Elizabeth Warren: Let people see trade deal ‘before we have to grease the skids’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is calling on President Obama to make a proposed trade deal with Pacific Rim nations public before Congress decides whether to press forward on it.

Ms. Warren said members of Congress can read the deal but “aren’t allowed to talk about it.”

“So now it’s the case that the president says that he wants the American people to judge this deal based on the facts, but to do that, he’s got to make the deal public,” Ms. Warren said this week on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” “Otherwise, the American people can’t judge it on the facts — [you] won’t put the facts out there.”

“If it’s a great deal for families, like the president says, or a great deal for workers, then put it out there and let ’em see it before we have to grease the skids to get the deal done,” she said.

Ms. Maddow pointed out that administration has said there will be a public comment period on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and that the public will be able to see it online.

But Ms. Warren said they’re “asking us to vote now on greasing the skids so that we give up now any chance to be able to block it, any chance to be able to slow it down — give all that up, and then you’ll get to see the deal on the other side.”

“I just don’t think that’s reasonable,” she said.

This week, House and Senate committees signed off on bills that would give the president so-called “trade promotion authority” on the deal that would give Congress an up or down vote on it without an ability to amend it — an issue that has revealed sharp divides in the Democratic party.

Mr. Obama, speaking at an Organizing for Action summit Thursday, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership “the most progressive trade agreement in our history.”

“So when people say that this trade deal is bad for working families, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said.

But liberals like Ms. Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont Independent, have remained opposed.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is considering a 2016 run for president on the Democratic side, has also come out against the deal, while Democratic frontrunner and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was noncommittal on the campaign trail in New Hampshire this week.

“Well, any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters. “We have to do our part in making sure we have the capabilities and the skills to be competitive.”