Asked whether he would support a clean TPA measure, Portman said, “Hopefully I won’t have to make that decision”. Pelosi signaled, though, that prospects for passage will increase if Republicans act on other Democratic priorities, such as a highway funding bill.
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Fast Track backers say that what happed Friday was merely a legislative bump in the road to approval of the trade pact. On the other side, they knew most Republicans would support TPA – enough to push it through, even if the majority of Democrats voted no.
Another idea is to pass the fast-track legislation by itself, but Democrats have indicated they’ll prevent that.
The president devoted his weekly address to pressing lawmakers to switch their votes when it comes up again. It won’t go to Obama’s desk unless the worker-aid bill also passes. The Senate passed a bill weeks ago combining TAA and TPA, which the House separated into two because the Republican leadership believed it would simplify passage.
Obama has lobbied for months for the trade measure, which would let him submit agreements to Congress for an expedited, up-or-down vote without amendments. He wants broad negotiating authority from Congress. What had been a small trade surplus in the U.S. turned into a combined trade deficit of $177 billion as more goods from Mexico and Canada crossed the border, the consumer group says, citing government statistics.
However, 144 Democrats in the House joined with 158 Republicans to defeat the part of the trade bill known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, designed to help those who have lost their jobs because of trade-related issues. All but one Democrat in the Illinois congressional delegation voted against Obama’s bid for fast-track authority to negotiate the deal. On Monday, 3rd District Rep. Erik Paulsen said he was surprised at what he called the “disparity” of the TAA vote.
There have also been many concerned over deals of this kind, as they could be seen as a way to gain a foothold on ‘property rights’ in the future, in addition to having lasting implications on intellectual property. House Democrats called the workers-aid program inadequate and improperly funded and opposed it as a way of simultaneously halting the fast-track measure paired with it under House procedural rules.
“TAA is one of the few programs we have that helps our workers cope with the transition to a globally integrated economy, a transition that is going to continue regardless of Congress”, Reinsch said.
All weekend, House Republicans gleefully distributed headlines about the Democrats’ rebuke of Obama.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Sunday that, “We need to regroup and come up with a trade policy which demands that corporate America start investing in this country rather than in countries all over the world”. The Senate passed it in May.
CONCORD, N.H.- Hillary Clinton defended the records of both her husband and President Obama while speaking today in New Hampshire during her first visit to the state since the formal launch of her campaign on Saturday. “And if we don’t get it, there should be no deal”.
On Friday, at least, a defiant progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the House responded to the unprecedented campaign against Fast Track waged by labor and its allies. Here is a primer on the Trans-Pacific Partnership dispute and what NAFTA can teach United States.
Hours before lawmakers were due to vote on the legislation, Obama arrived at Capitol Hill with Secretary for the culmination of a short but intense blitz to counter union efforts to use the worker support program to kill fast-track. Despite being pressed on her position on the trade deal that has divided Democrats and consumed Congress, Clinton still refused to take a position and maintained that she would “judge the final product”. After Friday, however, numerous liberal Democrats appeared bolder than they were before the vote in their opposition to the TPP.
“The question is: Is this a deal in its broad outlines that can be improved or not to meet the legitimate questions and objections that members of congress have raised?”
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