Dems to Hold Official Forum With Wal-Mart, Chamber of Commerce & K Street on "Free" Trade

Posted by David Sirota at 12:08 PM on February 28, 2007.

Matt Singer at Left in the West has the exclusive story on an official Senate Democratic Forum in the Capitol on international trade that reads like a line-up of the biggest of Big Money fat cats including Wal-Mart, Cargill and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (yes, the same U.S. Chamber of Commerce that behaves as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party). The full email from Left In the West that went out from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office is in the extended entry. Get ready to puke.

From: Wetjen, Mark (Reid)
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 1:07 PM
To: Wetjen, Mark (Reid)
Cc: Castellano, Mike (Reid); Smith, Hannah (Lincoln); Marantis, Demetrios (Finance-Dem); Novelli, Stacey (Reid)
Subject: Democratic Forum on International Trade this Friday, March 2, 2007, at 2:00 p.m.

On behalf of Mike Castellano from our office, and Demetrios Marantis and Hannah Smith from the offices of Senators Baucus and Lincoln, respectively, we invite you to join us in a forum discussion on international trade this Friday. We hope you can join us. We have assembled a good and knowledgeable group from the private sector to share its views on some very important topics in the international trade arena. Details about the event and the agenda for the program appear below.

When: Friday, March 2, 2007, at 2:00 p.m.

Where: Hart 512

Program Agenda:
Welcome
Assessment of FTAs
U.S. Engagement and Leadership
Improving Enforcement
Trade in Perspective
Questions and Answers

Sarah Thorn, Wal-Mart
Bill Lane, Caterpillar
Leslie Griffin, New York Life
Brendan Harrington, Kodak
Devry Boughner, Cargill

Other Participants:
Bill Jordan, McGraw Hill Companies
Bill Reinsch, National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC)
Bridget Gwyn, Business Roundtable (BRT)
Cal Cohen, Emergency Committee for American Trade
Chris Wenk, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Laura Lane, Time Warner
Linda Menghetti, Emergency Committee for American Trade
Nicole Venable, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Sarah Thorn, Wal-Mart
Scott Miller, Procter & Gamble

Mark Wetjen
Counsel and Policy Advisor
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
The Capitol
Washington, DC 20510

You may recall, House Democrats pulled these same sort of shenanigans a few months ago when they had Citigroup chairman Robert Rubin address the caucus, but did not give labor, environmental or consumer representatives equal time. I believe Senate Democrats had some sort of forum with labor in the past on trade, though it was far less formal, with only two speakers - not the major event this one is. And that doesn't even matter. Do you think the Republican leadership had a forum with its arch enemies? Of course not. And that says nothing of the fact that the trade debate has been so utterly dominated by Big Money interests, and this specific coalition has gone so far out of its way to crush Democrats and working people that there is absolutely no justification (other than perhaps a fundraising shakedown) for Democrats to use their new majority to open up the U.S. Capitol for an official forum with this crew.

Here we are, a few months after an election where Democrats won the majority thanks to a group of candidates running against lobbyist-written trade policy. Here we are a day after the Montana Senate tells Sen. Baucus it wants him to stop "fast track" trade authority. And yet here we see the Senate Democratic leadership join with Baucus to hold an official forum in the U.S. Capitol with the Big Money coalition pushing "fast track" and a slew of "free" trade agreements stripped of any labor, human rights or environmental provisions.

Why does this all seem so familiar, you ask? As I reported in my book Hostile Takeover, the very same thing happened at the Democratic-controlled White House during NAFTA. The Clinton administration, led by now-Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) began holding weekly meetings with this very same coalition in order to drive that job-destroying, wage-depressing, environment-degrading trade pact through Congress over the objections of progressive Democratic lawmakers, and the entire labor, human rights, environmental and consumer advocacy community.

When will this behavior end? It's a good question, but you'd think it would at least slow down after an election that dealt so thoroughly with trade and with the culture of corruption. Apparently not. Evidently, many Democrats don't care that some of their fellow colleagues are leading a courageous fight to stop this kind of blatant selling out on trade policy. Many seem to believe they should take their orders on trade not from their constituents, but from the Cargills and Wal-Marts of the world. Evidently, our lawmakers believe America's record trade deficit isn't big enough, our wages aren't low enough, our health care and pension benefits have to be further destroyed, our environment has to be more soiled and union rights must be further crushed. All they seem to want is for the corporate executives to give them the proper talking points to make it all seem like "good public policy in the people's interest."

Tagged as: wal-mart, free trade, chamber of commerce

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