The Devil is Always in the Details

Thursday, May 10th was a whirlwind day on the political frontlines in the
War on the Middle Class, as a handful of senior congressional Democrats and the
White House - cheered on by K Street lobbyists - joined forces today to announce
a “deal” on a package of trade agreements that could impact millions of American workers and potentially calls into question the entire election mandate of 2006 (I say potentially because the full details are still being concealed by both Democrats
and the White House). You’ll notice the irony of the deal with just a glance at
the front of the New York Times business section (screen captured above) - the deal was agreed to (though its details have still not been made public) on the very same day the U.S. government reported another widening of America’s job-destroying trade deficit.

Because so much has transpired in the last 6 hours, I’m going to summarize it here chronologically in bullet points to make it easier to digest.
I’ve been covering it live all day, but figured for brevity it would be best to put it in one place. For context, remember that, as Public Citizen has documented and as business publications like Forbes Magazine has confirmed, Democrats won their congressional majority in 2006 thanks to scores of challenger candidates specifically running against lobbyist-written trade policy. This 2006 lesson is particularly important to Democrats who, in the early 1990s experienced their own President campaign for office opposing unfair trade deals, then ram NAFTA through Congress “over the dead bodies” of workers, then watch the Democratic majority get decimated in the following election. I want to stress, we still don’t know the details of the deal, but we do have some critically important information to analyze.

This is one of those long, complicated, you have to be paying attention issues which Americans usually tune out in favor of "American Idol." The important facts here:

• No actual legislative language has been forthcoming on this series of trade agreements.
• The media is trumpeting it as a great thing for our country and the partner countries involved, without having seen anything more than summaries.
• Lobbyists claim they are getting assurances that any requirements about environmental concerns or the rights of workers in other
  countries will be essentially unenforceable.
• The Administration and a handful of Democrats are doing
  everything in their power to push this deal through with the least amount of scrutiny possible.
• This is all after the American public swept a slate of new representation into Washington who vowed to put an end to lobbyist-written legislation, reduce the influence of lobbyists, clean-up the culture of corruption, and put an end to "business as usual."