Politics

Fast-Track Sidetracked

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

July 23, 2001 / 12:37 PM EDT / CBS

In a setback for the Bush administration, House Republican leaders said Tuesday they did not have enough votes to give President Bush the authority to negotiate broad new trade agreements and planned to delay debate until September or later.

"The long and short of it is we don't have enough Democratic votes," House Republican leader Dick Armey of Texas told reporters, announcing the delay.

The Republican leadership had previously hoped to hold a House vote on so-called trade promotion authority by Friday, when Congress adjourns for a month-long August recess.

Under the legislation, also known as "fast track," Congress gives up its right to amend trade agreements negotiated by the executive branch and agrees instead to vote only to approve or reject the overall pacts.

Between 1974 and 1994, every president had fast-track authority. After that authority expired in 1994, President Clinton failed twice, in 1997 and 1998, to get a Republican-controlled Congress to renew it.

The White House is making a major push for regaining the authority, setting up a command center coordinating trade efforts among seven Cabinet agencies and administration officials who lobby lawmakers, creating a new Web site and preparing five-inch-thick binders for lawmakers.

The 107th Congress: learn more.

Officials also believe "fast-track" trade authority would boost Mr. Bush's standing as a world leader. Also, they argue, the authority would aid the economy by lifting tariffs that discourage other countries from buying American goods and services.

The administration contends that other nations are advancing trade pacts far more quickly than the United States is. Of the roughly 130 free-trade compacts among nations, the United States belongs to only two, another document says. The European Union has free-trade pacts with 27 countries, and 15 more are in the works, it says.

Mr. Bush and Republicans want a bill that allows the president to negotiate a free trade zone throughout the Western Hemisphere or a new round of World Trade Organization talks. Mr. Bush believes environmental and labor protections are important but should be dealt with outside the trade regime.

A House GOP bill, sponsored by Ways and Means trade subcommittee chairman Philip Crane, R-Ill., does not mention labor or environmental standards.

Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat whose committee will handle the legislation, made clear Wednesday the authority must come with a requirement that countries not lower labor or environmental standards to gain a trade advantage.

He said he would create a new body of congressional trade advisers that would be allowed to sit in on all negotiating sessions and vote on whether the president met the criteria for getting fast-track authority.

The Bush administration is trying to defuse citicism that sweeping trade authority would simply help Mr. Bush's business allies at the expense of environmental and worker protections. Getting across the idea that trade could have far-reaching benefits is a major focus of the White House campaign.

It is also targeting four groups of Americans in particular it says would benefit: Hispanics, high-tech workers, ranchers and farmers and women.

A document aimed at women says women-owned small businesses employ millions of workers and are starting up at twice the rate of male-owned businesses. Some 40 percent of American private agricultural land is solely owned by women, the paper says.