Public Citizen

Tell Congress: NO Extension of 'FAST TRACK' for Bush

Using the form below, or a personalized version, please send a letter to Congress.

Fast Track — the outdated, outrageous law that Richard Nixon cooked up to take away Congress' constitutional authority over trade policy — expired on June 30, 2007.

Surprise, surprise. President Bush wants Congress to hand him a blank check of more Fast Track so he can do more of the same NAFTA-style deals for his big corporate buddies.

With Fast Track expired, we have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to fix the current devastating rules of the global economy — and your voice is the only way to make a real difference!

Please use the form below to let your representatives know that you absolutely oppose any more Fast Track, and that it must be replaced with a better system that will help us create fair trade agreements. This form will send the letter to your Representative and to both of your Senators.

Want more info about Fast Track? Click here

April 22, 2018

Subject:

I’m writing to urge you to publicly oppose President Bush’s recent request for Fast Track. The American public sent a clear message on Election Day: no to staying the course on Bush’s Middle-Class crushing trade policy. Besides, how could Congress even consider giving more authority over anything to President Bush!

Please write to me ASAP to tell me you will oppose any version of Fast Track – which delegates away your constitutional authority on trade and takes away your ability to fix for your constituents the trade mess Fast Track has enabled with deals like NAFTA, CAFTA and WTO. If you cannot let me know now that you will not give away the authority over trade policy that the Founding Fathers wisely granted to Congress, then please explain what other position you hold and why.

Fast Track cannot be fixed. For 198 years of our nation’s history, prior to the Nixon-hatched Fast Track passing Congress in 1974, Congress was in the driver’s seat of U.S. trade policy. Our nation needs a totally different way for Congress to authorize presidents to negotiate trade pacts – a way that ensures Congress controls the contents. The very structure of Fast Track – with its broad delegation of Congress’ powers – destroys the most essential checks and balances of our democracy:

* How could Congress agree to give away its control of the contents of trade policy when the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive authority? All the White House must do is give you notice before starting talks. The White House alone then chooses the countries with which we negotiate and sets the agreements’ contents (ignoring things like labor rights, a negotiating objective in the 1988 Fast Track that enabled NAFTA and the WTO.) How could you allow a system that gives no vote until AFTER the president signs the trade agreements and thus enters our country into them? And then, when you do get a vote (too late), it is on legislation that the president, not Congress writes that does not go through committee processes, so outrageous items like a 3-year patent extension predicted to raise U.S. drug prices some $6 billion were slipped into the WTO. And, no matter how outrageous the agreement is, there is an automatic vote – regardless of what the House Speaker or Senate Leader thinks about the deal – with all amendments banned and debate sharply limited.

* Fast Track is bad for our economy. The trade agreements that Fast Track enabled – NAFTA and the WTO – have contributed to the faltering of our economy. Before Fast Track, we had balanced trade in every year except two (1971 and 1972). In EVERY year since Fast Track but one (1975), we have had a trade deficit. Wages have stagnated, we have lost millions of good manufacturing jobs, and jobs higher and higher up the income and skills ladder are vulnerable to off-shoring. With the Middle Class heading for a cliff, how could Congress even consider providing authority to do more of the same?

*Fast Track has allowed transnational corporations and other special interests to seize control of the U.S. trade negotiating system, establishing a model of globalization that has caused our middle-class living standards to decline, our manufacturing base to be undermined (threatening our national security), our food safety to be gutted, and our environmental laws to be attacked, while poverty and inequality has only spread in developing nations.

I hope you will stand up for me and see that Fast Track meets its long overdue demise. I am not against trade. What we need is dramatically different rules. I want you to insist on a totally different way to make our trade agreements – one that strengthens labor and environmental laws; makes sure that we can pursue local development policies; helps my family have access to quality affordable healthcare and energy and other essential services; and keeps medicine prices affordable. I am relying on you to keep President Bush and his negotiators accountable to the public – and to Congress.

If we do not change how we made trade agreements, we will never change the agreements themselves. It would be a pleasure to be able to fight FOR a trade agreement that lets me, and my community, experience the benefits of trade. The only way this will happen is by ensuring President Bush never again gets Fast Track authority and whatever comes next ensure Congress can control what must be and can never again be in U.S. trade agreements. Just at a minimum, please make sure you have the right to vote on trade deals before they get signed!

Please write to me now to share your position.

Sincerely,

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