Obama constantly goes after Hillary for Nafta, but he just supported IT'S EXPANSION

He just claims it has real environmental and labor protections. His lying about this is one reason he can't be trusted on trade.

He also voted against: Before getting to Peru here is an amendment you probably never heard about but it is a big deal and tells us a lot about Obama. “Sen. Obama opposed an amendment that would have prevented the weakening of laws that protect against unfair trade practices. (Hillary supported the amendment.) Sen. Obama also supports fast track authority.”
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=595...

Is this true? Yes. http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/r...

YEAs ---39
Akaka (D-HI)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Craig (R-ID)
Dayton (D-MN) Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (R-SC)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Nelson (D-FL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)

NAYs ---60
Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Burr (R-NC)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Chafee (R-RI)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Frist (R-TN)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)
Wyden (D-OR)

Vote Summary
Question: On the Amendment (Dorgan Amdt. No. 1665 )
Vote Number: 232 Vote Date: September 15, 2005, 12:17 PM
Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Amendment Rejected
Amendment Number: S.Amdt. 1665 to H.R. 2862

Statement of Purpose: To prohibit weakening any law that provides safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices.
Vote Counts: YEAs 39
NAYs 60

Obama was one of only 11 Democrats (including then Democratic Joe Lieberman) to vote against this pro-worker, pro-fair trade amendment. Look at the other 11. DLC, DLC, DLC!

Here is Obama’s statement which could have being plagiarized straight from the DLC:

"Obama said he would vote for a Peruvian trade agreement next week, in response to a question from a man in Londonderry, NH who called NAFTA and CAFTA a disaster for American workers. He said he supported the trade agreement with Peru because it contained the labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO, despite the voter's protests to the contrary. He also affirmed his support for free trade."

The voter's "protests to the contrary" are exactly right. The AFL-CIO does not support the bill expanding NAFTA into Peru, and the much-trumpeted labor/environmental standards leave enforcement up to the Bush administration, rather than empowering third parties to enforce them (like corporations have the power to enforce investor rights provisions in these same trade agreements). Leaving enforcement to the Bush administration -- or any administration -- is the biggest loophole possible. It is precisely why corporate lobbyists have bragged to reporters that the standards are not enforceable.

Obama is the first presidential candidate to officially declare his/her support for the NAFTA expansion moving through the Congress. His announcement is not necessarily surprising, considering he was the keynote speaker at the launch of the Hamilton Project -- a Wall Street front group working to drive a wedge between Democrats and organized labor on globalization issues. His announcement comes just days after a Wall Street Journal poll found strong bipartisan opposition to lobbyist-written NAFTA-style trade policies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/breaking-oba ...

Sherrod Brown:
"Congress (has) passed another job-killing trade agreement that will shut down our factories, hurt our communities, and send more unsafe food into our kitchens and consumer products into our children's bedrooms."

Brown, like the other freshmen Democrats elected to the Senate in 2006, understands something that Clinton and Obama are still missing. "Our current trade model chases short-term profits for the few, at the expense of long-term prosperity, health and safety for the many. It's a model that doesn't work. Look at our trade deficit, look at manufacturing job losses, look at wage stagnation, look at imported product recalls, look at forced labor, child labor, slave labor. Look what it does to communities," says the senator, who made changing trade policy a central issue in his successful challenge to Republican Senator Mike DeWine, as did other Democratic winners such as Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McMaskill of Missouri, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, John Tester of Montana and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island – all of whom opposed the Peru deal.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=256831

John Edwards:

-snip-

“Today I am announcing my opposition to the Peru Trade Agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration and being considered for approval by Congress. Despite strong efforts by many Democrats in Congress, labor organizations and fair trade advocates to embed international labor standards into the Agreement, what resulted were references to general principles and not specific standards. And the Agreement still replicates and in fact expands all of the other most damaging aspects of past trade agreements. In short, this agreement does not meet my standard of putting American workers and communities first, ahead of the interests of the big multinational corporations, which for too long have rigged our trade policies for themselves and against American families.

-snip-

Right now, President Bush is pushing to expand this NAFTA approach to four more countries. He has signed agreements with Peru, Panama, Korea and even Colombia, where since 1991, in this tiny country, there have been over 2100 documented cases of trade unionists being assassinated, 72 in 2006 alone.

All of these agreements replicate these terrible features of NAFTA:

• All of these agreements provide the expansive investor rights that literally create incentives to relocate U.S. jobs overseas;
• All of these agreements limit our ability to inspect imported food - even as the International Trade Commission projects that these pacts will result in a new flood of imported food;
• All of these agreements allow foreign corporations operating here to attack our environmental, health and even local zoning laws in foreign tribunals to demand our tax dollars in compensation if following our laws undermines their expected profits.
• All of these agreements even limit how we can spend our own tax dollars. These deals ban many Buy America and other similar policies. Instead of your tax dollars going to support American workers, these agreements take away one the few opportunities the government has to directly create jobs here.

But these four proposed agreements actually go even further than NAFTA.
For instance, these deals give those foreign corporations who get contracts to rebuild our nation's bridges and highways or to operate mines or cut timber on U.S. federal land special privileges superior to the treatment of U.S. firms. U.S. firms have to meet our laws, but in contrast, these agreements let foreign corporations operating within the United States who have a gripe about their contract terms drag the U.S. government into foreign tribunals stacked with their own lawyers acting as ‘judges.'

The damage threatened by these NAFTA expansion agreements extends beyond the United States. Buried deep in the 800-page text of the Peru FTA are ambiguous provisions that could allow U.S. banks to demand compensation if Peru reverses its disastrous social security privatization. That's right, the Peru FTA could lock in the misery facing millions of the elderly and ill in that extremely poor country all to ensure U.S. firms can profit on what should be a government service available to all in the first place.
(jackson_dem’s 2 cents, this is not Edwards’ comment: I guess the people of Peru will just have to settle for “hope”)

-snip-

The Peru, Panama and Colombia agreements are also projected to displace millions of peasant farmers

-snip-

The presidents of Peru's labor unions oppose this NAFTA expansion. So does Peru's Archbishop Pedro Barreto, who calls the NAFTA expansion into Peru immoral - and a threat to the national security of his nation and ours.

http://www.art-us.org/node/282

For more about the real Obama on trade http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4585898

It is a shame the msm killed off Edwards. :(

spoken of. The AFL-CIO stayed NEUTRAL on the bill. Given there normal anti trade agreement position, this is a signal that they tried. The complaint of Edwards and others is that the bill gives the President the right to see if those things are being inforced. This is NOT a problem if Obama (or HRC) is President in 2009 when it takes effect.

You better get used to embracing NAFTA because it's the Clinton's baby.

As does Clinton, frankly, See my above post about the truth about this horrible FTA.

If not, do some real research and stop relying on hyped-up talking points.

lets not kid ourselves...

That said we don't have any choices this year that can undo this horrid shit completely.

going to fuck their membership out of jobs.

In reality it was the same and in some ways worse. Open your eyes and read my post above for the truth about this.

Anyone who thinks Obama is not a "free" trader just doesn't know his views and record on trade. Both candidates are "free" traders, although one is slightly better. Edwards was a fair trader but we wanted "hope and change" over that so enjoy more NAFTAs! :eyes:

So - you are right - the fair traders are gone now, and we are now stuck with the leftovers.

The passage of the Peru FTA, which was overwhelmingly opposed in the United States and Peru, is bad foreign policy, bad domestic policy and egregiously bad politics. Both of Peru’s labor federations, its major indigenous people’s organization and its archbishop called on the U.S. Congress to oppose the deal based on the damage it is projected to cause Peru’s small farmers and environment.

The Peru NAFTA expansion replicates many of the CAFTA provisions that led most Democratic senators to oppose that pact. This includes: foreign investor privileges that create incentives for U.S. firms to move offshore and expose basic environmental, health, zoning and other laws to attack in foreign tribunals; bans on “Buy America” and anti-offshoring policies; limits on food import safety standards and inspection rates; and NAFTA-style agriculture rules that are projected to displace tens of thousands of Peru’s Andean farmers and thus increase coca production and immigration. The pact also contains terms that could subject Peru to compensation claims for reversing its unpopular Social Security privatization, the same system Democrats fought against at home.

Close your eyes if you want to.

Here is information about the Peru bill.

Obama never said he was against trade. NAFTA was a horrible bill, which Bill Clinton signed into law and Hillary has defended.

Bob Casey voted against it because he knows it had loopholes that corporate lobbyists were crowing about. Of course Kerry would support it. He's of the same trade mindset as Clinton, Obama, and the DLC crowd.

Social disaster

Peruvian workers, farmers and indigenous groups have repeatedly expressed the fear that free trade with the US will lead to a social disaster akin to the Mexican experience. “By fully opening Peru’s markets to US agricultural products, this trade agreement will destroy our domestic agriculture, threaten our food security and increase social problems”, according to Luis Zuniga, president of the National Convention of Peruvian Agriculture. In July, popular resistance to neoliberal reform and PeruFTA led to a general strike movement that was brutally suppressed by state security forces.

A centrepiece of PeruFTA is the removal of tariff barriers, allowing, in the words of the Office of the United States Trade Representative, “new opportunities for US farmers and ranchers. More than two-thirds of current US farm exports will become duty-free immediately.”

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/738/38218

He's all about the future, and only poopyheads care about his past votes and records.
You poopyhead, you.

silly me!

This is concrete stuff here.She wouldn't be attacking "Hope" she'd be nailing him for his absolute hypocrisy.

Edwards, who opposed it and made a great speech outlining the case against this horrible agreement, did attack Obama (yes, contrary to Obamite popular belief Edwards criticized St.Obama often) for this during the South Carolina debate.

All she would have to say is that Obama is really no different than her on this issue.

A better tactic, in my opinion, would be to compare their policies on trade. Clinton will review all trade agreements we have and study the effects of them on American workers. Obama will review only NAFTA. Hillary will have a time-out on trade agreements for a year, a long sought labor goal but Obama will not. They are both "free" traders but Hillary is better than Clinton, contrary to the myth among those obsessed with the Clenis.

Speaking of NAFTA, isn't it funny how Hillary gets pilloried among many progressives for the Clenis signing it while Gore, who played a huge role in winning the pr battle for NAFTA, gets no criticism for it? Hillary opposed NAFTA at the time behind the scenes; Gore went on national television and sealed the deal for NAFTA with his debate with Perot.

Wasn't as big of a political junkie back then.

that their records are similar.That he is attacking her on Nafta gives HER every opportunity to say look buddy,I don't know how you can open your mouth about NAFTA criticizing ME when you just voted to expand it!

What's he gonns say?"Well you did too?"

all she'd have to say is " yes,I did and it is no secret.It IS s secret that YOU did."


She needs to bring this to the publics attention.It's important that they realize this about him.

But she did use my sig line last nite :)
I was cheering when she said it.

are the ones that remain in the race.

would really do about any one of them. Exactly what does
he really plan to do about Nafta??? Practically all the
members on the Hill if pushed will vote the Free Trade Line.

Why I oppose CAFTA
Thursday, June 30, 2005

http://obama.senate.gov/news/050630-why_i_oppose_cafta/index.php

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
By Barack Obama

The proposed accord does less to protect U.S. labor than previous trade agreements, and does little to address environmental standards in the Central American countries

By Barack Obama.

This week Congress will debate the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

I wish I could vote in favor of CAFTA. In the end, I believe that expanding trade and breaking down barriers between countries is good for our economy and for our security, for American consumers and American workers. CAFTA would benefit farmers here in Illinois as well as agricultural and manufacturing interests across the country.

We also shouldn't kid ourselves into believing that voting against trade agreements will stop globalization--especially ones like CAFTA, where the countries involved have combined economies one-sixth the size of Illinois'.

Globalization is not someone's political agenda. It is a technological revolution that is fundamentally changing the world's economy, producing winners and losers along the way. The question is not whether we can stop it, but how we respond to it. It's not whether we should protect our workers from competition, but what we can do to fully enable them to compete against workers all over the world.

So far, America has not effectively answered these questions and American workers are suffering as a result. I meet these workers all across Illinois, workers whose jobs moved to Mexico or China and are now competing with their own children for jobs that pay 7 bucks an hour. In town meetings and union halls, I've tried to tell these workers the truth--that these jobs aren't coming back, that globalization is here to stay and that they will have to train more and learn more to get the new jobs of tomorrow.

But when they wonder how they will get this training and this education, when they ask what they will do about their health-care bills and their lower wages and the general sense of financial insecurity that seems to grow with each passing day, I cannot look them in the eyes and tell them that their government is doing a single thing about these problems.

That is why I won't vote for CAFTA.

There are real problems in the agreement itself. It does less to protect labor than previous trade agreements, and does little to address enforcement of basic environmental standards in the Central American countries and the Dominican Republic. Moreover, there has been talk that, in order to get votes from legislators from sugar-producing states, the Bush administration may be preserving indefensible sugar subsidies that benefit a handful of wealthy growers and cripple Illinois candy manufacturers.

But the larger problem is what's missing from our prevailing policy on trade and globalization--namely, meaningful assistance for those who are not reaping its benefits and a plan to equip American workers with the skills and support they need to succeed in a 21st Century economy.

So far, almost all of our energy and almost all of these trade agreements are about making life easier for the winners of globalization, while we do nothing as life gets harder for American workers. In 2004, nearly 150,000 workers were certified as having lost their jobs due to trade and were thus eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance--and this number doesn't even count service workers like janitors and cafeteria employees.

But this is about more than displaced workers. Our failure to respond to globalization is causing a race to the bottom that means lower wages and stingier health and retiree benefits for all Americans. It's causing a squeeze on middle-class families who are working harder but making even less and struggling to stay afloat in this new economy. As one Downstate worker told me during a recent visit, "It doesn't do me much good if I'm saving a dollar on a T-shirt at Wal-Mart, but don't have a job."

And so now we must choose. We must decide whether we will sit idly by and do nothing while American workers continue to lose out in this new world, or if we will act to build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to work hard, get ahead and reach their dreams.

If we are to promote free and fair trade--and we should--then we must make a national commitment to prepare every child in America with the education they need to compete in the new economy; to provide retraining and wage insurance so even if you lose your job you can train for another; to make sure worker retraining helps people without getting them caught in bureaucracy; that it helps service workers as well as manufacturing workers and encourages people to re-enter the workforce as soon as possible.

We also need to figure out a way to tell workers that no matter where you work or how many times you switch jobs, you can take your health care and pension with you always, so you have the flexibility to move to a better job or start a new business.

We cannot expect to insulate ourselves from all the dislocations brought about by free trade, and most of the workers I meet don't expect Washington to do so. But we need a national commitment.

In America, we have always furthered the idea that everybody has a stake in this country and that everyone deserves a shot at opportunity.

The imbalance in this administration's policies, as reflected in the CAFTA debate, fails to provide American workers with their shot at opportunity. It's time we gave them that shot.

*********************

As for me - I support Barack Obama!

To cite CAFTA as proof of Obama being a fair trader is wrong, unless you think the DLC believes in fair trade!