Bush Admin. talking to Mexicans about SPP, but not Americans
Bush Admin. talking to Mexicans about SPP, but not Americans
Partial Lou Dobbs Tonight transcript - Feb. 5, 2007
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... dt.01.html
DOBBS: The Bush administration tonight is pushing, rather publicly now, its Security and Prosperity Partnership, a plan to "integrate the economies" of the United States, Mexico, and Canada by the year 2010. You're thinking, you didn't vote for that, your congressman didn't vote for that, your senator didn't vote for that. You're correct.
It is a very ambitious plan for three very different economies and nations. It's moving forward without congressional oversight, in many cases congressional knowledge, and certainly not the approval of the American people. Nor, for that matter, the Canadian people, nor the Mexican people.
Christine Romans has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In Mexico City, from the Bush administration, a rare acknowledgement of concerns about its Security and Prosperity Partnership.
CARLOS GUTIERREZ, COMMERCE SECRETARY: We have three different countries. They are three different sovereign nations. They have their own laws, their own culture, their own history, their own governments. And within that framework we can build a stronger Western Hemisphere without pampering with local and national sovereignty.
ROMANS: The commerce secretary denies an outright plan for a single currency or a European-style American union. Instead the goal is "harmonizing" hundreds of rules and regulations from health care, to trucking, to energy, to cut red tape and make companies more competitive within the three nations.
But critics see stealthy changes taking place deep within government bureaucracies with input from business and academia, but away from lawmakers and voters.
REP. WALTER JONES (R), NORTH CAROLINA: All this is about is about open borders, open borders between Mexico and America, America and Canada. Open borders without any controls, and there's no telling what could happen to this country that would be detrimental to the future of America.
ROMANS: But Gutierrez says security comes first.
GUTIERREZ: The priority must to be keep those out who want to do harm, but to ensure that we can continue the flow of more goods and the flow of job creation across our borders.
ROMANS: Numerous SPP documents reveal a goal of moving people and goods more easily among the three countries.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: According to SPP documents released through Freedom of Information requests, architects of the SPP are aware that they've got a little bit of an image problem.
Congressman Jones says he thinks there's an image problem for a reason. He's written to the White House now twice about detailed questions about the SPP. He says he's been ignored on this.
DOBBS: Well, this White House is ignoring and has ignored Congress in nearly every instance in which it doesn't get a rubber stamp. The idea that Carlos Gutierrez, the commerce secretary, is talking about this in Mexico City and not addressing it publicly before Congress, the fact that all of these things are happening behind closed doors, I mean, why is there not some greater sense of what's going on, on the part of this government?
ROMANS: Congressman Jones points out that there's a Web site at the Commerce Department. He says he doesn't want a Web site. He wants to sit down and find out what this is all about. Trade, these things belong in the arena of Congress. And he'd like it see some oversight there.
DOBBS: I have to say that what we're watching here and what you've reported and all of our colleagues have been reporting on with the so-called North America union, and in a few other quarters, the American people have every reason to be very concerned. The suggestion that these -- these corporate and business elites, and now we can include some of the luminaries of geopolitics, George Schultz and others, meeting on these issues behind closed doors, without the approval or the knowledge the American public is ridiculous.
And we're going to continue to focus on it and get to the bottom of it.
Thank you very much.
Christine Romans.
We invited, by the way, Commerce Secretary Gutierrez to be -- to join us this evening. He wasn't available to join us tonight. We sincerely hope that the commerce secretary will find it convenient to join us here, because I would really like to know, and I'm sure that you would as well, just what in the world the Bush administration thinks it's doing carrying out this kind of policy without the approval of the American people or the United States Congress. There is still that little thing called a Constitution that does affect all of these -- these movements on the part of this government toward a security and prosperity partnership.
