Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has refused to stand behind President Obama’s “plans to pursue trade agreements in 2015, one of the few points of bipartisan interest from his State of the Union address earlier this week.” Yahoo News,
In his first public appearance with reporters since injuring himself in early January, Reid reiterated his previous skepticism of giving the president carte-blanche authority to broker international trade agreements without congressional amendment, a process known as fast-tracking.
“I don’t support fast-track,” Reid said. “Until it’s shown to me that trade agreements support the middle class, I’m not going to be jumping on the bandwagon.”
That Democrats are hesitant about such deals is not new. Yet Reid publicly restating his opposition days after Obama’s annual policy address and weeks into the Democrats’ new position as the minority party in the Senate highlights the divisions between the White House and Hill Democrats on fundamental policy issues as Obama plots out his final two years in office.
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