Sen. Bernie Sanders is pushing to ensure that the Democratic Party rejects the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal as part of the platform that will be sent to the national convention on Friday.
Jim Hightower, Sanders’ delegate at the party-drafting meeting in Orlando, Fla., plans to offer an amendment changing the current wording of the platform. In the current iteration, the Democratic Party doesn’t take a clear stance on TPP as it states, “there are a diversity of views in the party” about the 12-nation trade deal.
The Sanders campaign and Hightower hope to change this to read, “It is the policy of the Democratic Party that the Trans-Pacific Partnership must not get a vote in this Congress or in future sessions of Congress.”
Ahead of the Orlando meeting, more than 700,000 people signed petitions for the party to go on record opposing any vote on TPP after the November election. The Sanders campaign also pointed out that 83 percent of Democratic congressmen voted against giving President Obama fast-track authority, which would help the trade deal, last year.
“The overwhelming majority of Democrats are strongly opposed to this disastrous trade agreement,” Sanders said Thursday. “If both Secretary Clinton and I agree that the TPP should not get to the floor of Congress this year, it’s hard to understand why this amendment would not be overwhelmingly passed.”
Sanders’ representatives on the platform drafting committee also hope to change the platform to include a $15 minimum wage for all workers, a national moratorium on fracking, increased paid family and medical leave, and a carbon tax, among other issues.
Although Clinton secured the Democratic nomination in early June, Sanders said he wouldn’t endorse the former secretary of state until his progressive policies were reflected in the Democratic Party’s platform. Although the first draft of the platform did not include many of his ideas, Clinton amended her higher education plan on Wednesday to include some of Sanders’ ideas. The two Democrats are expected to appear at a joint campaign rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday, where Sanders will officially endorse Clinton.
