Skeptical congressional Republicans will pore over a
Trans-Pacific Partnership deal hammered out by the Obama administration — and the "intense scrutiny" could put the brakes on a pact critics have blasted as damaging to American workers, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warns.
"Serious concerns have been raised on a number of key issues," McConnell said in a statement,
The Hill reports. "This deal demands intense scrutiny by Congress and the legislation we passed earlier this year provides us the opportunity to give this agreement that scrutiny."
Congress okayed
fast-track legislation over the summer, giving President Barack Obama one of his top second-term priorities.
The bill allows the TPP to be passed through Congress with a simple up-or-down vote. Lawmakers also aren't able to amend the trade agreements.
But the veteran Kentucky Republican called TPP "potentially one of the most significant … in history," and said lawmakers have to make sure it "meets the high standards Congress and the American people have demanded."
The bill has critics on both sides of the aisle, including Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"Wall Street and other big corporations have won again," the Vermont lawmaker said, according to
The Hill.
"It is time for the rest of us to stop letting multinational corporations rig the system to pad their profits at our expense."
The Hill reports a bill to implement the deal will likely set up a congressional fight for Obama — and that the issue will likely figure prominently in the presidential campaign.
Sanders, who's been edging closer in the polls to front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton, argues the TPP is like previous deals with "Mexico, China and other low-wage countries that have cost millions of jobs and shuttered tens of thousands of factories across the United States."
"In the Senate, I will do all that I can to defeat this agreement," he said.
"We need trade policies that benefit American workers and consumers, not just the CEOs of large multinational corporations."
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