INTERVIEW: Rep. Phil Hare On the Fight to Stop the NAFTA Expansion

Democrats this week are expected to attempt to ram the Peru Free Trade Agreement through the House, in an inexplicable effort to expand the NAFTA trade model just months after they won Congress promising [1] to reform America's trade policies. The move is causing great consternation among rank-and-file Democrats on Capitol Hill, as the Hill Newspaper [2] reports this morning.

I was in Washington last week and had a chance to sit down and chat with Illinois Rep. Phil Hare (D), who is helping to lead the opposition to the NAFTA expansion. You can listen to excerpts of my interview with Hare here [3].

Hare's candor about his own party and the struggles his western Illinois district is facing provides an important look into the dynamics behind the debate over trade. He expresses deep frustration that his colleagues are pushing the NAFTA expansion even as President Bush threatens to veto a bill [4] to help workers harmed by such trade deals. In other words, the Democrats are going to open up workers to more job-killing, wage-depressing competition even though the president is poised to veto a bill to help those workers with trade adjustment assistance.

Hare says that in swing districts like the one he represents, news of the new Democratic Congress selling out the middle class like this could damage the party politically. That's not really news. As this CNN report [5] last week shows, districts like Hare's have been decimated by America's lobbyist-written trade policy:

Listen to my interview with Hare [3] for an in-depth look into this trade debate and the efforts to prevent the Democratic Party from passing this NAFTA expansion. Then, go over to Public Citizen's website [6] and use their tool to tell your representatives to vote against the upcoming Peru Free Trade Agreement and demand a trade policy that represents the interests of regular people - not just lobbyists.