On a Wednesday press call Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown complained that the Senate leadership is "rushing" through a vote on "fast track" trade promotion authority – a procedure that in essence preapproves trade deals before the public can know what is in them. He said they are limiting the time for discussion and debate of the bill, limiting the number of amendments that can be offered and engaging in the kind of secrecy similar to what the Obama administration is imposing.

If you are following the trade debate over fast track and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), then you know that the votes are being rushed through the Senate with very little debate. Call your senators today and tell them to support critical amendments and to vote against fast track. There is no reason that our Congress should preapprove a massive trade agreement that the public is not allowed to see.

If senators know people are paying attention it makes a difference. The game now is all about pushing fast track through before the public can rally to stop it. That's why the Senate Republican leadership is trying to get the vote done before the Memorial Day recess.

Press Call With Sen. Sherrod Brown

Brown said that the fast track bill is being rushed through in spite of millions of jobs being at stake. According to Brown, the last time fast track authority was voted on, debate was allowed to continue for three weeks, with more than 50 amendments voted on. Everyone got to explore the ramifications in depth, and this process allowed the public to become informed and weigh in.

This time the debate in the Senate is taking place for less than a week with very few amendments allowed. Brown said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is "shutting down amendments" and is rushing this through.

Brown complained about "not following Senate tradition when we used to debate two or three weeks." He speculated that the reason is that senators do not want to hear the opposition when they go home over the Memorial Day weekend. He said that it is not right that Congress should engage in secrecy, like the way the administration is engaging in secrecy over the TPP agreement itself.

“We can’t have trade promotion without trade enforcement,” Brown said. “That’s why we cannot rush through the biggest trade deal in our history by passing fast track authority this week. While I’ll continue fighting to protect American workers and businesses, I’m urging the administration to make the TPP text public. With millions of jobs on the line, members of Congress, the free press and the American people have a right to an open and informed debate.”

This is a rigged process designed to keep the public from learning what is going on and doing anything about it.

It is not yet clear if the Senate will be allowed to vote on these amendments.

I’ve Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is Right to Be Concerned," he writes,

Only portions of the text have been provided, to be read under the watchful eye of a USTR [U.S. Trade Representative] official. Access, up until recently, was provided on secure web sites. But the government-run website does not contain the most-up-to-date information for cleared advisors. To get that information, we have to travel to certain government facilities and sign in to read the materials. Even then, the administration determines what we can and cannot review and, often, they provide carefully edited summaries rather than the actual underlying text, which is critical to really understanding the consequences of the agreement.

The agreement is being negotiated in extreme secrecy, by negotiators who by and large come from and/or will go to lucrative corporate positions. Congress and even cleared advisors are having trouble learning what will be in the agreement, but Congress is being pushed to preapprove it with the fast track procedure. Apparently even the fast track procedure is being rushed and rigged.

Call your senators (you can use this OpenCongress tool to get the number) and ask them not to vote to pre-approve the TPP by voting for fast track until We the People know what is in the agreement. Or at least until we know what is in the completed parts of the agreement. Or at the very least not until they have read the agreement themselves with a trade expert at their side explaining what the impact will be on American companies, workers and our economy.
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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary and/or for the Progress Breakfast.