Congressional Fast Track Vote

Some of our Congressional Representatives and Senators are for the majority of the people of our nation. However, some of them are not. Instead they are primarily in favor of their election campaign donors. This can be seen by examining bills they have brought before congress for a vote and how they have voted on other Representatives’ congressional bills. Also which bills passed with a majority of votes and became law.

As an example, voting yes and giving the President Fast Track Authority, also called Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to negotiate trade agreements that Congress can approve or deny, but cannot amend or filibuster turns trade authority from Congress to the President. This does not follow Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that. “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives”. Either that or the TPP, which President Barack Obama has been promoting will not raise revenue for the United States, only for multi-national corporations.

TPP negotiation did not begin with members of Congress. Actual textual input is from more than 600 corporate lobbyists, some of which could be the lawyers of ISDS, which grants multi-national corporations with their investors the right to sue governments at any level, state and federal. These ISDS suits under three corporate lawyers also acting as judges may impose fines on governments if they rule their laws have lessened the profits of corporations. This could be seen after reading some of the text of TPP, which is vaguely written with legal jargon or with current or past lawsuits under NAFTA.. Congress was left out of the negotiation process and were only allowed to read its content behind closed doors with a security guard. Or as Senator Barbara Boxer was told by a guard, “you can’t take notes”. Then when she replied, “I can’t take notes?” the guard says, “Well, you can take notes and have to give them back to me, and I’ll put them in a file”. This was before the congressional fast track vote on June 18, 2015, which passed with a vote of 218 “yes” and 208 “No”.

So how did a bill like this pass Congress? Answer: It was added to a favorable unrelated bill, H.R. 2146: Defending Public Safety Employees’ Retirement Act. This favorable bill allows retired federal law enforcement officers and firefighters over the age of 50 and with 20 years of service to withdraw money from their retirement funds without any tax penalty. Typically there is a 10 percent tax penalty on retirement funds withdrawn before the age of 59½. Even though law enforcement officers and firefighters are able to retire at the age of 50 after 20 years of service.

So should Congressional Representatives voting "Yes", or as they pronounce it "Aye" on a bill only look at and listen to the good and none of the bad or evil? Only if they are one of the three monkeys or are related to them. Or if they think the majority of the people of our nation will follow the three monkeys whenever they examine something. Feel free to be nice to the monkeys, but work to educate them.  Realize that "Aye" can be a very good pronunciation for monkeys, but teach them to say "No" also.  

Source: Mark Sanguinetti, Web Site Author

Below is the congressional vote count for the passage of Fast Track Authority on June 18, 2015. For more verification research this online. Here is one link to double check this vote count for accuracy including the spelling of congressional representatives' names.