Vox - In a razor-thin 218-208 vote, the House of Representatives just approved Trade Promotion Authority. The legislation guarantees that trade deals negotiated by the president will get a prompt up-or-down vote. President Obama has said the legislation is essential to completing work on the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal being negotiated by about a dozen Pacific Rim nations.
However, it remains far from certain whether TPA will become law. The Senate has also passed a TPA bill, but that bill came with an extension of Trade Adjustment Assistance, programs that help workers who lose their jobs due to international competition. For TPA to become law, congressional leaders need to either get the House to pass TAA or get the Senate to pass a TPA bill that doesn't include TAA.
The problem is that neither option looks likely to happen. The inclusion of TAA was essential to getting a critical mass of Democrats to support the Senate trade package. But in the House, majorities of both parties oppose the legislation — albeit for opposite reasons. Most Republicans oppose TAA itself, whereas most Democrats voted against TAA as a way to kill the broader trade package.
2 comments:
Tuesday is the key vote in the Senate. 14 Senate Democrats voted for Fast Track TPA last time. The TPA bill from the House is worse in a number of ways that the previous Senate bill. In addition to their being no assistance for workers who lose their job (TAA) the Fast Track does not allow climate change to be considered in trade, weakened provisions in the Senate version on banning human trafficking/slavery and minimizing prohibition of currency manipulation. So, there is good reason to vote against it. To see the 14 visit https://www.popularresistance.org/stop-fast-track-2/. I've worked on this issue for more than three years and my sense it is going to be very hard to stop Fast Track in the Senate. We need four votes to switch in order to win.
60-37 vote result today. What happens to TAA, assistance to all the future displaced workers that failed in the House?
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