Immigration, Outsourcing And Now Fast-Tracking TP - When Will GOP Stand Up For Americans?
Last November, Republicans grew their strength in Congress to levels unseen since 1946...
And, so, what is the first order of business now in the Ways and Means Committee of Paul Ryan and Senate Finance Committee of Orrin Hatch?
“The first thing we ought to do,” says Ryan, “is pass trade promotion authority.” Trade promotion authority, or “fast track,” is a synonym for Congress’s surrender of all rights to amend trade treaties, and a commitment to confine itself to a yes or no vote on whatever deal Obama brings home...
With the huge Trans-Pacific Partnership in negotiations, Obama wants Boehner and McConnell to agree in advance not to tamper with it. “Hands off!” he demands. If this GOP agrees to this, it will, in its first great decision, be engaging in an act of self-castration.
Why would they do this?
...As the liberal group Public Citizen notes, the biggest trade deal of Barack’s term, the U.S.-Korea trade pact modeled on NAFTA, has been another job-killer for American workers:
“Since the Obama administration used Fast Track to push a trade agreement with Korea, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has grown 50 percent–which equates to 50,000 more American jobs lost. The U.S. had a $3 billion monthly trade deficit with Korea in October 2014–the highest monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with the country on record.”
Everywhere we hear that the issue of our time is the wage stagnation of the middle class...
Wages are the price of labor, and price is determined by supply and demand. Wages have fallen because the supply of labor has exploded.
Following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, we threw open America’s doors to a flood of immigrants, legal and illegal. Some 40-50 million have poured in, an unprecedented expansion of the labor force.
As these immigrants–many uneducated, unskilled, unable to speak English well–entered the labor pool, they were willing to work for less than native-born Americans who needed higher wages to sustain their standard of living...
Yet, over a million new low-wage workers pouring into the USA every year was not enough for our banksters and corporatists.
Thus, “free-trade” Republicans and their collaborators in the Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce decided to drop the U.S. labor force into a worldwide labor pool where the average wage was but a tiny fraction of an American living wage...
Move production out of the United States, out from under the jurisdiction of U.S. law, into the Third World, and then bring your products back free of charge. To these folks, America is the best market to sell into, but, as a place to produce, give us China!
Mexicans, Latin Americans, East and South Asians, Chinese would all work for less than Americans, thus enabling corporate executives to take home fatter shares of far larger profits, in salaries, bonuses, benefits, stock options and soaring equity prices.
Like NAFTA and GATT, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an enabling act for multinationals to move freely to where it is cheapest to produce while securing access to where it is most profitable to sell...