements, including from writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.
That is not yet enough to suggest that Clinton will lose South Carolina. But she is running on a fundamental and untenable racial contradiction. She claims she will fight "systemic racism" at a time when the system and Bill's role in it is under a fresh microscope from a new generation represented by the Black Lives Matter movement. At some point, the firewall cannot hold back the flames the Clintons fanned.
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'Turncoat Dems' in House Blasted as Fast Track Fight Heads Back to Senate
'We expect more regard for environmental protection and respect for working families from President Obama and the Democrats who supported this bill.'
Jun 18, 2015
Drawing the swift ire of progressives around the country, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday took a step to revive President Barack Obama's faltering corporate trade agenda, passing Fast Track, or Trade Promotion Authority, in a 218-208 vote.
Twenty-eight Democratic lawmakers voted in favor of Fast Track, which would make it easier for Obama to ram through controversial trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership, reducing the role of Congress to an up-or-down vote on such mammoth agreements.
"Thanks to House Republicans and a handful of turncoat Democrats, the army of corporate execs and industry lobbyists who wrote the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership will now have an easier time shoving it down the throats of an American public that's broadly opposed to more NAFTA-style trade deals," Democracy for America chair Jim Dean said after the vote. "While we will continue to work to defeat fast-track for the job-killing TPP in the U.S. Senate, we will never forget which House Democrats stood with American working families against Fast Track and who sold them out."
The vote comes as a result of procedural maneuvering and arm-twisting by the White House and GOP leaders--machinations that Fast Track opponents were quick to decry.
"Our disappointment with the president is profound," said Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica on Thursday. "Sadly, we have come to expect Republicans to sell out the environment for the pursuit of corporate profits. But we expect more regard for environmental protection and respect for working families from President Obama and the Democrats who supported this bill."
While Thursday's vote is a setback, the fight is far from over. The legislation will now head back to the Senate, where as Public Citizen notes, "its fate remains at best unclear."
In May, the Senate originally passed a version of Fast Track that was linked to Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) legislation that gives aid to workers displaced by trade. But last Friday, the TAA measure was overwhelmingly defeated in the House, in turn derailing Fast Track.
Thursday's vote separated Fast Track from TAA legislation, meaning those who voted in favor supported a bill without protections for workers. It is unknown whether Senate Democrats will support a stand-alone Fast Track bill.
The Hill reports on the wheeling-and-dealing currently happening on Capitol Hill:
Obama spoke with a group of Senate Democrats on Wednesday at the White House, and talks continued in the Senate on Thursday on a way to give the president trade promotion authority, also known as fast-track.
One possible mechanism for giving assurances to Senate Democrats would see the Senate vote first to pass a trade preferences bill, this time with the TAA program attached. It would then be sent to the House for a vote before the Senate considers fast-track.
This planned move angered members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who asked Senate leaders not to use the trade measure, which would provide preferential access to the U.S. market for African countries, as bargaining chip to pass fast-track.
"The legislation that barely squeaked through the House today faces a much more uncertain future in the Senate," said Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter. "Today's narrow vote to approve Fast Track in the House is an ominous harbinger of the fate of Fast Track in the Senate, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the electoral prospects for Fast Track supporters."
Echoing the warning of others, Hauter added: "Voters will remember all this and hold members of Congress accountable for siding with transnational corporations rather than their constituents."
Follow ongoing developments and reaction on Twitter:
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Plan B: Ditch Help For Workers, Just Get Corporations What They Want
As a new GOP-led approach to approving Fast Track authority on behalf of the Obama administration materializes, the process itself signals just how noxious the contents of deals like the TPP must be
Jun 17, 2015
Legislative maneuvering around Trade Promotion Authority (TPA or Fast Track) continued late Tuesday, as GOP leaders in Congress, the Obama administration, and a handful of anti-democracy Democrats hatched a plan to hold a straight vote on Fast Track--handing the White House the authority it wants to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other pending corporate-friendly agreements--while separating out a provision offering assistance to workers displaced by future trade deals.
It's not a simple or guaranteed path forward for Fast Track, but Politico explained the GOP leadership's latest approach this way:
Under the emerging plan, the House would vote on a bill that would give Obama fast-track authority to negotiate a sweeping trade deal with Pacific Rim countries, sending it to the Senate for final approval. To alleviate Democratic concerns, the Senate then would amend a separate bill on trade preferences to include Trade Adjustment Assistance, a worker aid program that Republicans oppose but that House Democrats have blocked to gain leverage in the negotiations over fast-track.
The leaders' behind-the-scenes machinations are an attempt to allow both bills -- TAA and the fast-track measure known as Trade Promotion Authority -- to move to Obama's desk separately, sidestepping the objections of House Democrats that stalled the package last week. The idea, which has been discussed among top congressional leaders and the White House, would be tantamount to a dare to pro-trade Democrats in both chambers to vote it down.
The plans are fluid and could change. But multiple congressional leaders, speaking anonymously to candidly describe their strategy, said they felt this was the only hope to reverse the trade package's flagging fortunes.
The big question in the House remains how many of the 28 House Democrats who voted for Fast Track when the worker assistance program, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), was on the table would do so now that it's been taken off. But even if the GOP-controlled House passes a clean Fast Track bill, the path in the Senate will not likely be smooth sailing. As The Hill notes, when the Senate approved Fast Track, it included "both programs, and the support from 14 Democrats in the upper chamber hinged in part on that fact."
And according to the Huffington Post:
As rumors swirled about Boehner being ready to move forward with a stand-alone TPA bill, House Democrats called for an emergency caucus meeting on Wednesday morning, where pro-TPA Democrats were expected to try to garner support for the Republican strategy. That meeting was abruptly canceled late Tuesday, after the House Rules Committee opted not to line up a floor vote on a clean fast-track bill. A committee aide said the panel had no plans to meet again this week to take up TPA.
Despite the committee's punt on Tuesday, House Republican leaders appear ready to push through a clean TPA bill. Their latest strategy, according to Democratic and Republican aides, is to pass the clean bill and send it to the Senate, where lawmakers would then attach TAA to a separate trade bill for African countries, the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The strategy behind that approach would be to convince members of the Congressional Black Caucus to support TAA this time around, since the controversial funding would then be tied to AGOA.
If House Republicans do pursue a stand-alone TPA bill, it won't necessarily make matters better for the president's agenda. Passing a clean bill would be far more difficult in the Senate. Obama has vowed to veto a fast-track bill unless TAA is also passed or attached, and passing a clean bill would be far more difficult in the Senate.
Sen. McConnell, President Obama, and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) have been discussing their options since the defeat last Friday, but on Tuesday, McConnell expressed the most optimism that Fast Track could still become law in the coming weeks.
"The Speaker and I have spoken with the president about the way forward on trade," McConnell told reporters. "It's still my hope that we can achieve what we've set out to achieve together, which is to get a six-year trade promotion authority bill in place that will advantage the next occupant of the White House as well as this one."
Critics of both the TPP and Fast Track point out that machinations necessary to get them passed through Congress bodes poorly for the contents of the corporate-friendly agreements themselves. As David Morris, executive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, argued in a piece at Common Dreams on Tuesday, the whole process stinks of an anti-democratic culture in which the contents of so-called "free trade" deals are being actively kept secret from the people--even as lawmakers jump through procedural hoop after procedural hoop for multinational corporations to get what they want. Moving forward, hope opponents, Congress should consider how the process has eclipsed substantive debate over the trade agenda's wide-ranging implications for public health, the environment, and workers' rights. According to Morris:
We the people would like it to be as transparent and democratic as possible. Public opinion consistently favors trade but just as consistently solidly opposes fast track. We oppose the remarkable, indeed unprecedented secrecy in which the trade pact has been drafted and the inability of the average citizen, unlike giant corporations, to play a part in that drafting. We condemn the prohibition against changing the document in any way after submission.
And perhaps most of all we are furious about fast track's foreclosure of extensive and intensive debate on a complex document of far reaching consequence.
Morris noted that the existing system ostensibly allows for such debate, explaining that Obama, as president, can always submit a trade agreement--which historically were considered treaties and required approval of the Senate for passage. "If fast track fails the President can still submit a trade bill," Morris explained. "And we can then launch a much needed and long overdue national conversation about the benefits and limitations of trade and the dangers of ceding sovereignty to a new international constitution whose goal is to limit democracy and expand corpocracy."
According to the Huffington Post, the White House has been "coy about what efforts are being made behind the scenes to get the trade package passed. " Previous reporting by Common Dreams makes it clear that the political "arm-twisting" is happening at the highest levels.
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