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Clinton, House GOP Leaders Agree on `Fast-Track' Trade Authority
------------------------------------------------
>
> Clinton, House GOP Leaders Agree on
> `Fast-Track' Trade Authority
>
> By Paul Blustein
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Wednesday, October 8, 1997; Page A08
> The Washington Post
>
> President Clinton reached agreement yesterday
> with House Republican leaders on a bill that
> would give him new trade negotiating authority,
> but it was unclear yesterday how many Democrats
> would support the bill in a House Ways and
> Means Committee vote today.
>
> The president, who wants the legislation so he
> can negotiate free-trade accords with countries
> in Latin America and elsewhere, spent
> considerable time yesterday at the White House
> cajoling Democratic members of the Ways and
> Means panel to support the bill.
>
> But a majority of the panel's 16 Democrats have
> joined House Minority Leader Richard A.
> Gephardt (D-Mo.) and organized labor in
> opposing unfettered free-trade deals as bad for
> working-class Americans. Only two of the
> Democrats on the committee -- Robert T. Matsui
> (Calif.), ranking minority member of its trade
> subcommittee, and John S. Tanner (Tenn.) --
> have firmly said they intend to vote for the
> bill.
>
> Leaders of the generally pro-free-trade
> Republican majority, including Ways and Means
> Chairman Bill Archer (R-Tex.), have said the
> legislation needs the support of five to seven
> of the panel's Democrats to stand a chance of
> passage in the full House. Otherwise, the odds
> will dim of getting the 50 to 70 Democrats
> believed necessary for ensuring a bipartisan
> majority.
>
> "We'll just plug away, and I can't make a
> prediction right now," Matsui said in after a
> meeting with eight other committee members at
> the White House. "The president has really
> worked the members. But you don't know what's
> going to happen until you actually get in"
> today's committee meeting.
>
> One Democrat the Clinton administration was
> hoping to sway, Richard E. Neal (Mass.), said
> that although "the president did a pretty good
> job of laying out the debate," he would vote
> against the bill because of the large number of
> manufacturing jobs his district has lost in
> recent years.
>
> A defeat in Ways and Means -- or even a poor
> showing -- would doom one of Clinton's top
> priorities for this year and would embarrass
> the president on the eve of his trip to South
> America that he is scheduled to begin Sunday.
>
> Clinton wants to be able to show Latin leaders
> that Congress will soon grant him "fast-track"
> authority, because without it he would have
> difficulty making good on his promise to
> negotiate a Free Trade Area of the Americas
> that would essentially extend the North
> American Free Trade Agreement beyond Canada and
> Mexico to the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
> Under fast-track procedures, trade deals would
> be subject to yes-or-no votes in Congress with
> no amendments allowed, a procedure that assures
> foreign governments their agreements with the
> administration won't be rewritten on Capitol
> Hill.
>
> The compromise bill, which was finished at 2
> a.m. yesterday and approved a few hours later
> by Archer and U.S. Trade Representative
> Charlene Barshefsky, includes language designed
> to appeal to pro-free-trade moderate Democrats
> without alienating conservative Republicans.
> Its goals closely track those of a bill that
> the Senate Finance Committee approved last
> week, although it uses different wording and
> legal formulations.
>
> The most contentious issue revolves around the
> president's ability and obligation to negotiate
> trade accords that include provisions
> concerning worker rights and environmental
> standards in foreign countries. To gain
> Democratic support, the bill would allow trade
> deals that prohibit foreign governments from
> lowering their labor, health and environmental
> rules simply to gain a competitive advantage in
> global trade.
>
> That provision doesn't go nearly far enough to
> satisfy pro-labor Democrats such as Gephardt,
> who insist on much stronger labor and
> environmental protections. But it represents a
> concession by GOP free-traders, who fear that
> new protectionist pressures could arise if
> access to the U.S. market becomes contingent on
> a country's labor and environmental standards.
>
> The committee's ranking minority member, Rep.
> Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), who met with
> Clinton privately and later joined the other
> Democratic members at the group meeting, said:
> "It was difficult to know whether the president
> gained anything at all. But it was an exciting
> meeting, and the president said he thought he
> deserved support on this in order to be able to
> deal with trade as any other head of a nation
> would."
>
> Although some congressional sources said that
> Rangel has been working behind the scenes
> against fast-track authority, he refused to say
> publicly whether he will vote for the bill. He
> said there has been talk among committee
> members of holding a voice vote, in which their
> decisions would go officially unrecorded, "but
> I don't think that's going to happen."
===== Comments by MDOLAN@CITIZEN (MDOLAN) at 10/08/97 9:17 am
in case you missed this
big vote today
****************************************************************************
/s/ Mike Dolan, Field Director, Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen
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