Senator to Obama: Justify Keeping Trade Deal Secret

As it becomes apparent that most members of Congress haven’t even read the draft of a trade deal criticized by opponents as a monumental surrender of U.S. sovereignty, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is demanding President Obama explain the legal basis for not releasing the text to the public.

In a letter to Obama delivered Friday, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest noted the president is asking for “fast-track executive authority” to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement and other trade deals. Trade Promotion Authority, Sessions reminded Obama, would take away the most basic congressional powers, including the power to write, amend and fully consider legislation on the floor.

Contending the TPP is more a treaty than a trade deal – creating a “nascent European Union” – the implications are “extraordinary,” Sessions said.

They “ought to be discussed in full, in public,” he said, “before Congress even contemplates fast-tracking its creation and pre-surrendering its power to apply the constitutional two-thirds treaty vote.”

Ratifying a treaty requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. With fast-track authority, an agreement like the TPP could be passed with only a majority vote of both the Senate and the House, and no amendments would be allowed.

“I would therefore ask that you provide to me the legal and constitutional basis for keeping this information from the public and explain why I cannot share the details of what I have read with the American people,” Sessions wrote in his letter, which was first published by Breitbart News.

Sessions spokesman Stephen Miller told WND that granting fast-track trade authority would give Obama extraordinary powers the senator believes would be detrimental to the nation.

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