Nancy Pelosi pulls a fast one on the Bush administration.
The House adopted a rules change Thursday that freezes the Colombia free trade agreement by waiving a requirement that Congress act on it within 90 days. The rule passed mostly along party lines by a vote of 224-195 with one lawmaker voting present.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Congress and the White House must first enact policies to help the faltering U.S. economy before approving the Colombia pact. “We should certainly do more for our economy before we pass another trade agreement,” she said in remarks on the House floor.
Pelosi just changed the Fast Track trade authority rules in the House so that she is under no obligation to put the Colombia trade bill on the calendar. She has many motivations for doing this, but here’s one of them:
…Democrats have argued that President Bush broke years of precedent by submitting the trade agreement to Congress without first receiving approval from House and Senate leaders…
…Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said President Bush “forgot” to consult with his panel before crafting the proposed deal with Colombia. “Let’s give the House more time to facilitate an atmosphere to allow the members [to] know what’s in the bill,” he said.
It’s instructive to look at the ten Democrats that voted against Pelosi:
- Melissa Bean (IL)
Dan Boren (OK)
Allen Boyd (FL)
Jim Cooper (TN)
Robert ‘Bud’ Cramer (AL)
Henry Cuellar (TX)
Baron Hill (IN)
Nick Lampson (TX)
Tim Mahoney (FL)
Jim Matheson (UT)
John Tanner (TN) voted present.
Every one of these Democrats, excepting Tim Mahoney, is a Bush Dog Democrat, meaning that they voted in May 2007 for supplemental war funding with no strings attached and that they voted in August 2007 to give the president unprecedented warrantless wiretapping abilities. Mahoney escaped a designation as a Bush Dog despite capitulating on the war funding because he opposed the NSA power grab.
It’s not clear why the same group of Democrats would be pro-war, pro-Soviet style domestic surveillance, and pro-free trade, but there you have it. Any way you slice it, these are terrible representatives. Rep. Cramer is retiring, and most can argue that they represent conservative districts, but I think it’s worth a phone call to these folks to ask them why they can’t support the Speaker and why they continue to vote like Bush’s lapdogs.
