From Credo:
Our campaign to pressure President Obama's administration to immediately make all secret trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) just got a massive boost.
President Obama is lashing out at activists and our elected representatives who have called for transparency around secret negotiations, calling us “dishonest.”
In response Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown added their voices to Senator Bernie Sanders’ call for the Obama administration to immediately release the full text of the TPP. In a letter to the president, Senators Warren and Brown wrote:
The American people should be allowed to weigh in on the facts of the TPP before Members of Congress are asked to voluntarily reduce our ability to amend, shape, or block any trade deal. The press and the public should be allowed to examine the details that corporate executives and lobbyists have already been allowed to influence for years. Members of Congress should be able to discuss the agreement with our constituents and to participate in a robust public debate instead of being muzzled by classification rules. Before Congress votes to facilitate the adoption of the TPP, the American public should be allowed to see for themselves whether it's good deal for them.1
Stand with Senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders: Add your name and tell President Obama to immediately release the full text of the TPP before Congress votes on Fast Track. Click here to sign the petition.
Senators Warren and Brown sent the letter in response to the president's recent attacks on progressive activists fighting to stop Congress from rubber-stamping a Fast Track bill for the biggest trade deal in our history. President Obama has even gone so far as to compare our objections to the deal being negotiated with corporations and foreign governments to Sarah Palin’s invocating of “death panels” during the health care debate.
The Warren-Brown letter specifically points out that President Obama's "trade transparency record is worse than that of former President George W. Bush," noting that even Bush "published the full negotiation texts of a major free trade deal with Latin America several months before Congress had to vote on giving the deal fast track benefits."2
This letter gives our ongoing campaign to rally around Senator Bernie Sanders’ call for transparency on all pending trade deals a huge lift. We need to do our part by pushing even harder for transparency now.
Add your name and tell President Obama to immediately release the full text of the TPP before Congress votes on Fast Track. Click here to sign the petition.
It would be outrageous for the Obama administration to allow the Republican leadership and their corporate allies within the Democratic party to ram through Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority without allowing all members of Congress, their staff, and the American public to read what is in trade agreements such as the TPP. And as Senators Warren and Brown point out, it would be worse than George W. Bush!
In fact, the reason why the corporate lobby is pushing hard for Fast Track is that they know the TPP could not get through Congress without this extraordinary power grab.
This secret "trade" deal would eviscerate broad swaths of regulations that protect consumers, workers, the environment and the soundness of our financial system. And it would set up a legal regime where corporate profits trump the policy priorities of sovereign governments.
It’s ironic that the president claims critics of the TPP "don’t know what they’re talking about" when it’s his administration that is refusing to release the text of his secret trade agreement to the public – only providing extremely limited access to members of Congress. The Obama administration should immediately release the TPP text to the public, and Congress, so we can have a spirited and informed public debate on the largest trade deal in our history.
Stand with Senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Bernie Sanders: Add your name and tell President Obama to immediately release the full text of the TPP before Congress votes on Fast Track. Click the link below to sign the petition.
To sign petition
Thank you for your activism.
Murshed Zaheed, Deputy Political Director
CREDO Action from Working Assets
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