"Politics" complicating getting TPP fast track: I'd call it "democracy"

On February 15, the New York Times reported the election year politics were making it all but impossible for President Obama to get "fast track" authority he needs to get the TransPacific Partnership (and likely a similar TransAtlantic deal) through Congress.  Fast track is an agreement in which Congress cedes is authority to amend a trade deal and only allows an up-or-down vote.  It effectively freezes the public out of the process.
 
According to the Times, "Last month, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he had no plans to schedule a vote on trade promotion authority. On Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi told reporters that giving Mr. Obama that authority was “out of the question.”
 
While most of the TPP debate has been around "jobs," the even more dangerous provisions in the deal, which were breezed by in the Times (and almost every other of the news stories on the TPP), that deal with "harmonizing regulations."  These provisions, which are embedded in sections dealing with intellectual property and investor rights, could severely impact a wide range of health and safety, environmental, privacy, and worker rights issues, could form a back door to effectively rolling back these safeguards and would make expanding them more difficult here in the US as well as in other countries.
 
I say, good Senator Reid and Congresswomen Pelosi.  For once, people in Congress are listening to the public rather than the wealthy corporations (including Big Tobacco) who will benefit from the deal.
 
And thanks to all the public interest advocates, including Public Citizen, CPATH, and others, who have been working so hard to keep this secretly-negotiated deal from sliding through.