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Thom's blog
Is the TPP Dead?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that he opposes giving the President new fast-track powers. In his the State of the Union, President Obama asked Congress to work on "tools like bipartisan trade promotion authority" - the name of proposed fast-track legislation. However, on Wednesday when asked about it, Harry Reid said "I'm against fast track." Reid told reporters that he would not guarantee floor time for the proposal, saying "everyone would be well advised not to push this right now."
So, does this mean that the TPP is as good as dead? The middle class is toast unless we radically rethink our country's trade policy. And the best way to start rethinking our trade policy is to ditch the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. For over 200 years after the founding of the Republic - our economy was built on a system of tariffs. Everything worked fine until the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan abandoned the system of tariffs that had worked so well for centuries and ushered in the golden era of so-called "free-trade." Nixon had already put the United States on the "free-trade" path in the 1970s - but things really took off in the Reagan years. Every President since, including Democrats like Bill Clinton, has followed Reagan's lead by slashing tariffs and signing us on to free-trade deals like NAFTA and CAFTA.
This has been a disaster for the American working people and that disaster would worsen under the TPP. If President Obama doesn't get fast tracking powers it's going to be very hard - maybe even impossible for him to get Congress to pass the TPP. Democrats and Republicans alike oppose the deal, and without party leadership on board, getting the TPP through Congress will cost a lot of what remaining political capital he has left. Thankfully, Harry Reid who is a former boxer, may have just given the TPP a knockout punch.
-Thom
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Watch & Listen to Thom
Time for Big Oil to Pay for its Pollution
Harry Reid pushes back on TPP
Geeky Science! The pesticide link to brain disease...
Are the Wealthy Elites Being Bullied?
Is execution by firing squad coming back?
Bold Progressives Speak Out...
Lone Liberal Rumble - We're Back to the Guilded Age
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Thom discusses Senator Reid coming out against fast-tracking TPP with Public Citizen's Lori Wallach, talks the death penalty with Attorney David Benowitz and debates income inequality with Conservative Neil McCabe. Thom takes viewer video questions and phone calls in "Your Take, My Take Live" and in tonight's "Daily Take" Thom discusses why it's gravely important that we establish a carbon tax.
Thom Hartmann on the News: January 30, 2014
MyRAs: Buyer Beware!
America's Wealthy Treated Like Jews in Nazi Germany?
An Out of Control Big Pharma?
Stop Trade Treachery
Without Government, There is no Middle Class
Who is full of "Bull-shevik"?
The Thom Hartmann Program - January 30, 2014 |
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