Good news for the registered Socialists who wish President Obama were a little further left on the political spectrum – Sherrod Brown’s got your back.
Sen. Sherrod Brown officially broke with President Barack Obama today on the issue of trade, saying the president “is wrong’’ by supporting free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia.
Though President Obama agrees with Senator Brown that the best way to create jobs is to take a pile of money from job creators and dump it into a special-interest pit, Obama’s belief in big government may have found a limit. Unlike Sherrod Brown, President Obama seems willing to admit the global economy is beyond his control.
The White House says it won’t send the deals to Capitol Hill for approval unless Congress renews a 2009 expansion to the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which retrains workers displaced by trade. President Obama wants $1 billion more.
Ok, the president seems willing to admit the global economy is beyond his control if Republicans will concede to even more deficit spending to benefit the unions. Sadly, this is the sort of little $1,000,000,000 footnote that goes without saying in the Age of Obama.
Sadder still, Sherrod Brown’s fix for American job loss in the union-rigged manufacturing industry is to apply comparable layers of rigging overseas:
Workers and manufacturers have found it increasingly difficult to compete in today’s global markets when the deck is stacked against them because of unfair trading practices. Yet manufacturing has helped to lead us out of past recessions, and must again be an essential part of our economic strategy.
Foreign workers could truly benefit from some of the 19th- and 20th-century rules won by American unions. However, when Sherrod Brown complains of “unfair trading practices” he doesn’t mean basic human rights; he’s promoting the same union demands that ran American manufacturing businesses overseas or into the ground.
Since the reality is that no free country would allow unions to control the price and terms of labor, the AFL-CIO wants protectionist policies so they can keep their racket going here in the States. However he dresses it up in the usual class warfare garb, Brown’s stance is great for the unions but not so good for opening new markets to American products and the job creation that would result.
Even in the face of President Obama’s far-left pandering, Sherrod Brown continues populist posturing against any trade agreement that wasn’t written by the unions. My fellow conservative loons, let’s share a round of applause for Sherrod Brown: with all the odds stacked against him, he has reminded us that President Obama could be more destructive to America’s economy!
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Cross-posted at that hero and Columbus Tea Party.