You may not have seen it in your local paper last week*, but on Wednesday Congress finally passed the free trade deals with Colombia, Korea and Panama. These agreements are good news for workers in the United States and workers in each of these countries.
The agreements, especially the one with Colombia, have been hanging around since the George W. Bush administration, but the Democrats, particularly the House Democrats under Nancy Pelosi opposed them and wouldn’t let them come to a vote. Even with the Republicans taking control of the House in January, the bills were still delayed and delayed as the Obama administration, in spite of the President’s alleged support for them, kept finding new reasons to not send the bills to Congress.
The President finally sent the bills to Congress in September, and within a few weeks** the bills passed. Consider the votes in the House and Senate on each of these deals:
Colombia
House 262-167
Republicans 231-9
Democrats 31-158
Senate 66-33
Republicans 44-2
Democrats 22-31
Korea
House 278-151
Republicans 219-21
Democrats 59-130
Senate 83-15
Republicans 45-1
Democrats 38-14
Panama
House 300-128
Republicans 234-6
Democrats 66-123
Senate 77-22
Republicans 46-0
Democrats 31-22
I was glad, and proud, to see the strong support for these bills by Republicans in both houses. And I am glad that President Obama finally sent these deals to Congress in spite of the opposition by congressional Democrats.
One final point: Remember how the “Tea Party” elected in November 2010 were supposed to be ignorant isolationists who didn’t appreciate the United States’ position in the world and how the world economy works. Obviously, it wasn’t true about them.
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* It wasn’t, for example, in the print edition of the Chicago Tribune. It’s good that the Tribune no longer claims to be “The World’s Greatest Newspaper”.
** Update (10/17/11 8:45 am): It was actually within a week.
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