Barbara Boxer Could Not Take Notes On TPP
Barbara Boxer told, "You Can't Take Notes"

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat from California, in May of 2015, blasted the secrecy shrouding the original Trans-Pacific Partnership text.

Barbara Boxer speaking on the floor of the Senate explained her experience in trying to read the content of the TPP. “They said, well, it’s very transparent. Go down and look at it” Then she explained their deliberate contradictions, “Well let me tell you what you have to do to read this agreement. Follow this: you can only take a few of your staffers who happen to have a security clearance because, God knows why, this is secure, this is classified. It has nothing to do with defense. It has nothing to do with going after ISIS. It has nothing to do with any of that, but it is classified.”

“So I go down with my staff that I could get to go with me. And as soon as I get there the guard says to me hand over your electronics. OK, I hand over my electronics.”

Barbara Boxer, who has served in the House and Senate for 33 years, then described the restrictions under which members of Congress could look at the TPP text as it was originally being written.

“The guard says, ‘you can’t take notes.’ I said, ‘I can’t take notes?’” Boxer recalled. “‘Well, you can take notes, but have to give them back to me, and I’ll put them in a file.’ So I said: ‘Wait a minute. I’m going to take notes and then you’re going to take my notes away from me and then you’re going to have them in a file, and you can read my notes? Not on your life.’”

Barbara Boxer noted at the start of her speech that she hoped opponents of the trade promotion authority bill, the so-called fast-track legislation required to advance the TPP, would be able to block the bill via a filibuster. Some Democrats may have tried to do this against Fast Track Trade Authority. However, without the Republican party’s experience with their many filibusters on other less harmful issues, the Senate with most Republicans and some Democrats passed Democratic President Barack Obama’s Fast Track Authority with a majority vote on June 24, 2015. The vote count for this was 60 to 38, with 13 Democrats joining all but five Republicans. Of course, Barbara Boxer, voted against Fast Track Authority for Barack Obama and the next president. The ability under Fast Track for the president to bring a finalized and passing vote before congress will last for 6 years.

As Barbara Boxer explained, “Instead of standing in a corner, trying to figure out a way to bring a trade bill to the floor that doesn’t do anything for the middle class that is held so secretively that you need to go down there and hand over your electronics and give up your right to take notes and bring them back to your office. They ought to come over here and figure out how to help the middle class,”

Source: Link to original written source with additional editing- https://theintercept.com/2015/05/12/can-read-notes-life-top-democratic-senator-blasts-obamas-tpp-secrecy/