President Obama Weekly Address: Fighting for Trade Deals that Put American Workers First

[pampango]

38. Your faith in congress to make this a better agreement, if given the chance, is intriguing.

You don't throw up your hands and say 'we can either just vote blindly for something negotiated by the Executive Branch or do nothing.

Iow, do it the Democratic way. Let Congress add amendments, take out stuff that is harmful to the American people etc.

IS there a reason why letting Congress represent those who hired them, has become so controversial?

I would not go so far as to say "just vote blindly for something negotiated by the Executive Branch or do nothing" are good ideas. If every single word of the TPP is not released before any vote, it should be defeated. If it is all released, then we would not be 'voting blindly for something negotiated by the Executive Branch'. It may still deserve to be defeated if it is not a high-standards, high-enforcement agreement.

I would go so far as to say that I trust Obama to negotiate a good agreement more than I trust Boehner and McConnell to "change things that are good for Corporations" or "add amendments, take out stuff that is harmful to the American people" and make any Obama-negotiated agreement better for the American people.

I agree that to "do nothing" is a dismal alternative.

IS there a reason why letting Congress represent those who hired them, has become so controversial?

I suspect that, for many liberals, trusting the Boehner-McConnell congress to solve our problems is a rather rare occurrence. The majority of our base seems to want to keep the republican congress as far from influencing the content of this agreement as possible and sees TPA as a way to do this. And the prospect of those two republicans having the power to add and delete anything they want in the TPP is a scarier thought yet. It is unusual to see your level of bipartisanship here on DU.