The Colombian Trade Mess

If you came to Washington in the mid 1980s, as I did, it's hard to believe that politics was once dominated by discussions of El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The capital was consumed with how to defeat Marxist insurgencies in those small, distant countries. President Ronald Reagan even went on television to note that Harlingen, Texas, was just two days driving time from Sandinista insurgents.

Today, of course, Nicaragua and El Salvador get nary a mention in capital conversation.

So it's fairly amazing to me that Washington is getting there once again with a debate over the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. It's not that the pact is unimportant, but with only $18 billion in annual trade between the two countries it's barely going to affect the American economy.

Despite that, in the last few days the Colombia trade pact has come to dominate Washington politics—and that says a lot about both the state of discourse in the capital and why Washington doesn't work.

First, some background: The Bush administration has been pounding out a number of bilateral trade agreements, which it's managed to pass with Democratic support. It's been a quiet success story in an otherwise very troubled administration.

An agreement with Oman, for instance, won approval two years ago. Last year, Congress passed an agreement with Peru. All three presidential candidates supported that measure. A much more important agreement with South Korea is likely to come before Congress in the coming year, but for now the Colombia deal is on the docket.

Under so called "fast track" authority, which Congress granted the president during the Clinton administration, certain trade agreements are sent to Congress under a special set of rules. They can't be amended, and they have to be voted on within 90 working days.

Until now, neither Bush II nor Bill Clinton sent an agreement to Capitol Hill without Congressional leaders telling them to come on ahead.

But this week the Bush administration did something untoward and, I think, unwise. It sent the Colombia agreement to the House without Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional leadership supporting its introduction.

The administration wasn't totally misguided. It figured that, now or never, the bill needed to get done, and now was the time. After all, Colombia, while a small trading partner, is a strategic ally—a major recipient of U.S. aid as it battles a leftist-wacko insurgency called the FARC and right-wing paramilitary squads.

Plus, if you believe in a war on drugs, then Colombia, with its infamous coca crops, is a country you want to keep as an ally. Add in the despotic regime of Hugo Chavez next door in Venezuela threatening war against Colombia earlier this year and you have reason for the administration to want to get this thing passed.

The problem is that it probably could have passed if they'd gotten the Democrats on board for a vote. Now it's going to be a lot tougher, probably impossible. Labor has lined up against the agreement. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama oppose the measure too.

Critics point to the murders of labor leaders in Colombia, and a lack of environmental protections in the accord. But there is enough of a trade consensus in the House and, especially, the Senate, which had always been more amendable to these kinds of deals, to get this passed. Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has been a big trade supporter.

But now we're at an impasse. Pelosi has said that she'll use House rules to keep the vote from coming up, effectively undermining the whole fast-track authority in the first place. That's bad.

Her move could make it hard for future presidents to get trade agreements because fast track has given a president, whether its Bush or Clinton, the ability to tell a trading partner that the deal you get with us won't get fiddled with by Congress. Now that whole regime is in danger, and it may be much harder to get more bilateral deals.

If the Colombia deal goes down, it won't be the end of the world, but it probably should pass. It could be better, and we certainly have the leverage with Bogota to have gotten a better agreement or to get a better one if we have to go back to the drawing board.

But the real problem is what this whole debate symbolizes, beyond trade and even beyond the economy. On an issue of at least some national importance, the two parties and branches of government really can't get things done. There is a fundamental dysfunction to Washington, and the Colombia agreement exemplifies it.

No one group, I think, is entirely to blame. Both Democrats and Republicans have screwed this one up. The whole episode shows that whoever wins the presidency in November—McCain or Obama or Clinton—faces a real challenge here.