Fast Track free-for-all

[MDOLAN <mdolan@citizen.org>]

  Fast-track talks become free-for-all
  
                                BY JOHN MAGGS
                                JOURNAL OF COMMERCE STAFF
  
  WASHINGTON -- The long-planned effort to pass new trade negotiating 
  authority
  is turning into a legislative free-for-all, with as many as four competing 
  proposals for
  Congress to sort through in little more than a month. House and Senate 
  Republicans
  are headed in different directions on their bills, which share the aim of 
  limiting
  President Clinton's ability to use the trade authority to push through bills 
  on labor
  and environmental standards. Meanwhile, Clinton administration officials 
  invited
  House Democrats last week to propose their own bill to carve out a larger 
  role for
  labor and the environment than would be possible under Mr. Clinton's 
  proposal.
  
  "Fast-track" authority would prevent Congress from amending trade pacts such 
  as
   the one planned to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement to Chile.
  Mr. Clinton says it is necessary -- otherwise, Congress would unravel such
   delicately balanced deals. The flurry of different bills poses two problems 
  for
  supporters of fast-track trade authority. First, while it is normal to use 
  competing
  bills to push different factions toward a compromise, it is a process that 
  usually
   takes time -- a year perhaps; often much longer.
  
  Mr. Clinton decided against putting forward a fast-track bill last spring 
  and has only
  about five weeks left to pass the legislation during this session of 
  Congress. It is
  doubtful that his administration would be able to advance the bill in '98, 
  when
   Democrats will try to retake the House and will need campaign funding from 
  unions
  opposed to the trade negotiating authority. The second problem is that the
  competing plans are the product of a highly partisan legislative process 
  that clashes
  with the traditional bipartisan way Congress has handled major trade bills.
  
   Happy to fight
  
  When it comes to most legislation, Mr. Clinton and Republican leaders have 
  been
  happy to slug it out rhetorically on their way to a compromise. But trade 
  has long
  been a bipartisan issue in Congress -- at first because of the Cold War 
  consensus in
  favor of free trade, but more recently because the widening unpopularity of 
  trade
  has required bipartisanship to eke out approval.
  
   Partisanship, in fact, has been the main hurdle to enacting fast track for 
  the last few
  years. Mr. Clinton embraced the idea of adding labor and environment to fast 
  track
  as a way to appeal to Democrats who had voted overwhelmingly against Nafta.
  Republicans took the bait and demanded that fast track actively prohibit any
   negotiations on labor or environmental issues.
  
   That's why veteran trade specialists are worried about the partisan turn 
  that has
  been taken in the fast-track debate. At a Senate Finance Committee hearing 
  last
   week, Republicans lined up to take verbal shots at the administration 
  proposal. Sen.
   Phil Gramm of Texas said repeatedly that it would never be approved by the
   Senate.
  
  A former longtime congressional trade staffer said: "This is not the way 
  that fast
  track has worked in the past, when there has been a core of (GOP and 
  Democrats)
  in the House and the Senate willing to work together. If the yelling gets 
  too loud,
  then there won't be any way to build a compromise."
  
  Rhetoric may get boost
  
   For now at least, the White House seems to have embraced a strategy that 
  could
   increase the rhetoric. In Thursday's meeting with about 50 House Democrats, 
  White
  House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and U.S. Trade Representative Charlene
  Barshefsky were treated to a lecture on the shortcomings of the Clinton 
  plan.
  
   Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the committee handling the 
  bill,
  told the Clinton advisers that Democrats need to vote for a bill that 
  reflect their
  "values" of raising living standards and protecting the environment.
  
  His comments mirrored those of House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, 
  D-Mo.,
  the chief opponent of fast-track authority, who used a speech in his St. 
  Louis district
  must not auction off our future or our values to make a quick buck."
  
  Separate Democratic bill
  
  In response, said sources at the meeting, the Clinton officials welcomed the 
  idea of a
  separate Democratic bill providing for much more extensive labor and 
  environmental
  goals than the Clinton fast-track plan. "I think it could be a welcome 
  addition to the
  debate," said one administration official archly. Some administration 
  officials believe
  that a more liberal version of fast track will help their cause by giving 
  Democrats
  something to vote for before moving to a compromise. According to this 
  theory, the
  Clinton legislation, which has been attacked by most Democrats, will appear 
  more
  moderate when compared with the extremes of Republican and liberal 
  Democratic
  plans.
  
   But some skeptics say there may not be enough time for all this 
  positioning.
  
  
  
  ****************************************************************************
   /s/ Mike Dolan, Field Director, Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen
  
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