Foes of fast-track trade legislation, Santa Fe.
President Obama
came to Capitol Hill Friday morning to meet with Democrats in a last-minute attempt to save Trade Promotion Authority, fast-track trade legislation, that is at risk of failing. If he succeeds, TPA could be on his desk by the weekend.
Foes of the legislation are planning to follow an approach that AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka met with Democrats Thursday to promote—defeating TPA by voting down the Trade Adjustment Assistance bill. That bill would provide funding for retraining and other aid to workers who lose their jobs as a result of trade agreements. TAA must pass before TPA can be voted on. If it goes down, TPA goes down as well.
Under normal circumstances, it would be Democrats supporting TAA and Republicans, who think it's a wasteful welfare program, opposing it. But, with labor's backing, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has been whipping against TAA as the best means of defeating TPA. To counteract this, the Republican leadership likely will urge some in their party to bite their lips and vote for TAA.
"The TAA is the handmaiden to facilitate the whole deal," said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. "We have the potential to stop this whole train and revisit the most egregious provisions" of fast track. "It's counterintuitive for Democrats to be voting against it, but President Trumka came and said vote against it."
Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., said of the Democrats: "It's in their hands, they have to pass TAA. We can only deliver a certain number of votes for TAA. So we'll see. We're calling their bluff. If they want to bring it down, then it's going to be a crushing blow to their president."
The sequence of votes today was approved in a 217-212 vote on the procedural rule by the House of Representatives Thursday. It's a complicated approach.
Read more about this below the fold.
The TAA, as passed by the Senate, contains cuts in Medicare spending to offset the costs of the worker adjustment program. The complication comes because Republican leaders want to avoid sending TAA back to the Senate for another vote there. So they left the original Medicare offset language intact. To pacify Democrats, the House on Thursday passed an African trade bill with language that supersedes the TAA provision on Medicare, offsetting the retraining costs with “strengthening Federal tax compliance laws.”
But some Democrats are still not keen on voting for the TAA because they can easily imagine that Republicans will produce campaign ads next year pointing out that Democrats voted for Medicare cuts even though those cuts would never actually take place.
Democrats in opposition to fast-tracking have high hopes that this maneuver to defeat TPA by defeating TAA will work. But that is not the only view. Some Democrats say that if TAA loses it would only slow down fast-tracking legislation:
“My understanding is that if the TAA is voted down tomorrow, it does not mean that [fast-track] will not be brought back up,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.). “The [fast-track] bill does not die, it can be brought back up again.”