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December 5, 2001
Where
are all those strict-constructionist Republicans who've been complaining
about activist judges who don't respect the fact that the U.S. Constitution
gives "all legislative powers" to the Congress? Don't those
Republicans realize that it is just as unconstitutional to transfer
legislative powers to the executive branch?
When it comes to
legislative powers over trade matters, the U.S. Constitution is precise.
Article I, Section 8, expressly grants Congress the sole power "to
regulate commerce with foreign nations" and "to lay and collect
taxes, duties, imposts, and excises."
The Bush Administration
and some Republicans are trying to pass Fast Track, a bill to
unconstitutionally transfer those commerce powers to the executive branch.
Fast track would give the President and his appointees a blank check to
make trade deals with foreign countries.
This isn't the first
time that misguided Republicans tried to do an end-run around the
Constitution by unconstitutionally transferring power to the President.
During the 1980s and 1990s, we had to endure the persistent efforts of some
Republicans to impose the Line Item Veto, which was patently unconstitutional,
and the U.S. Supreme Court finally so ruled on June 25, 1998.
Newt Gingrich made the
Line Item Veto a hallmark of the Contract With America and, for years, the
Gingrich Republicans tried to make it a litmus test for fiscal
conservatism. There was just one little problem: it was unconstitutional
because it transferred to the President the power to change laws that
Congress had passed.
In the hope of
concealing the shady procedure of Fast Track, the Bush Administration has
given Fast Track a sweeter-smelling name: Trade Promotion Authority. But
Fast Track is exactly what this bill should be called because it will rush
executive-branch agreements through Congress with mandatory deadlines,
severely limited debate, no amendments allowed, only the chance to vote aye
or nay, and rigging the process to evade the two-thirds treaty requirement
in the Senate.
It's one thing for the
President to push his agenda. But it's unfortunate that he has resorted to
name-calling of those who disagree, as he did when he labeled them
"isolationists" at his June 20 meeting with the Business
Roundtable.
No doubt the managers
of Fast Track in Congress will sanctimoniously use such arguments as
"Don't you trust our President?" The response should be, Yes, we
trust him to do what he said he would do, and he said his high priority
under Fast Track will be to implement the Free Trade Area of the Americas
Agreement, which would extend NAFTA to cover 34 Latin American countries.
When Bush signed the
Declaration of Quebec City on April 22, he gave a "commitment to
hemispheric integration and national and collective responsibility for
improving the economic well-being and security of our people." It is
clear that "our people" means all the people of the Western Hemisphere.
Bush pledged that the
United States will "build a hemispheric family on the basis of a more
just and democratic international order." He agreed to "the
promotion of a Connectivity Agenda for the Americas (to) facilitate the
beneficial integration of the hemisphere."
The Quebec Declaration
is filled with United Nations doubletalk such as "sustainable
development," "interdependent," "realization of human
potential," "civil society," "international
organizations," "reducing poverty," and "greater
economic integration."
The media have never
reported any public opinion polls on whether the American people want to be
"integrated" with third-world, low-wage Latin American countries.
The media don't ask questions when they don't want to report the answers.
Do we want to "integrate"
our economies and currencies with Latin American countries, or assume the
"national responsibility" to improve their "economic
well-being"? Do we think that joining "a hemispheric family"
with countries that do not respect the Rule of Law will give us "a
more just and democratic international order"?
Even though Fast Track
has not been voted on yet, the Bush Administration is behaving as though it
has. Bush's U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick just met in Qatar
with 142 World Trade Organization countries, where he agreed to submit the
United States to international rules to invalidate our anti-dumping laws
that protect our industries against foreign governments dumping their goods
on us at unfairly low prices.
An earlier version of
Fast Track was in effect when Bill Clinton rammed NAFTA and GATT through
Congress in 1993 and 1994. Hidden in the 22,000-page GATT was the 14-page
charter putting us in the World Trade Organization, where we have one vote,
the European Union 15 votes, and the Third World 80 votes.
Fast Track advocates
are mute about the failure of NAFTA and GATT to live up to their rosy
predictions. To most Americans, the most visible result is the current plan
to flood our highways with Mexican trucks that haven't passed U.S.
inspection for safety and insurance.
It would be a
constitutional travesty for Congress to surrender what one federal court
called "the unmistakably legislative power" to impose, modify, or
continue tariffs and import restrictions. Fast track violates our
separation of powers, diminishes American sovereignty, and infringes on the
rights of Americans to engage in the trade of our choice.
Phyllis Schlafly column
12-05-01
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