[CTC] Fast Track timing & maneuvering

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Two articles below…

Monday, June 01, 2015
Inside U.S. Trade - 05/29/2015
House GOP Plans TPA Action In Week Of June 8; Separate TAA Vote Likely

The House Republican leadership has indicated it intends to bring a bill to renew Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and reauthorize the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program to a House floor vote during the week of June 8 and is leaning toward a plan to hold two separate votes on its constituent parts, according to House aides.
 
But TPA supporters, including the Trade Benefits America Coalition, have indicated that the vote could slip until the third week of June. Several lobbyists said the longer timeframe would provide supporters more time to lock in votes.
 
The coalition has made clear that there is no formal whip count and it is now focused on lobbying House members from Georgia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Alabama, sources said.
 
The House is considering taking up the Senate-passed bill, H.R. 1314, which contains both the TPA and TAA renewals, but then voting on each part separately. This could be done using a parliamentary procedure called "division of the question," which is permitted under House rules.
 
This plan is aimed at achieving the longstanding goal of the House to avoid a conference of the TPA bill, thereby ensuring that the House only has to vote once on the controversial legislation.
 
Essentially, the House Rules Committee would write a rule for H.R. 1314 that would set up separate votes on TPA and TAA. Like all rules, this one would have to be approved on the House floor prior to consideration of the bill.
 
If both votes succeed, then the House would send H.R. 1314 to the president's desk without the need for another Senate vote, as long as the version approved by the House is identical to the Senate version.
 
Holding a separate votes could make it easier to secure the support of House Republicans for TPA, as they would not be forced to vote on a TPA bill that included TAA, which many oppose. However, they would still have to vote on the rule providing for division of the question.
One congressional source expressed doubt that this approach would meet the demand of Heritage Action for America, a conservative group, that TPA and TAA not to be packaged together.
 
But a lobbyist close to Republicans said it would be unlikely that the rule dividing the question would be defeated on the floor, since rules are typically approved in party-line votes. He also argued that it would be hard for Heritage Action to construe a vote in favor of the rule as a vote for TAA.
 
The likely reason for holding the TPA vote in the second week after the House returns from recess on June 1 is to give both Republicans and Democrats time to shore up support for TPA to ensure they have the 217 or more votes needed to pass the bill, sources said. It takes 217 votes, instead of the normal 218 votes, to approve the bill because of two vacancies in the House.
 
One congressional aide noted that the House will be focused on appropriations legislation the first week of June when it comes back from recess.
 
House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has already pledged, in consultation with the House leadership, that the lower chamber will consider TPA and TAA renewal on the same day as a customs and enforcement bill and legislation to renew several trade preference programs (Inside U.S. Trade, May 22).
 
However, business sources said there is still no clear indication on how these four votes will be packaged.
 
A House Democratic aide said Republicans are now saying they can deliver a higher number of "yes" votes for TPA than they had previously indicated. Before, Republicans were seen as lowballing their numbers in order to maximize the number of Democratic votes that would be required.
 
TPA supporters said they expected between 40-55 Republicans to vote "no," although opponents say the number could be much higher. Two pro-TPA sources said that among several scenarios being floated, the most realistic appears to be between 40-45 Republicans voting against it. Another source said he did not expect more than 55 Republicans to vote against the bill.
 
One pro-TPA lobbyist speculated that more House members who are currently undecided could move to "yes" in light of the Senate's 62-37 vote in favor of the TPA bill on May 22, but conceded it will be hard to lock in the final votes in favor of TPA.
 
With 245 Republicans in the House, the 40 to 55 range would require between 17-22 Democrats voting "yes" in order to get to the required 217 votes. Sources close to Democrats say they can provide more than 20 votes, possibly 25 or 27, given that 17 members of the caucus have already endorsed the TPA bill.
 
The public announcement by Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA) on May 27 that he would support the pending TPA bill does not alter that number because he has long been counted as a "yes" in light of having signed an statement by members of the New Democrat Coalition in support of the legislation sent to reporters on April 16.
 
One pro-TPA lobbyist said a key factor in determining the level of Democratic support will be the stance taken by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD). Both have previously backed an alternative to the pending TPA bill authored by House Ways & Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI).
 
House TPA supporters will likely want to ensure that they have a comfortable margin of votes beyond the required 217, in case of last-minute defections, sources said. One pro-TPA lobbyist said that if Heritage Action whips against the bill, it could peel off 10-15 Republican votes.
 
Heritage Action professes to support free trade but is a staunch opponent of TAA, which it characterized in a May 11 statement as an "egregiously ineffective welfare program." In the statement, it urged conservatives to oppose any effort to combine TPA with TAA, hinting that it would urge a "no" vote on the overall bill if that happened.
 
But the group ultimately stopped short of issuing a "key vote" alert calling on senators to oppose the TPA-TAA bill in the Senate. Instead, it only key voted an amendment offered by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) that would have stripped TAA out of the bill. The Senate on May 22 rejected that amendment by a vote of 35-63.
 
In addition to TAA, Heritage Action is also focused in the TPA debate on fighting the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank.
Heritage Action and Club for Growth, two longstanding Ex-Im opponents, in a May 22 statement urged House Republicans to leverage their TPA vote to "extract ironclad public commitments" from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) that they will not force Ex-Im reauthorization legislation through their respective chambers at the behest of Democrats.
 
Two sources close to Democrats said the vote on the TAA part of H.R. 1314 could be threatened over a funding provision opposed by many Democrats that cuts $700 million from Medicare reimbursements to health care providers in fiscal year 2024. One of these sources said that this is a "real danger" at this time.
 
Republican and Democratic staff have worked to try to find an alternative offset to the TAA bill, but as of this week had not reached a deal, according to a congressional source.
 
If the Medicare funding offset remained in place, it could give Democrats political cover to vote against TAA, which could endanger its success since their votes would be needed for passage, as many Republicans are expected to vote against it. If the TAA vote is rejected, that would throw a wrench in the goal of the House to avoid a conference of the TPA bill, since H.R. 1314 will only go directly to the president if both parts are approved.
 
But a pro-TPA source said he did not expect the leadership to put TAA up for a vote unless it has the necessary support.
In a related development, 12 groups advocating for senior citizens on May 13 urged senators to oppose the TPA-TAA bill on the floor, citing objections to the Medicare offset and the fact that TPA would pave the way for congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the groups said could raise drug prices.
 
Among the signatories were the AFL-CIO, Alliance for Retired Americans and Center for Medicare Advocacy, but not the AARP, the major U.S. advocacy organization for seniors. AARP has previously indicated that it will hold off on taking a firm position on TPP until it can evaluate the details of the agreement (Inside U.S. Trade, Dec. 26, 2014). -- Matthew Schewel
 
Inside U.S. Trade - 05/29/2015 , Vol. 33, No. 21

Monday, June 01, 2015
Inside U.S. Trade - 05/29/2015
Committee Leaders To Use Customs Bill For TPA Fixes, Other Issues

Through a political deal, the leaders of congressional trade committees have agreed to use a conference on a customs and enforcement bill to address at least four unresolved issues that arose in the debate on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation, and potentially to resolve differences in other trade legislation that the Senate passed earlier this month.
 
The four issues that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Finance Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR) and House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) have explicitly committed to address in a customs bill conference are trade remedy law changes championed by Ohio's two senators; compromise TPA language on fighting human trafficking; preventing trade agreements from changing U.S. immigration laws; and expanding access for U.S. exports of fish, seafood and shellfish.
 
This plan is aimed at achieving the longstanding goal of the House to avoid a conference of the TPA bill, thereby ensuring that the House only has to vote once on the controversial legislation. It would mean the House would take up and pass H.R. 1314, the TPA bill approved by the Senate on May 22. Once the president signs that bill into law, Congress would agree to retroactively change some of its provisions through the customs bill.
 
Hatch and Wyden made their commitment to address the four outstanding issues through the customs bill conference during a colloquy on the Senate floor on May 22, just prior to votes on amendments to the TPA legislation. As part of the colloquy, Hatch and Wyden entered into the Congressional Record a letter they received from Ryan the same day in which he pledged to include these four provisions in the House customs bill, thereby opening the door for them to be addressed in the conference committee.
 
The Ryan letter did not address the issue of using the customs bill as a way to work out differences between the House and Senate versions of legislation extending trade preference programs, although two House aides held open that possibility. But one of the aides said another option under discussion is for the House to take up the Senate preferences bill, make changes, and send it back to the Senate in what is colloquially referred to as "ping pong."
 
"While it's too early to say what the final product will look like, the customs and enforcement bill has always been the vehicle with which we've planned to reconcile differences between the two chambers on a range of issues," Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said in a May 26 emailed statement. He added that this could potentially include changes not only to TPA, but also the preferences bill.
One trade lobbyist warned that making the customs bill conference the forum for resolving a host of outstanding issues from other legislation could complicate the process to the point of delaying an agreement on a conference report.
 
Ryan's letter did not address legislation to create unilateral trade preferences for Nepal that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sought unsuccessfully to add as an amendment to the Senate TPA bill. Feinstein's amendment, S.A. 1438, would provide duty-free access for a small set of textile and apparel items from Nepal such as bags, carpets, shawls and hats -- a much narrower scope of products than Feinstein had proposed in her initial Nepal trade preferences bill.
 
Although S. 1438 never came up for a vote in the Senate, Feinstein obtained a last-minute commitment from Hatch and Wyden that they would include the provision in the customs bill conference report. She received that commitment on May 22 only after scaling back her initial proposal, which would have provided duty-free entry to all textile and apparel products from Nepal subject to annual limits.
The National Council of Textile Organizations had opposed Feinstein's initial proposal, but has worked to modify it into something that it could accept, according to an informed source.
 
But there was no corresponding commitment in Ryan's letter to work to include the scaled-back Nepal language in the customs bill, and a Ryan spokesman said he was unaware of any such commitment.
 
Sources said it would be very difficult, but not impossible, to include the Nepal language in the conference report if it were not part of the House customs bill, since it was not part of the Senate bill. They noted that conference committees are not prohibited from raising new issues not included in either the House- or Senate-passed versions of the legislation, but it is very rare for them to do so.
 
Two private-sector sources said another obstacle to the inclusion of the Nepal language in the House customs bill or the conference report is that there is no one in the lower chamber who is championing this issue. A Library of Congress legislative database lists no House companion bill for S. 81, Feinstein's original proposal for Nepal trade preferences.
 
The desire to avoid a conference on the TPA bill is leading supporters to consider splitting up the Senate-passed fast-track bill, H.R. 1314, so that the House holds separate votes on TPA and the renewal of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. TAA is opposed by many House Republicans. -- Matthew Schewel
 

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