[CTC] White House rips Boehner on trade

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/240703-white-house-rips-boehner-on-trade <http://thehill.com/policy/finance/240703-white-house-rips-boehner-on-trade>
 
White House rips Boehner on trade
 
The Hill
By Vicki Needham and Mike Lillis
April 30, 2015
 
The White House fired back at Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday after he suggested that President Obama isn’t doing enough to rally Democrats behind his trade agenda. 
 
White House spokesman Josh Earnest questioned why GOP leaders, who control the largest House majority since the Hoover administration, can’t marshal their own troops on an issue traditionally championed by Republicans.
 
“First, let me point out the irony of Republicans campaigning very aggressively to win a majority of both houses of Congress so that they could advance their policy agenda, and three months later, turning around to all of you asking what the president is going to do to get their work done,” Earnest told reporters.

“Yes, it is also part of the president’s agenda, which is why he is going to do his part to make his case to the American public and to Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill” on why trade deals are in the best interest of the United States, Earnest added.
 
Republicans have said that to get one of the president’s signature issues through Congress he must rally enough Democrats to back Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), or fast-track, that will help streamline passage of trade deals that reach Capitol Hill, including the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.
 
But liberal Democrats are lining up in overwhelming opposition to the TPA bill.
 
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Thursday that Obama's lobbying effort is changing few minds.
 
“The president has done a very good job of taking us to a much better place than NAFTA,” Pelosi said of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico that many Democrats say has hurt U.S. workers. 
 
“But nonetheless, it's with many more countries, many more concerns, and I don't think the timing right now — I don't think enough of our issues have been resolved for us to be having a big movement of votes toward the bill.”
 
Those issues, Pelosi said, are as far-ranging as currency manipulation, the environment, food safety, access to automobile markets and worker rights in Vietnam.
 
She declined to say how she herself would vote on the TPA bill, but suggested that, if GOP leaders want to pass it as is, they'll have to do it largely on their own.
 
“If they don't have the vote, then hopefully we can have some accommodations in either the trade promotion at or the TPP itself — the actual bill — that will make it more palatable to more Democrats,” she said. “But we'll see.”
 
The president met Pelosi at the White House on Wednesday. And on Thursday his lobbying continued with a meeting with members of the New Democrat Coalition, a centrist group where most of the Democratic support for fast-track authority has emerged.
 
At least 11 members of the group have said they are standing with the White House on trade, but Earnest did not give a target number of how many Democratic votes the White House ultimately expects to deliver.
 
Jordan Fabian contributed.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20150430/3e919ffe/attachment.htm>