Senate Democrats block action on Obama's trade agenda

Senate Democrats dealt President Barack Obama a stinging setback on trade Tuesday, blocking efforts to begin a full-blown debate on a top priority of his second term.
The president's supporters said they will try again, and Obama summoned key Democrats to the White House to discuss possible strategies. One possibility was to drop a contentious issue dealing with countries that manipulate their currency, but it was unclear whether that would resolve the impasse.

What was clear, however, was that Obama suffered a rebuke from his own party, led by some who served with him in the Senate.

Only one Senate Democrat, Tom Carper of Delaware, voted for a GOP-crafted motion to start considering Obama's request for "fast track" trade authority. Fast track would let the president present trade agreements that Congress can ratify or reject, but not amend.
Tuesday's vote highlighted the deep divide between Obama and the many congressional Democrats who say such trade deals hurt U.S. jobs. Leading the fight against fast track are labor unions and liberal groups, which are crucial to many Democrats' elections.
"It is the president's party," said GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. "It's amazing to me that they would do this to the president on a bill of this magnitude."

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Democrats were "throwing their own president under the bus." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the results "pretty shocking," but he said the "door remains open" for trade legislation.

Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida took a darker view, however. "Maybe what McConnell really wants to do is embarrass the president," he said, referring to McConnell's refusal to grant Democrats' demands about assembling the legislative trade package.

Several Democrats said Obama erred last weekend by pointedly criticizing a leading Democratic foe on trade, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, in an interview with Yahoo News. He suggested Warren was poorly informed and politically motivated.

"The Fast Track train went off the rails today," said Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. Obama's bid to build momentum in the Senate backfired, she said, and House Democrats remain convinced that "the trade package would do a lot more harm than good."

This entire deal is a mess.. No one can read it. He wants no one to be able to amend it. He wants no penalties for countries that manipulate its currency value..

And the idiot republicans want to give it to him..

Really. He wants to drive the final nail in the coffin.

anything your not allowed to read should be an immediate red flag. i hate democrats and republicans the same. theyre both a bunch of corrupt bastards.

So much for the most transparent administration in history....haha

exactly my thoughts, why is there still so many people who cant see through this schmuck?

The ones that speak out go to jail...

Here is an interesting fact.. Did you know that more government employees have been charged by this administration under the espionage act than ALL other administrations COMBINED?

by espionage act, do you mean more whistle blowers were prosecuted under this administration than anyone else?

Im not sure I would call all of them whistle blowers, but I suppose they may be to someone.

Whistleblowers Soar To Record Levels Under Obama; Being Punished For Speaking Out
Government workers routinely threatened with "directed reassignment" by superiors


Government workers speaking out in the face of security lapses and corruption have soared to record levels, while many are being retaliated against and punished by higher ups for daring to report misconduct.

The Washington Times reports that The Office of Special Counsel, which oversees government whistleblower complaints, has experienced an “unprecedented rise” in its caseload.

The OSC notes that 5,200 complaints were filed in fiscal 2014. That figure constitutes a 17 percent increase on 2013 cases, as well as a 30 percent rise in three years.

The leading source of whistleblowers within the Obama government is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which filed 1,504 cases throughout the year. The DoD filed 1,365 cases, while The Department of Homeland Security presented 489.

Instead of being rewarded and praised for speaking out in an effort to improve the inner workings of those government departments, whistleblowers are more often being punished.

“Whistleblowers are not the most beloved people by their leaders,” said Steven Bucci, an analyst on homeland security at The Heritage Foundation. “Unfortunately, the system that protects them is really imperfect. Rather than get the corrective action, instead you end up seeing organizations expend more effort to screw with the person who raised the issue.”

This is not surprising under an Obama administration that has overseen an unprecedented rise in convictions of government whistleblowers.

Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined. The President has sentenced whistleblowers to 25 times the jail time of all prior U.S. presidents combined. Critics have accused the President of protecting criminal activity by prosecuting and harassing whistleblowers rather than criminals. Indeed, Obama hasn’t prosecuted even one high-level Wall Street executive, despite the multitude of evidence against them.

This week, yet another whistleblower was convicted, as leaker Jeffrey Sterling was sentenced to 42 months in prison under the Espionage Act.

Sterling was fired in the early 2000s for leaking classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen regarding the US government’s attempt to sell Iran flawed nuclear weapon schematics and project a negative image about the country’s nuclear program.

In related news, two TSA managers recently claimed they were retaliated against after exposing major security problems at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The Office of Special Counsel is taking on the cases of the TSA workers, who claim that they routinely witnessed improperly handled ammunition found at TSA checkpoints and inadequate background checks on travelers.

Andrew Rhoades and Becky Roering, say they were ordered to be transferred by superiors who knew that they would rather quit the TSA than relocate.

“It was a total shock,” Mr. Rhoades said in an interview. “They couldn’t get me on a performance issue, so they reassigned me to try to get me to resign.”

Rhoades claims that the threat of “directed reassignments” is routinely used against whistleblowers by senior management in order to get them to back down.

“Overall security at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has precipitously declined, and most of the staff is absorbed with avoiding retaliation rather than focusing on their jobs,” he told the Office of Special Counsel.

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Steve Watson is a London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

I remember when Al Gore debated Ross Perot on NAFTA...

The lapdog media all said gore won.... 20 years later we find out it wasn't Perot that lost it was us...

al gore was, is, and always will be a fraud. no wonder why the media always used to smeer ross perot when i was a kid. i can remember when i was young they were always making fun of ross perot on tv.

I wonder if this is ultimately just posturing.

I mean

That reads like the Obamacare fiasco when republicans blocked action on Obama's health care agenda.

It's like they just decided "repubs got the last one, dems this time it's yours."

Like democrats needed something to separate them from Obama for their team to get some kind of positive press.
Obama plays the devil with the republicans, the democrats pretend to be the good guys, some arm twisting and closed door negotiations from Obama to push this deal ahead, and in 6 months they'll have to pass it for everyone to find out what's in it, and it's just shoved down our throats, accusations thrown around, people grumble, and it just sticks.
And in the next election(s) this becomes a magic talking point about how awesome democrats are to stand up for what was "right," or how they were just doing what republicans did, and they get votes from some folks.


I don't think they did.
I think it comes across as a script to a political play.

I mean this:

just seems like added drama for people that watch too much t.v.

seems some Democrats are thinking that Obama is poisoning the Well for for them for '16!

I think that well has been poisoned since 2008 & some brain cells have regenerated enough for their own ambitious & agenda to return.