meet with house democrats to discuss it. do you know what this is all about? this is all about president obama knowing he does not have the votes and does not have the support. this is your last will have minute arm twisting and deal cutting to try to get him fast-track authority. what this meeting signals is that the president is nervous about his own party, and he knows he can t get this through, and he really wants it. other countries are waiting for this to happen. i m joined by the congressman from wisconsin. also with us tonight, larry cohen, president and communication workers of america. congressman, is this last-minute sell job by the president, because he knows he doesn t have the votes? well he efinally communicating with congress. we ve been complaining we don t know what s in this law. only about 600 people largely corporate cos have been involved in the drafting and yet we re supposed to give up our constitutional responsibility to have oversight over this.
to be a catastrophic deal catastrophic for israel and the united states and the middle east. if we re wrong, if we re all paranoid and fearwhy not address the dissenters? why not speak to the republican party? speak to the democrats like senator menendez, who are totally aopposed to the deal. the senate is saying we just want to pass a bill that will allow us to ratify this as a popular treaty. there s no backing down by the people who believe the letter was the right thing to do. thank you. coming up, a call to put infrastructure before trade. my blood pressure is going up again. the communication workers of
outsource production to countries using unfair trade practices. the tpp what does it do? it threats u.s. wages. the tpp would undermine environmental protections and the food safety standards and the buy american act could be gutted by the tpp. it would undermine wall street and reform by allowing corporations to skirt regulations put in place to avert another financial crisis. what don t we get about this? bottom line the tpp is a test. the elected officials have decided are going to have to decide which side they re going to be on and who they are looking out for. joining me tonight, congresswoman from illinois and president of the communication workers of america. both of you have done yeoman s works happy new year. thank you. both of you have done
find out why workers voted against their own best interests. larry cohen, president of the communication workers of america join us tonight to talk about this. larry, great to have you back with us. thanks so much. you know, if it goes unchallenged, this will be the template and it will set a standard of how elected officials can inject themselves into a process. this is a new level of union busting that we have never seen. so from that standpoint, how important is this inquiry. is it a good step? . it it s a critical step. yes, they re taking us back before 1935 when there were no laws, when elected officials did do things like this. and the documents surfaced showing that the governor said to volkswagen directly that there would be state incentives if the labor relations in the plant were satisfactory to the state of tennessee, not to the workers in the plant. and so we have a situation where
worldwide. global economy will move forward with us or without us. u.s. is not in the vanguard of pursuing new agreements, we risk falling behind other countries that are pursuing other agreements of their own. we also surrender the opportunity to negotiate new rules to address trade barriers and issues that did not exist previously. i say stop worrying about what the rest of the world is doing. start thinking about american jobs. free-trade agreements have devastated local communities in the united states. cwa president larry cohen made that clear at today s hearing. we must document the like lynette effect on employment. these micro examples are wonderful and we applaud them, but what is the net effect? what has the net effect been of 20 years of these trade deals? what has happened to our jobs, our communities? the north philadelphia that i grew up in? the dlooefld i can picture right now? devastation throughout those communities. nowhere near the replacement in jobs for the mor