Democrats Must Fight to Defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership by Bernie Sanders
The Democratic National Committee is meeting this weekend in Orlando to mark up a platform laying out the views and aspirations of the party. Up to this point, we have made good progress in helping to create the most progressive Democratic Party platform ever. But more needs to be done.
One of the major amendments that will be debated during this meeting is to make it clear that the Democratic Party is against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and will oppose it coming to the floor of Congress during a lame-duck session. In my view, the trade deal would result in job losses in the United States, make the global race to the bottom even worse, harm the environment, undermine democracy and increase the price of prescription drugs for some of the poorest people in the world.
This should not be controversial. It is the exact same position that Secretary Clinton and I have taken during the campaign, and opposition to the TPP is the position of the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress.
One of the major reasons why the middle class has been in a 40-year decline: poverty has been increasing and the gap between the very rich and everyone else has been growing wider and wider due to our disastrous trade policies. You do not need a Ph.D. in economics to understand that our trade agreements have failed.
Over the last 35 years, our trade agreements have been rigged by corporate America to shut down manufacturing plants in the U.S., throw workers out on the street and move to Mexico, China and other low-wage countries where workers are paid a fraction of what they are paid in the U.S. The new proposal would continue these destructive policies that have hollowed out the middle class and led to the deindustrialization of inner cities and factory towns throughout this country. [….]
Enough is enough. If we are serious about rebuilding the middle class, we must do everything we can to prevent the TPP from coming up for a vote in the lame-duck session and beyond. Trade is a good thing, but it has got to be fair. And the TPP is anything but fair. I hope all of the Platform Committee members in Orlando will unify behind this amendment and work to fundamentally rewrite our trade policies to help all people, not just the CEOs of multi-national corporations.
Democratic platform meeting kicks off in Orlando
[T]he outnumbered supporters of Sanders, who scored numerous policy victories across three drafting committee meetings, came to Orlando with more changes in mind. Josh Fox, the director of the "Gasland" film series, is in Orlando as a Sanders delegate, and he intends to amend the platform to favor "a full national moratorium" on hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) instead of the current, less definitive language about energy. Ben Jealous, the former president of the NAACP, will attempt to strengthen the criminal justice language to "require the Department of Justice to investigate all police-involved shootings."
Most controversially, Sanders delegates intend to try, one more time, to put the Democratic Party on record against one of the Obama administration's final legislative priorities. Jim Hightower, the progressive author and Sanders delegate from Texas, intends to introduce language stating that "it is the policy of the Democratic Party that the Trans-Pacific Partnership must not get a vote in this Congress or in future sessions of Congress." [….]
Sanders's team, which includes a dozen people in Orlando, is anticipating the TPP debate to come Saturday morning. Votes on fracking and other issues may come Friday. In the run-up to this meeting, Sanders repeatedly said he would "take the fight" on key planks to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.
Link to video in tweet above: Sen. Elizabeth Warren on why we need to stop the TPP
Sanders takes aim at Democratic Platform
The Sanders team is hoping to prevail on top liberal leaders and interest groups to push anti-TPP language. The sense among Sanders, as well as many other progressives, is that language opposing the TPP is one of the last missing puzzle pieces in a platform that party leaders have hailed as one of the most progressive ever produced by the party.
On Thursday, Sanders' campaign announced that it had collected over 700,000 signatures on a petition urging the Democratic Party to announce its opposition to a TPP vote.
“The overwhelming majority of Democrats are strongly opposed to this disastrous trade agreement,” Sanders said in a statement on Thursday. “If both Secretary Clinton and I agree that the TPP should not get to the floor of Congress this year, it’s hard to understand why this amendment would not be overwhelmingly passed.
In recent days, it hasn’t just been Sanders pushing for anti-TPP language. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a regular name on Clinton vice-presidential shortlists, recorded a video for the liberal CREDO Action, praising the organization’s members for staunchly opposing the deal and reiterating her own opposition for it as well. Sanders has also talked repeatedly with Warren about fighting TPP, Gunnels said.
“America shouldn’t be signing lousy trade deals — period,” Warren said in the video.
Link to video: $15 Federal Minimum Wage Passes at the Democratic Platform Committee
Democrats back $15 minimum wage, but stalemate on Social Security
The Democratic National Committee added a call for a $15 minimum wage to its 2016 platform, a victory for progressives produced by a deal between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Just an hour later, however, Clinton-loyal members of the platform committee defeated two amendments that would have committed the party to expanding Social Security — a moment marked by cries of "Shame!" and "Are you Democrats?" from Sanders supporters sitting in the observation area of the Hilton where the party was meeting. [….]
After midnight, during a session that began nearly two hours after it was scheduled, two amendments on Social Security policy got speedy rejections. One would have eliminated the cap on Social Security taxes; another would have created a new cost of living index for Social Security benefits to replace the cost of living adjustment, or COLA.
"This is smart politics, and if the Republicans are smart, they'll have it in their platform, too," said Eric Kingson, a Social Security expert who ran a strong but unsuccessful primary for Congress in New York, with Sanders's backing. [….]
The Sanders campaign was hardly routed. It declared victory on a lesser-known amendment, promising to "protect the earned pension benefits of Americans in multi-employer pension plans" by taxing millionaires.
Video link: The Young Turks weigh in on endorsement talk
Since 1980, spending on prisons has grown three times as much as spending on public education
State and local spending on prisons and jails has grown three times as much over the past three decades as spending on public education for preschool through high school, according to a new analysis of federal data by the U.S. Education Department.
The analysis, released Thursday, comes amid growing bipartisan agreement about the need for criminal justice reform, and argues that taxpayers and public safety would be better served by redirecting investments from incarceration to public schools.
“A variety of studies have suggested that investing more in education, particularly targeted toward at-risk communities, could achieve crime reduction without the heavy social costs that high incarceration rates impose on individuals, families, and communities,” it says.
From 1980 to 2013, state and local spending on public schools doubled, from $258 billion to $534 billion, according to the analysis. Over the same period, the number of people incarcerated in state and local prisons more than quadrupled, and spending also increased by more than four times, from $17 billion to $71 billion.'
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