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While we were all fascinated today by The Passion Of Big Chicken, not many of us heardthe unmistakable sound of skids being greased.

"The TPA [trade promotion authority] legislation we are introducing today will make sure that these trade deals get done, and get done right," outgoing Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in a joint statement with the bill's co-sponsors, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Finance panel. The bill addresses growing concerns about secrecy in trade negotiations by ensuring all members of Congress have access to negotiating texts and can observe trade talks. Other provisions would aim to increase the transparency of negotiations by requiring the Obama administration to consult more with Congress and share more information with the public and advisory committees.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a million-ton dunghammer aimed at what's left of the American middle-class, the dwindling numbers of which ought to be able by now to recognize the taste of "free-trade" snake oil when it's fed to them. This bill is the worst kind of Beltway Potemkin transparency. It seeks to guarantee that the debate is carefully circumscribed within the parameters in which the Serious People feel most comfortable -- one in which a goody-bag for corporate interest supported by Orrin Hatch and Max Baucus is considered to be a "bipartisan" triumph -- and making sure that the debate doesn't disturb the horses or interrupt cocktails on the veranda.

The bill would allow Obama to submit trade deals to Congress for straight up-or-down votes without any amendments and lays out negotiating objectives for the agreements in such areas as currency, digital trade, state-owned enterprises, investment, labor, the environment, agriculture, services, intellectual property and trade remedies. The bill would also allow Congress to vote to strip fast-track protections from a trade bill if lawmakers feel negotiating objectives have not been met. The White House needs the legislation for free-trade agreements it is negotiating with 11 Pacific rim countries and the 28 nations of the European Union. Concluding the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership pacts would secure Obama's legacy as a historic trade president. TPP would be the largest U.S. free-trade agreement to date, surpassing the 20-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, and TTIP would be even bigger.

We should all get very, very nervous when our sublet Congress tells us it has our backs on something like this. It is a monstrosity, negotiated in secret, and utterly heedless of labor standards and environmental protections. The president who speaks so eloquently on income inequality wants an easier time passing a trade deal that inevitably will make that inequality worse. In a week where everybody in Washington was talking about poverty, we are asked to take this gigantic job-sucker on faith. Fast track, my elbow. This thing should be debated, ferociously and fully, and with absolute transparency, every subparagraph of it up for argument, for no less than a year. Otherwise, Mr. President, you're going to need a bigger Promise Zone.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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