[PEN-L:397] 'Fast Track' Rides Back on Africa Bill (fwd)

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Washington Post				Wednesday, July 22, 1998; Page A04

'Fast Track' Rides Back on Africa Bill

	By Guy Gugliotta

A Senate committee passed controversial "fast-track" trade legislation
yesterday, raising the possibility that President Clinton and congressional
Democrats could relive one of their most embarrassing legislative moments
on the eve of Election Day.

Clinton, an exuberant champion of fast track in 1997, has muted his
support for it this year to avoid a showdown with House Democrats and
their anti-fast-track allies in organized labor.

But the Senate Finance Committee trumped Clinton yesterday by attaching
fast track to a popular trade initiative for Africa. Senate sources said
Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) probably would bring the bill to the
floor in September with the congressional election campaign in high gear.

"The majority of the House and the Senate, I think, are inclined to want
fast track, but it's going to take a lot of leadership from the president,"
Lott
told reporters. "The president says he's for fast track, but 'Oh, gee, we just
can't do it in the House.' "

White House spokesman Michael McCurry branded the Senate Finance
Committee action as "more political mischief than commitment to free
trade," and, when asked whether it made Democrats uncomfortable, said
"you could easily surmise that, couldn't you?"

Congress has granted every president since Gerald R. Ford fast-track
authority to negotiate complex trade agreements and accompanying
legislation and send it to the House and Senate to be approved or
disapproved without amendment.

Last year, Clinton made common cause with House Speaker Newt
Gingrich (R-Ga.) in seeking fast-track authority over the opposition of the
majority of House Democrats. Gingrich withdrew the bill when it was clear
it would not pass.

Fast track appeared to have died, but Senate Finance Committee
Chairman William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.) bundled it together with several
other trade measures and hooked it to the House-passed Africa bill
yesterday. Trade bills cannot originate in the Senate, but may be amended
there.

"We have had a few signals in the last week that the president is becoming
anti-fast-track," said senior Finance Committee member Sen. Charles E.
Grassley (R-Iowa). "It's going to have to be done by Congress and not by
the president."

The bill passed the committee by an 11-1 vote, underlining how much
more popular fast track is in the free-trading Senate than in the House,
where lawmakers' constituents blame international trade agreements for
local job losses. Organized labor is both fast track's fiercest opponent and
the largest campaign contributor for Democratic House members.

Grassley suggested that packaging fast track with the Africa trade
measure, championed by members of the mostly Democratic Black
Caucus, might sweeten the bill enough to pass the House, but Sen. Max
Baucus (Mont.), a Democratic supporter of fast track, had misgivings.

"It sends a lot of mixed signals," Baucus said. "That may make it difficult to
pass, and that would be unfortunate. Fast track can be passed and
supported strongly by both parties if it is done in a thoughtful way."

Few of fast-track's opponents agreed. "Putting fast track on the legislation
is a sure way to slow the Senate down," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan
(D-N.D.). "It's like putting earrings on a hog." He vowed to use every
available procedural trick to stall the bill in the Senate.

And in the House, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), one of fast track's most
fervent opponents, dismissed yesterday's action as "the Republicans' effort
to divide and conquer," and predicted it wouldn't work: "I say bring it on,"
she said. "We can't wait to defeat it."




--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx