Democratic leader get hypocritical on free trade

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid try to claim the high ground on protecting workers’ jobs.

Reid pontificates:

”I think if you were to date this decline, it would have started in 2001.”

But the story correctly notes it started back in 1993.

Democratic opponents of trade deals cite a trade deficit that has risen from a little more than $100 billion in 1993, when the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada was approved, to more than $700 billion last year.

And the president then was… a Democrat named Bill Clinton… and both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats. Yes, many Democrats initially opposed NAFTA. But, after Clinton gave them assurances about labor and environmental issues that weren’t even worth toilet paper, but were convenient fig leaves to take home at election time, they changed their tunes.

At least Reid didn’t vote for NAFTA. But Pelosi?

The future House Minority Leader voted yes after getting the promise of a Clinton executive order on labor rights and trade sanctions, an order that was never issued. Whether that’s Pelosi being naïve or disingenuous is at least somewhat open for discussion, but I vote for it being primarily the latter.

There’s plenty of additional proof to that. She voted in favor of GATT a year later, then in favor of a bailout for investors in Mexico. And prior to NAFTA, she voted against a resolution disapproving presidential fast-track trade authority, which set the stage for NAFTA and GATT.

Reid, to his credit, opposed both NAFTA and CAFTA.

But Pelosi? The more you read about her, you realize the GOP’s labeling of her as “ultraliberal” is just rhetoric. She’s not ultra-anything.