You would think that with Democrats so concerned with the perceptions of the United States by people overseas that they'd try to avoid doing anything to make what they already see as a serious problem by making it worse.

Of course, you would be wrong.

The U.S. has one really good ally in South America, Colombia, and the Democrats have, foolishly, decided to tell them to take a long walk off a short pier.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said House Democrats plan to change the rules on how Congress handles trade agreements to avoid a vote on a controversial free trade pact with Colombia backed by President Bush.

Bush sent the trade agreement to Congress on Tuesday. Under trade-negotiating rules, Congress must vote on the pact within 90 days and cannot make changes to it.

Pelosi, D-California, said House Democrats will remove the timeline requirement.

The move effectively puts off any congressional consideration of the pact.

Some facts, of course, would be in order. From the Wall Street Journal editorial page we find out that the pact would be welcome news for Caterpillar.

Exhibit A are 8,600 jobs at two Caterpillar Inc. factories in Illinois. Caterpillar exports more to Peru and Colombia than it does to Germany, Japan or the United Kingdom. So keeping and growing market share in both countries is important to union members in both plants. Not all are union jobs but both facilities are United Auto Worker shops.

Consider exports of the off-highway truck, made in Decatur. Customers in Colombia now pay a 15% tariff – equal to $200,000 – on the import of these vehicles. If the FTA goes through, that import tariff goes to zero immediately. Conversely, if the deal dies and Colombia, which is trying to expand its world trade, strikes an agreement with another country where similar vehicles are made, U.S. exports will immediately be at a 15% price disadvantage.

And then there's this fact that, if the media did it's job, would shame Pelosi and her acolytes into voting on the deal.

The AFL-CIO's rejectionism makes even less sense when you consider that 92% of Colombian goods coming to the U.S. now enter the American market duty-free under the Andean Trade Preferences Act, or ATPA. In June 2007, 365 members of Congress voted to renew the ATPA and thereby maintain open U.S. markets for Colombian products. The FTA is a chance to open Colombian markets to U.S. goods and services. Killing it is like saying that we want U.S. products going to Colombia to be heavily taxed. Even for a trade protectionist like Mr. Sweeney, that makes no sense. For American workers, it's crazy.

The Wall Street Journal piles on (the facts) in Thursday's paper.

The latest Democratic objection is that Bogotá isn't doing enough to protect labor activists. But the murders of trade unionists have fallen by almost 80% since 2002, in part because of special protection programs, and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has reduced other violence by nearly every measure, particularly against narco-traffickers. But any excuse will do. Yesterday Ms. Pelosi said the bill would harm "the economic concerns of America's working families." Yet over 90% of Colombian imports enter the U.S. duty-free, while the agreement would open the Colombian market to American goods that face tariffs as high as 35%

Do you get that? Our market is already mostly open and free to the Colombians, it's their's that is closed and this would open it up.

Are these people insane?

Note how the first report I quote, from CNN, phrases this as a procedural political issue.

Now think back to the media's coverage of the SCHIP expansion the Democrats tried to implement last year. When the GOP moved to block that proposal that would've provided health insurance to adults earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level the media followed the Democrat line that the Republicans hate sick kids.

Here again, the media marches in lockstep with the Democrats. Follow that first link and read the entire story. It contains the typical back-and-forth of a political story, but never enlightens the reader as to what the effect the trade agreement would have as compared to the status quo.

If the mainstream media were truly independent and competent, then you wouldn't have to depend on the Journal editorial page to tell us that the ones getting the shaft are Americans.

For the record: I don't ever want to hear another word about that vote the GOP held open for three hours when they were in charge of the House again if Pelosi goes through with this rule change. This move is little different. Washington is all about power, not fairness. The Democrats would throw their grandmothers under the bus if it would benefit them politically -- and so would the Republicans.