
BREAKING: Hillary Clinton would NOT vote for Fast Track
Robert Cruickshank, Democracy for America
Republicans and the White House won't give up on trying to pass Fast Track for the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership. And we won't give up trying to stop them.
On Thursday the House once again narrowly voted for Fast Track. The battle returns to the Senate, where we stopped cloture on Fast Track once before.
Even bigger news: Now Hillary Clinton is saying she wouldn't vote for Fast Track.
There's been a lot going on with the Fast Track bill lately, so much that it might make your head spin. So I want to take a moment and give DFA members an overview of where things stand -- and how we can win.
The House passed a standalone Fast Track bill, without the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) that Democrats want to help workers who lose their jobs due to foreign trade. One problem is that Republicans have insisted that TAA be paid for by cutting $700 million from Medicare. Senate Democrats want to find a different funding source, avoid Medicare cuts, and save the TAA. But they also don't want to pass Fast Track without the TAA.
Senate Democrats are now being asked to trust John Boehner and Mitch McConnell when they say they will bring the TAA up for a vote, and find a way to avoid $700 million in Medicare cuts. That doesn't sound like a good idea to me. If Senate Democrats go along, they may find out that Fast Track is headed to President Obama's desk, while TAA dies.
That proposal led to some big news: Hillary Clinton said she would not vote for Fast Track under those conditions. Here's what she told Jon Ralston, a Nevada reporter:
"I certainly would not vote for it unless I were absolutely confident we would get trade adjustment assistance."
The answer here is simple: Senate Democrats need to listen to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Sherrod Brown and stop Fast Track and the TPP right here, right now.
While we will continue to work to defeat fast-track for the job-killing TPP in the U.S. Senate, we will never forget which House Democrats stood with American working families against Fast Track and who sold them out.Republicans did not have enough votes to pass Fast Track all by themselves -- and Fast Track would have failed both times it came up for a vote in the House had it not been for these 28 Democrats:
Brad AshfordAmi Bera
Don Beyer
Earl Blumenauer
Suzanne Bonamici
Gerry Connolly
Jim Cooper
Jim Costa
Henry Cuellar
Susan Davis
John Delaney
Suzan DelBene
Sam Farr
Jim Himes
Ruben Hinojosa
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Derek Kilmer
Ron Kind
Rick Larsen
Gregory Meeks
Beto O'Rourke
Scott Peters
Jared Polis
Mike Quigley
Kathleen Rice
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Kurt Schrader
Terri Sewell
Our message to these 28 Democrats is clear:
We will not lift a finger or raise a penny to protect you when you're attacked in 2016, we will encourage our progressive allies to join us in leaving you to rot, and we will actively search for opportunities to primary you with a real Democrat.
Those primaries could happen next year or they could happen in election cycles to come, but, make no mistake, we will make certain that your vote to fast track the destruction of American jobs will be remembered and will haunt you for years to come.
DFA members have won some battles on Fast Track and we've lost some as well. That's better than anyone thought was possible at the beginning of the year, when all the pundits were sure that Fast Track would easily pass. We can still win a victory when the Senate votes again on Fast Track, as early as Tuesday.
However, even if Fast Track passes, that's NOT the end of the fight against the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Congress will still have to take a final vote on the TPP, in the months ahead. I don't know if we can win that vote. But we're in a much stronger position to win today than we were in January, and that's all because of the signatures, donations, and phone calls that more than 173,000 DFA members like you have made in our campaign to stop Fast Track and the TPP.
Because of DFA members like you, millions of Americans are more aware of what the TPP is and why it is so bad for our jobs and our democracy -- and that could be the difference in the end.
Thank you for never giving up in the fight to save jobs and stop corporate power.
- Robert
Robert Cruickshank, Senior Campaign Manager
Democracy for America