Pelosi Plays Hardball on Trade: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Posted by David Sirota, Open Left at 4:28 PM on April 9, 2008.

This just off the Reuters wire:

The House of Representatives will decide on Thursday whether to put off indefinitely a vote on the Colombia free-trade agreement that President George W. Bush submitted to Congress this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. Pelosi, announcing the move to reporters on Wednesday, would not give a time frame for when the trade pact might be debated and put up for a vote on passage in the House. The vote on Thursday would change rules for considering the deal by eliminating a 90-day deadline for Congress to approve the Colombia trade deal.

This is good news, bad news and potentially ugly news.

The good news: Finally, a Democratic leader is trying to use some modicum of legislative power to halt our economically destructive and wildly unpopular trade policies. It's a start.

The bad news: Pelosi has yet to say she will work to kill the pact outright. In fact, she issued a press release earlier this week merely worrying that Bush's tactics jeopardize the final passage of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, other top Democrats like Jim Clyburn have gone on record saying they want this deal to pass (Clyburn has since amended his statement - but sometimes the truth is in the first reaction).

The potentially ugly news:

Is Pelosi throwing America's fair trade majority a meaningless bone that ends up helping lobbyists pass this deal?

While it certainly is good in the short-term that Congress is postponing passage of the Colombia deal, if Democrats are ultimately aiming to pass it anyway, then the delay may actually be a bad thing, in that it would serve to give K Street lobbyists more time to pressure Congress to pass it. It's quite possible (probable, really, based on the Democrats willingness to sell out on this issue) that this postponement (if it passes) will let them cut a deal with Bush to modestly increase Trade Adjustment Assistance funding in exchange for the free trade deal. That would be a terrible bargain for workers, giving them a few crumbs while robbing yet another loaf of bread out of their hands.

In fact, Pelosi's press release this morning seems to suggest she still wants this bill to pass:

"I thought there was a risk, the President sending it to the Congress now.If brought to the floor immediately, it would lose. And what message would that send?"

See that? Her big fear is not the deal passing, thus hurting American workers and validating the murderous Colombian government. No, her big fear is that the deal would NOT pass right now.

If Pelosi is successful in engineering this rejection of fast track - rather than the rejection of the Colombia FTA- it puts the timetable for the vote firmly in her hands. She will be able to engineer the vote's timing so that it passes (imagine, for instance, Pelosi calling a vote on this bill in the post-election lame-duck session, in a wink-and-nod deal with corporate campaign contributors). And rest assured, that if this bill does not get outright rejected, the lobbying pressure to pass it will only increase over time.

This issue is obviously a moving target. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Well, it seems like that ugly side could be coming true. Here's CongressDaily:

House Democratic leaders are seriously considering delaying a vote on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement until after the November elections, thereby providing needed cover for vulnerable rank-and-file members, according to senior Democratic leadership sources.

CongressDaily says the lame-duck plan is gaining momentum, and that - despite polls showing the vast majority of Americans opposing this NAFTA-style trade policy - Democrats say killing the deal "is not seen as a viable political option."

David Sirota is a veteran political strategist and author of Hostile Takeover, a New York Times bestseller about the corruption of both political parties.