Working Life

Fast Track is now coming up for a cloture vote in the Senate. A recap follows. And I’ll try to give a paraphrased tracking of the position and votes, and ultimately which Democrats continued to abandon workers on behalf of big corporations.

FINAL VOTE UPDATED HERE. 60-37 approved. (McConnell says Corker would have voted YES but was detained)

DEMOCRATS WHO VOTED WITH BIG CORPORATIONS TO ABANDON WORKERS:

Michael Bennet (CO) Maria Cantwell (WA) Tom Carper (DE) Chris Coons (DE) Dianne Feinstein (CA) Heidi Heitkamp (ND) Bill Nelson (FL) Tim Kaine (VA) Claire McCaskill (MO) Patty Murray (WA) Jeanne Shaheen (NH) Mark Warner (VA) Ron Wyden (OR)
This means that tomorrow fast track will pass the Senate. We will see whether the TAA gets added.

Also want to add up top comments by Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders at the end of the debate:

Sherrod Brown: this is a celebration in corporate suites.

Bernie!!! This trade agreement was supported by virtually every big corporation, Wall Street, by the pharmaceutical industry. This agreement was opposed by every union. This will continue the policy of NAFTA,CAFTA. We need a policy that represents working people. It’s a great day for the Big Money interests.

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Tomorrow, the Senate will take a new vote on fast track. It will be a cloture vote on whether to proceed to consider a “clean” fast track bill, given the (positive-result) clusterfuck that took place in the House. Though one can imagine scenarios under which fast track can be defeated even if the cloture vote wins, it’s a lot harder.

So, this is a moment of truth. I’ll break it down into three parts.

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This is a bad state of affairs, if you are a regular worker (meaning, not someone worth millions of dollars who complains that her family is dead broke). Whether fast track becomes law may depend on the votes of 14 Senate Democrats–the very Democrats who abandoned workers just last month when the Senate passed fast track with the Trade Adjustment Assistance program attached.

Now, it’s game on again. Workers lives depend on 14 Senate Democrats who voted, in the last fast track vote,with Republicans to destroy middle class jobs.

That vote is coming again next week on a cloture vote.

And now this an easy question: Will Hillary Clinton call for the defeat of the cloture motion next week? That question needs to be asked every single day next week.

She is the one who can make a difference with a huge number of those 14 Senate Democrats.

If she stays silent, that will be a clear answer of what she believes.

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Today was a teachable moment (beyond the horrific, racist shooting in Charleston). Sometimes you have two moments that appear together and need to be connected. As I sat out West (on the road for work), it became clear that what the Pope had to say about climate change and the desperate attempts by the president to ram through fast track are deeply connected.

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You know, those fast track obsessed people seem in a big rush to make happen this bad brew of trade and corporate annihilation of decent wages. They aren’t giving up.

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It’s been amusing, sort of, to watch the corporate roaches scurrying about, looking here and there for an opening to try to revive the odious fast track legislation.

But, putting aside what we know already, there are two important lessons to learn:

1. We always need to call out phony arguments, like “burial insurance”, that politicians want to use to cover their asses when the upshot is they are happy to sacrifice workers to keep a bad system in place.

2. Organizing works–and organizing creates movements.

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You could pick a multitude of examples showing the forces on each side of the fast track fight. It’s the voices of workers against the voice of corporations (aided by 28 Democrats who need to face primaries).

Indeed, here is a quote that says it all: the fast track vote is “a victory for those with a narrow agenda that puts petty politics ahead of people, while jeopardizing the futures of millions of men and women in America.”

Oh, the source of that quote, the organization looking out for millions of workers?

It’s not the AFL-CIO.

It’s the National Retail Federation, one of the most anti-union trade organizations in the nation. There, that’s one of your allies, Mr. President.

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You can all go here to look at how this unfolded today in the liveblog. Here now are the names of the votes of the 28 Democrats who voted against workers and in favor of corporate rights. To be clear, without the votes of these 28 Democrats, fast track would have failed. It only passed […]

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Hey, I have to watch this for general work so what the heck…

Setting the stage first (and apologies ahead of time for the typos).

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The vote was close on the rule that allows fast track to proceed to a vote. It would have gone down to defeat.

Except for EIGHT Democrats who sold out seniors (because Republicans are seeking cuts in Medicare as part of this piece of dung), workers and the environment.

Some Democrats are calling the President’s position on workers’ aid attached to fast track (which I call “burial insurance”) like it is: bullshit.

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