Fight Over Colombia Trade Intensifies

By RUSSELL BERMAN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 10, 2008

WASHINGTON — The fight between the White House and Congress over a free trade agreement with Colombia is escalating after the House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, said she would seek a rule change eliminating the requirement that lawmakers vote on the deal within 90 legislative days.

The planned move drew an immediate outcry from the Bush administration and congressional Republicans, as the White House press secretary accused the Democratic leadership of trying to "change the rules in the middle of the game."

President Bush's decision on Monday to send the contentious treaty to Congress had angered Mrs. Pelosi and other top Democrats, who said he was breaking with decades of established protocol by forcing a vote on a trade deal without a finalized agreement with congressional leaders. Democrats say they cannot pass the deal without assurances that Colombia will crack down on attacks on labor organizers and an agreement on a separate assistance package for American workers negatively affected by free trade.

Mrs. Pelosi said she had warned the president not to send the agreement to Congress because it would fail, but he ignored her pleas. "The president took his action. I will take mine tomorrow," she said at the Capitol.

Mr. Bush's spokeswoman, Dana Perino, told reporters that the move would set "an awful precedent" and that it "shows that any sense of good faith in our process of negotiating trade has evaporated."

The White House mobilized a half dozen members of the Cabinet to respond to Mrs. Pelosi's move and call on Congress to approve the treaty quickly. Secretary of State Rice warned that a failure to pass the agreement would damage American credibility around the world. "From the perspective of American foreign policy and American interests, there is perhaps no more important free trade agreement in recent memory," she said.

The rule requiring a timely vote on trade deals comes under the president's so-called fast-track authority that expired last year but still applies to the Colombia agreement, which was negotiated in 2006.

The chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem, backed Mrs. Pelosi's decision to hold off a vote, saying that if Congress rejected the treaty as expected, it would be "a total embarrassment to us as a country."