McConnell: We can beat Warren on trade

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday expressed confidence that supporters of trade legislation will prevail over Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a vocal liberal opponent.

Asked by John Harwood on CNBC’s “Speakeasy” whether the GOP leader can “beat” Warren’s attempt to stop the trade legislation, the Kentucky Republican replied in the affirmative.

“Yeah, I think we can,” McConnell said.

{mosads}Warren has proven a tenacious foe against the White House’s efforts to convince Democrats to back trade promotion authority (TPA), also known as fast-track.

“I think she’s a very effective spokesman for a very far left position,” McConnell said.

The liberal senator is focusing her attacks on problems she sees lurking within the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), especially provisions she argues would undermine U.S. financial law.  

Her efforts have led to a personal and public feud with the president, who has harshly criticized her campaign against the trade deal.

“On most issues, she and I deeply agree,” Obama told Yahoo News during a visit to Nike’s headquarters in Oregon last week. “On this one, though, her arguments don’t stand the test of fact and scrutiny.”

McConnell praised the president for taking on his opponents amid a division among congressional Democrats.  

“Look, I want to compliment the president [for] the way he took on the base, his own base last week,” McConnell said. “He took on Elizabeth Warren. He took on the labor unions.”

Warren, who is leading a charge from liberal Democrats to stop the trade agenda, shot back that she has three objections to moving forward on trade.

“The first is that the president is asking us to vote to grease the skids on a trade deal that has largely been negotiated but that is still held in secret,” she said in a Tuesday interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

Second, she argued that under the TPP, global corporations will be allowed to sue countries for regulations they don’t like and those decisions will be made outside of the courts.

“The third problem is that he wants us to vote on a six-year, grease-the-skids deal,” Warren said.

McConnell put the spotlight on the division between the White House and liberal congressional Democrats with a view toward the 2016 presidential race.

“This debate comes at an interesting time when these divisions on the Democratic side are so obvious,” McConnell said.

“You’ve got the energy of the Elizabeth Warren faction kinda driving the agenda, pulling Hillary Clinton further to the left, which, by the way, I think is useful for us in the general election next year,” he said.

Clinton is the Democratic front-runner in the presidential race, and Warren has consistently said she will not run in 2016.

“The biggest divisions these days are not among Republicans but among Democrats,” he said.