TRADE-U.S.: Clinton Forced to Delay Fast-Track Vote

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 7 1997 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton, faced with steadfast opposition from a vast majority of Democratic lawmakers, has delayed a critical vote on “fast track” which would give him authority to negotiate sweeping new trade agreements with Chile and other countries.

Despite an intense lobbying campaign in the House of representatives, the White House has been unable to win over more than about 40 Democratic representatives to support Clinton’s request for fast-track authority, according to Congressional sources Friday.

Top administration strategists continued consulting with the House Republican leadership, which supports the fast-track bill, over what it will take to bring as many as 170 Republicans to back the president, the sources said.

“The cost is sure to be very high,” said one Capitol Hill aide, who predicted that Clinton may be forced to sacrifice one or more of his top legislative priorities in order to get the Republican backing he needs to win the fast-track vote.

For himself, Clinton denied that he was making any deals. In a public appeal Friday, he warned Washington would lose export markets to its competitors unless fast-track was approved. “It would be a folly to turn back now,” he said.

Fast-track authority gives presidents the power to negotiate new trade accords without worrying that they can be amended by special interests when they are submitted to Congress for ratification. Under fast-track rules, trade agreements are subject only to a yes-or-no vote by both houses of Congress within 60 days of their formal submission.

Congress routinely has granted such authority over the last 20 years, but has failed to give it to Clinton since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect.

Clinton has wanted fast-track authority to negotiate free-trade accords with Chile and eventually the rest of Latin America, as well as trade-liberalisation measures with Asia and in multilateral fora. But he has been caught between conflicting demands of most Democrats that new trade accords include enforceable provisions – namely sanctions – to ensure protection of worker rights and the environment, and most Republicans who contend that labour rights and environmental conditions have no place in trade treaties.

After dithering for three years, Clinton finally bit the bullet in September. He went along with Republican demands that provisions on worker rights and environmental protection be relegated mostly to unenforceable “side-agreements,” as they were in NAFTA, and to the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

As a result, Clinton was abandoned by his own Democratic leadership in the House where Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and Whip David Bonior have campaigned relentlessly against what they call “the Republican fast-track” bill.

The arithmetic is simple. With the Senate virtually certain to approve fast-track, Clinton must get 218 ‘yes’ votes in the House to prevail in the 435-seat chamber. The Republican leadership has so far agreed to line up as many as 155 of its almost 230 members. But if that is all the Republicans can muster, Clinton must persuade at least 63 of 206 Democrats to go along.

According to most vote-counters, however, he has so far fallen significantly short of that goal. Administration and Congressional sources say they count barely more than 40 Democrats with the president – leaving a gap of about 20 votes to ensure passage.

The focus now is on how Clinton can get those missing votes – possibly even as early as Saturday.

Earlier this week, the White House unveiled a new package of measures designed to lure shaky Democrats. It included expanding retraining programmes for workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition; intensifying efforts at the World Bank and the Inter- American Development Bank to better promote worker rights and environmental protections, and working in the WTO to open its arbitration panels to public scrutiny and permit activist groups to submit briefs.

While the new package was successful in getting Senate Minority Leader Tim Daschle to commit himself to voting for fast-track, it fell flat in the House where labour and environmental opponents stepped up their lobbying.

As a result, Clinton is now focusing on bringing individual Democrats along by offering them support on measures designed to appeal directly to their constituencies, such as special environmental projects or specific protections for industries located in their districts.

Most of the speculation about a Clinton surrender centres on a 13-billion-dollar foreign aid bill that has been stuck for weeks in a House-Senate conference committee. A majority of Republicans want the bill to include a ban on giving any US aid to population groups abroad who use or publicly advocate the use of abortions in their family-planning programmes.

Clinton has repeatedly vowed to veto any measure that includes such a provision, but some lawmakers believe he may cave in on the issue if he can get another 15 or 20 Republicans to vote for fast- track.

Other Clinton promises which could be sacrificed to his fast- track drive include reforms in education and the census that would favour racial and ethnic minorities.

Referring to reports of negotiations over these issues, Gephardt reacted strongly Friday. “This fast track is bad enough,” he said. “The president should publicly stand up and say that he won’t trade away core Democratic values for Republican votes.”