Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) (AP Photo)

(CNSNews.com) – Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) described how she was told by a guard to surrender her cell phone and that she could not take notes on the president's trade agreement when she went to read it.



“Let me tell you what you have to do to read this agreement. Follow this: You can only take a few of your staffers who happen to have a security clearance, because – God knows why – this is secure. This is classified. It’s nothing to do with defense,” said Boxer.



“It has nothing to do with going after ISIS. It has nothing to do with any of that, but it is classified,” she added.



“So I go down with my staff that I could get to go with me, and as soon as I get there, the guard says to me, ‘Hand over your electronics. OK. I give over my electronics. Then the guard says, ‘You can’t take notes.’ I said, ‘I cannot take notes?’” said Boxer.







“‘Well, you can take notes, but you have to give them back to me, and I’ll put them in a file,’” the guard said, according to Boxer.



“So I said: ‘Wait a minute. I am going to take notes, then you are going to take my notes away from me? Then you are going to have them in a file, and you can read my notes? Not on your life,’” she said.



“So instead of standing in a corner trying to figure out a way to bring a trade bill to the floor that doesn’t do anything for the middle class, that is held so secretively that you need to go down there and hand over your electronics and give up your right to take notes and bring them back to your office, they ought to come over here and figure out how to help the middle class, how to extend the highway bill, how to raise the minimum wage, how to move toward clean energy, how to fix our currency manipulation that we see abroad,” Boxer said.







Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Wyo.), and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) introduced the bipartisan bill on April 16, 2015, which “establishes concrete rules for international trade negotiations to help the United States deliver strong, high-standard trade agreements that will boost American exports and create new economic opportunities and better jobs” for U.S. workers, manufacturers, farmers, ranchers and entrepreneurs, according to a Senate Finance Committee press release.



The bill outlines negotiating objectives that the administration “must follow when entering into and conducting trade talks with foreign countries while also increasing transparency by requiring that Congress have access to important information surrounding pending trade deals and that the public receive detailed updates and see the full details of trade agreements well before they are signed,” it stated.



“When the trade agreement meets the United States’ objectives and Congress is sufficiently consulted, the legislation allows for trade deals to be submitted to Congress for an up-or-down vote, an incentive for negotiation nations to put their best offer forward for any deal,” it added. “At the same time, the bill creates a new mechanism to withdraw TPA procedures and hold the administration accountable should it fail to meet the requirements of TPA.”



Trade promotion authority (TPA) must be approved before other countries involved in talks will agree to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership.



TPA “is an important step toward finalizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership – the most progressive trade agreement in our history, which levels the playing field” for U.S. workers and institutes “new, high standards environmental, labor, and human rights protections,” an administration official told CNN.



Senate Democrats on Tuesday defeated the trade promotion authority bill. House Speaker John Boehner expressed optimism Wednesday that the bill would pass.



Calling it “a bump in the road,” Boehner said, “At the end of the day, I think there is a majority in the House and Senate for giving the president trade promotion authority.”



