Major newspapers around the country including the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal are urging President-elect Barack Obama to pass the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in the lame duck session. The Los Angeles Times said it bluntly, “It’s time to stop playing games with a trade pact whose economic and political benefits are good for both nations.”

Some reports of the meeting between the president-elect and President Bush said that the president had pushed for the trade agreement in exchange for support of the auto loan package, but that was denied.

CEI has strongly supported the passage of this agreement based on its own merits – it provides surety for continued liberalized trade for Colombia, it opens up Colombian markets to U.S. goods without high tariffs, and it helps cement the close relationship with a Latin American ally besieged by leftist neighboring governments.

Oh, Happy Day! And it certainly is for all those who value freedom, responsibility and the true free market in which individuals are free to profit from their risks on the condition that they don’t stick the rest of us with their losses.

It’s not hyperbole to say the Republican and Democratic backbenchers who defied both parties’ leadership to defeat this $700 billion package of Wall Street socialism literally saved America. Whatever their reasons, this defeat (or rather victory for freedom), means that America is much less likely to turn into France, Venezuela, or the old Soviet Union, as this bailout/nationalization package would have set us on the road to becoming.

Several great speeches on the Right and Left were given. Democrats Brad Sherman of California and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon gave powerful speeches against corporate giveaways. And conservative leaders of the Republican Study Committee — such as Jeb Hensarling, Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, and of course Ron Paul — spoke about how government intervention was largely the cause of this predicament, but the bailout would doom arguments for the free market form here on out. The idea of the government making this kind of outlay to high-flying risk takers just didn’t jibe with members, and certainly not with the American people.

Read the full story