Washington Insider-- Tuesday

Evaluating Shadows and Tea Leaves

Here's a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN's well-placed observer.

USTR to Make Additional TPP Documents Available to Congress

Responding to complaints that the administration has not been providing Congress with an adequate amount of detailed information regarding the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has announced several new transparency measures.

According to Froman, members of Congress now will have greater access to the full TPP negotiating text in the congressional security office. Previously, the full text was available for all members to review upon request. The changes will allow members to review the text at their convenience, without administration officials being present, a senior administration official told the press. In addition, members will be allowed to bring a member of their personal staff (provided that staffer has the appropriate security clearance) to join them when they review text. Previously, members could have only committee staff with them.

TPP texts are classified as confidential because they are working documents of sensitive, ongoing international negotiations where trading partners have an expectation of confidentiality. Some have questioned whether members of Congress and staffers will abide by the "Confidential" classification. Others, however, say that it is difficult to imagine that any member would put his or her personal political ambitions ahead of the national interest by revealing sensitive negotiating details that could upend proposed trade agreements.

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WTO Agriculture Meeting Focuses on U.S., Chinese Farm Policies

Last week's meetings of the World Trade Organization's Agriculture Committee focused quite a bit of attention on the steps that China and the United States might be willing to take to reduce their farm subsidies, steps that are believed to be necessary to conclude the Doha Round's agricultural agenda.

China continues to support formulas for reducing trade-distorting measures that were drafted in 2008. It says that any country that opposes that draft should specifically identify the text's weaknesses rather than try to adopt an entirely new proposal.

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For its part, the United States maintains that certain emerging economies — such as India and China — should contribute to subsidy reduction in a way that reflects the realities of their current trade policies, not those of 2008.

It is important to note that the United States has not yet indicated to WTO members how it plans to modify its current agricultural policies to advance the agricultural talks. Unless and until that happens, many nations will be reluctant to put their offers on the table for discussion.

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Washington Insider: Evaluating Shadows and Tea Leaves

It seems the press sees the current Congress has an enormously fertile ground for conflict, especially fights concerning budget arcana that include plenty of details that most people don’t understand. Especially interesting are reports that hope to indicate future directions for some aspect of the government.

The publication Congressional Quarterly is telling its readers that it is modestly important to follow appropriations subcommittee deliberations, even though there are many of them. CQ says these sessions are supposed to be “pure fact-finding” but in reality are about ways the “now all-Republican Congress” can make detailed decisions “contradicting the spending President Barack Obama wants.”

In this environment, CQ thinks, one issue to watch is the training model of the White House requested by the Secret Service. It would cost about $8 million and would be used to better train agents and officers in presidential protection. If Congress provides the money, CQ sees that as a signal of bipartisan belief the agency is getting its act together — and that the GOP is resisting the temptation of making granular spending cuts based on headline-grabbing appeal.

So, CQ says “the project doesn't stand a great chance of surviving.” That, it concludes, is only partly because there is bipartisan agreement in Congress about the poor performance of the Secret Service. “Mainly, it's because Republicans are itching to poke at Obama almost every chance they get and the training “mockup” may prove a target that Congress finds “impossible to resist.”

This is a frequent practice, CQ says, and often includes “relatively small-beer items that pack a decent symbolic punch.” When such a program or project gets targeted, its merits quickly become beside the point.

So now — well before the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee releases its draft of legislation to fund that department in FY 2016 — may be the best time to appreciate the arguments in favor of a model White House complex just 20 miles from the real thing. Since the beleaguered Secret Service is pursuing the money with a straight face before already raised eyebrows on the Hill, there may be “merit to the idea.”

In fact, training and then more training is the best way for law enforcement agents get ready for the incredible tensions and minimally predictable situations they must confront — and, the more realistic the simulations, the better. "Right now, we train on a parking lot, basically," Joseph Clancy, the new Secret Service director, said in explaining the proposal to House Appropriations last week. "We put up a makeshift fence and walk off the distance between the fence at the White House and the actual house itself. We don't have the bushes. We don't have the fountains. We don't get a realistic look at the White House."

The proposal would build a full-scale model of the residence, the East and West Wings and the surrounding 18 acres at the Maryland Secret Service Training Center. The design hasn't been made public, but it is expected to include significant amounts of detail. The center’s 500-acre campus abuts the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and already features a model village where agents practice protecting the president in many types of places. Aerial photographs show a pretend strip mall, an urban street-scape that might belong at Universal Studios, a tarmac with mockups of Marine One and the front end of Air Force One, a highway overpass and a tunnel to nowhere — all connected by an elaborate six-mile road network for the practice of defensive driving.

Congress has paid for such facilities in the past, but things may be tighter now. And, even though the budget for the model may survive the subcommittee, where genuine needs generally triumph over political point-making that won't necessarily stop efforts to block it in the full committee, on the House floor and then in the Senate, CQ thinks.

To be fair, Democrats pursued the same sorts of “petty punishments,” CQ points out, including a House vote on cutting off federal funds to pay the utility bills at Dick Cheney’s official residence. The amendment got only 141 votes, but served the political purpose of demonstrating partisan antipathy toward Cheney.

So, it is unclear what this type of analysis actually reveals. We already know about the president’s fights with Congress and fully expect a number of high profile stand-offs in the coming months. And, there are a long list of agricultural items, some popular and some not so much, that could face at least some of the same politicization that seems to be following the Secret Service training model.

The main hope is that the sober analytical approach CQ expects from the subcommittee prevails more often than not, and that the political headline hunting be held to a minimum, Washington Insider believes.


Want to keep up with events in Washington and elsewhere throughout the day? See DTN Top Stories, our frequently updated summary of news developments of interest to producers. You can find DTN Top Stories in DTN Ag News, which is on the Main Menu on classic DTN products and on the News and Analysis Menu of DTN's Professional and Producer products. DTN Top Stories is also on the home page and news home page of online.dtn.com. Subscribers of MyDTN.com should check out the U.S. Ag Policy, U.S. Farm Bill and DTN Ag News sections on their News Homepage.

If you have questions for DTN Washington Insider, please email edit@telventdtn.com

(GH/CZ)

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