In 1994, while the campaign was going on, there was a Senate hearing on the G.A.T.T. C-Span televised that hearing. There were law professors from Yale and Harvard talking about the constitutional considerations of the agreement, and though I was not watching that part, one of the senators made the remark that the Harvard professor had opined that the agreement was not constitutional.
There was also a representative from the A.B.A. there to extol the virtues of the agreement. I did see that, and it was my impression that she didn't really believe what she was saying. It was as though she was very nervous about the prospect that someone might hear what she was saying. In any event, she was not convincing, without much consideration for what she was saying.
Ralph Nader was also at the hearing, and he gave a rebuttal to the argument of the A.B.A. In a word, he took that little lady apart by the numbers! I am not normally a Nader fan, but that day he was as good as I ever saw him in expressing his opposition to the plan. I made an outline of the argument he presented for the information of a candidate I was working with who was running for the Third District Congressional seat of Kentucky. Aside from the information about the W.T.O., and the fact that the United States would be just another of the 124 members, with only 1 vote, and no veto power, he spoke of some clauses included in the enabling legislation which I thought at the time had nothing at all to do with our membership in a world trade agreement.
There was a clause he labelled a "sweetheart deal" which gave about $2-billion to a consortium of about 10 newspapers with which they would be able to gain control of a telecommunications system which would be forthcoming in the near future. He also mentioned a clause which would reduce the floor of interest the government could give on savings bonds to under 4%. There was a third clause which would require that every baby born in the United States be assigned a serial number at birth. Using that serial number, the baby could be tracked throughout its life, to be sure it got all its shots, and where it was educated, etc. The lowered interest section was enacted in less than 6 months, and the telecommunications part took a little more than a year. The section on the babies has been enacted too, evidently as apart of another bill.
Exactly why those three provisions were included in the enabling legislation of a trade agreement is unclear. Perhaps there were provisions which benefitted Congressional patrons which we were not supposed to know about. Certainly the first thing which comes to mind when covert dealings are done is that someone is going to be advantaged in a way the public would not be happy to hear about.
But let's go back to the G.A.T.T. The original agreement is 22,000 pages long! Notice something here. This, like NAFTA, was not handled as a treaty. Sometime ago, someone in Congress came up with a term which is like Madison Avenue merchandizing. They started calling an executive agreement a "fast track treaty"; a souped-up term that makes people think a treaty is being ratified, when in truth it is not. A "fast track treaty" is nothing more than an executive agreement. What's the difference?
In the Constitution, a treaty is described as an agreement which may be negotiated by the president or his representatives; it is further negotiable through the advice and consent of the Senate. Then, for it to be ratified, the Senate must approve it by a 2/3 vote. An executive agreement (which is what both NAFTA and the G.A.T.T. are) is also an agreement negotiated by the president, but without the possibility of further amendment by the Congress, and which may only be approved by a straight up or down vote by both chambers, requiring a simple majority for approval. This has been merchandized as a "fast track treaty". It is not any kind of treaty!
If you don't know it already, the first G.A.T.T came along in 1947, just after the end of World War II. It was handled as a treaty, and was not ratified by the Senate. There was much "confusion" by the media as to whether the current agreement is the seventh or eighth in the series. It is the eighth. It is also the first which did not offer the United States the protection of a veto power.
What is a veto power, and what is its value to us? If you are at all familiar with the organization of the United Nations, you know that there is a Security Council, and a General Assembly. All nations are represented in the General Assembly, and no nation has a veto power in it. The Security Council, however, has only 13 members, and five of them are permanent members, each with a veto power. Serious matters of security must go through the Security Council, and any one of those 5 nations can reject action by a single vote. Those nations are the United States, England, France, the Soviet Union, and China. You might be reminded that U.N. action to prevent subversion by the Soviets was vetoed at least 98 times by the Soviet Union in the first decades after the end of World War II. The only reason the U.N. was able to act against the invasion by the North Koreans in 1950 was because the Russians had walked out in a huff, and were not present to veto the action.
In all the previous G.A.T.T. agreements to which we have been involved, we always had the protection of a veto power. Why is that important? Now, we are but 1 of 124 nations who are members of the World Trade Organization, and without a veto power, we have only one vote, just like Cuba, Angola, or Pakistan. We have less than 1% of the "say" about what happens, but we are expected to pay for at least 20% of the costs! Isn't that interesting!
You should also be aware that there is to be a Tribunal within the W.T.O. to which member nations can lodge complaints against other members. This tribunal is to be made up of 3 people selected, not necessarily with consideration of their possible conflict of interest, and those three people may operate entirely in secret. The accused nation is obliged to prove its innocence when facing complaints by other members, which is contrary to our practice of the accused being innocent until proven guilty.
What happens if a nation brings charges against another? The accused nation is guilty until it proves itself innocent. The Tribunal conducts its investigation in secret. If the Tribunal finds against the accused nation, that nation must obey the ruling of the Tribunal, or pay a fine which may be levied by the Tribunal until the accused nation complies, or the accused nation must "harmonize" its laws and/or standards with the rules of the W.T.O., which would result in the loss of sovereignty by the accused nation. There is no appeal!
The enabling legislation which was considered by our Congress was more than 1,400 pages long. Many members of Congress did not even read the legislation before they approved it! The House reduced the time for debate from 20 hours to only 3! After the elections of 1994, there was a "lame-duck" session of Congress to act on this legislation. They met the 30th of November, and the 1st of December. That meant that 92 members who would not be in the Congress in the following term were allowed to vote on it! And the newly elected members, considered a "revolution" in the majority, were not allowed to vote on the legislation! Why the sense of urgency? No one seems to know, because we didn't have to make a decision of any kind until June, 1995. If you "understand" what was going on, you will realize that had they waited until the new Congress was seated, the measure might not have passed!
There have already been several complaints lodged against the United States in the Tribunal. It is interesting that one of the complaints involved Japan, and we had a complaint against them on the same subject. Both our nations settled the complaint outside the W.T.O., and we were chastised for not honoring the decisions of the Tribunal! It is also interesting that the W.T.O. ordered the United States to cease its trade embargo against Cuba! And we have no means to counter the order, except to ignore it, and the fine that goes with our inattention to the order.
The most objectionable thing about this whole matter is that the American public is not sufficiently well informed about what is going on. All we know is that we have lost more than 3.5 million jobs over the last 15 years or so, and our average take-home pay has been reduced from about $320 a week to about $215 in the same period. There is supposed to be an escape clause in our agreement, but our representation in Congress has not seen fit to use it. The plain fact is both the major parties are working together on this matter, and it is not to the advantage of the American people! The obvious answer to that is find some new faces to represent us in Congress...preferably from some other party!