Harry Reid Calls Trade Push By Obama And GOP 'Insanity' - HuffPo

[WillyT]

Harry Reid Calls Trade Push By Obama And GOP 'Insanity'
Michael McAuliff - HuffPo
Posted: 05/20/2015 11:37 am EDT Updated: 37 minutes ago

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WASHINGTON -- The push by President Barack Obama and Republicans for gigantic new trade deals meets the definition of insanity, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) charged in a Senate floor speech Wednesday.

The president and Republican leaders are pushing hard to pass legislation known as Trade Promotion Authority that allows a White House to fast-track trade deals through Congress with no amendments, no procedural hurdles or filibusters, and a simple up-or-down vote in limited amount of time.

That fast-track authority likely would make it possible for the Obama administration to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership with a dozen Pacific Rim nations, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe. Together, those pacts would cover about 80 percent of the global economy.

The much-maligned North American Free Trade Agreement of the 1990s covered about 10 percent of the word's trade, and Reid said that deal and many since have all been disastrous for American workers, costing millions of jobs.

"It causes huge job losses," Reid said. "As Einstein said, you keep doing the same thing over and over again, and you expect a different result, that's the definition of insanity."

"We can look at these trade bills over the years -- every one of them without exception causes to American workers job losses. Millions of job losses," Reid added. "But yet they're going to try the same thing again and hope for a different result. That's insanity."

Obama has tried to counter such complaints by...

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More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/harry-reid-trade-insanity_n_7343106.html

[msongs]

1. customer: where is that meat from? seller: sorry I am not allowed to tell you. nt

[WillyT]

2. Top Story On HuffPo... For Now... Check It Out...

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

[CharlotteVale]

3. I agree with him and can think of some more words.