Friday Vote: Congress Rushing the TPP Through Even Though They Know Americans Will Lose Jobs

By Melissa Dykes

There’s nothing free about free trade.

The only reason Congress is holding out until Friday to vote on the TPP according to Politico is “They’re trying to resolve a last-minute hangup over aid for workers who lose their jobs to free trade”:

House leaders, confident but not yet certain they have the support to pass sweeping trade legislation, are aiming to bring the package to a floor vote by the end of this week — even as they rush to resolve a last-minute hangup over how to pay for aid to displaced workers.

The vote to grant President Barack Obama fast-track authority to negotiate a massive Pacific Rim trade deal will be extremely tight by all accounts. Senior aides and lawmakers in GOP leadership are intent on scheduling the vote at the moment they believe they have the votes locked up — ideally by Friday, to spare supportive lawmakers the possibility of another weekend of attacks by trade foes back in their districts.

“We’re doing very well, we’re close,” Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who’s been at the forefront of the GOP effort to round up support, said Tuesday of the current vote count. If Republicans want to bring the trade legislation to the floor Friday, they must decide Wednesday. [emphasis added]

This means Congress is WELL AWARE a lot of people are about to lose their jobs once the TPP that none of us have even gotten to read goes through.

They should be; secret negotiations for this thing have only been underway now for SIX YEARS.

NAFTA on steroids doesn’t even really begin to cover what we do know of the TPP. It’s not like any previous trade agreement we’ve ever seen. Where should we begin? The fact that it’s going to make Obamacare look like a happy fun time stroll down a sunny lane, or the fact that it’s basically facilitating the U.S. merger with China? (Bye bye national sovereignty, hello TPP!)

For starters, here are ten reasons why you should oppose it straight out of the gate.

It’s not like the economy and job markets don’t already suck as it is these days. Food service is one of the fastest growing job markets in this country. Enough people have been mumbling under their breath about how robots are about to take a lot of the jobs that Google CEO Eric Schmidt specifically felt the need to respond to this “unfounded fear” at Davos earlier this year.

Now these crony idiots in Congress are about to completely sell us out so the middle class isn’t just dead, it’s dead and they’re gleefully kicking the carcass around.

Of course, if it were the Dems in charge, it wouldn’t be any different, either.

And they’re all in on it, even “Libertarian Lite” Filibuster-Things-That-Won’t-Change-Anything Rand who last year gave a speech talking about how Obama should prioritize the TPP by the year’s end.

This Friday just wasn’t near fast enough for Rand… but aw shucks, I guess it’ll have to do. Even after writing about that video before by the way, people still couldn’t believe it and found ways to make excuses for it as if he either didn’t say what they just saw and heard him say or he must have a very good reason for doing so.

Yeah, he did have a good reason. He’s a sold-out shill. It’s pretty simple.

The corporations running the government we all pretend we still have are attempting to enslave us all. The people are no longer represented by anyone in our so-called government, unless you count corporations as people too my friend the way Mitt Romney does.