House Set to Vote on Removing Fast Track Timetable from Colombia Trade Deal

House Set to Vote on Removing Fast Track Timetable from Colombia Trade Deal

by Mike Hall, Apr 9, 2008

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced that tomorrow the House will vote to lift the 90-day Fast Track time limit for the House to vote on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that President Bush sent to Congress yesterday.

Pelosi said Congress and the president should be focusing their energy on the needs of America’s working families during these precarious economic times, not on the flawed trade deal.  She told reporters she told Bush on Monday that:

we really had to continue our conversation about addressing the economic concerns of America’s working families.

Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

We agree with Speaker Pelosi that Congress must keep a hard focus on the economic crisis facing America’s working families—and certainly before consideration of another flawed trade deal.  We applaud her for taking decisive action to reassert congressional authority over trade.

The AFL-CIO position on the Colombia FTA remains unchanged: The violence, murders, impunity and violations of workers’ rights in Colombia must end. Until and unless the Colombian government achieves sustained results on the ground to that effect, the AFL-CIO will muster all its resources in opposition to this agreement.