If your question is, do I want to see the Democratic leadership become more costly for the American public than Republicans, certainly not. If the question is, was the Clinton Administration more costly to Americans (now looking back with what we know today) I would have to say yes, with the additional warning that its just begun, that decisions made in the 1990s still have lots and lots of destructive potential that is still unrealized. This is all because of GATS.
GATS is globally forcing public services to be privatized if any of a myriad number of things change.
Basically, the combination of clauses that do that are called standstill, ratchet and rollback. For example, they could cause the loss of the ACA's good parts as soon as Hillary globalizes health care the WTO gains final jurisdiction over domestic regulation in that service sector. (Thats what Elizabeth Warren was arguing with Obama about, could WTO order us to change US laws, the answer is clearly and unambiguously yes. One scary possibility involves the use of L-1 "non-immigrant" visas to allow corporations to staff their US operations with foreign workers being paid their at home wage. That seems to be part of the GATS and new agreements and I have not been able to find any mention of wages to date. (can you? Look at http://www.wikileaks.org/tisa under movement of natural persons)
There is no limit to the power of human beings to rationalize greed. They can and will.
Once a service sector become international than expect the WTO to be brought in to change our economy to conform with their idea of what is right. They will likely eliminate minimum wages because that's neoliberal ideology and "subsidies" as they are framed are not allowed to developed countries, only poor ones.
They are also in the case of healt insurance compelled by the wording of the agreement to rule to "roll back" the rules to their original state (1998, I think, see video below) if requested to do so by an injured party. Rules in a country that effect a covered sector must be consistent with the goals of the GATS. They must not deny other WTO members the benefits of the GATS. Everything else, like the public's needs, is explicitly limited by the agreement's goals and countries are not allowed to legislate laws that are inconsistent with the deals.
they are designed to compel radical change irregardless of local laws or public opinion.
The top thing is profitability of foreign investors. Nothing can impede the rights of foreign financial firms to exploit our insurance market in he most profitable manner. Rules requiring that profits be limited or that insurers cover unprofitable groups are clearly new regulations and are not liberalisation (because they are unprofitable) so the njured party, any foreign firm that challenges it will win.
Any foreign insurance provider is guaranteed to want to rollback the rules to the standstill date in January 1998. The "standstill" in GATS is supposed to represent a high water mark for regulation and all subsequent changes to services covered under the GATS are compelled to be deregulation, not additional regulation.
TiSA is supposed to become part of GATS in the future. So the dates used in TiSA appear to be GATS dates if applicable.
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A similar situation is likely to exist with financial regulation of all kinds. Especially the critical areas of regulation of "too big to fail" banks will be prevented from effectively being regulated by GATS and its progeny, TiSA.
That's what happened with Glass-Steagall. Glass-Steagall was repealed because of GATS.
This video is mostly about TiSA but there is a bit about GATS interactions.
if you want to know more about TiSA< look for videos by Sanya Reid Smith on YouTube. And read the documents themselves.
Also, this is useful if you understand its wording:
http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6891-2013-ADD-1-DCL-1/en/pdf (EU negotiating document)
Video:
Some other links.. This following document is interesting.
http://www.maine.gov/legis/opla/ctpchlthcaresub.pdf (shows why and how TiSA negotiations were started in 2006 in the context of health care)
The problem it describes has not gone away!
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