[CTC] press coverage: House defeats trade bill

[Fred Heutte]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obama-is-all-in-on-trade-sees-it-as-a-
cornerstone-of-his-legacy/2015/06/12/32b6dce8-1073-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.html

Obama-backed trade bill fails in the House

By David Nakamura and Paul Kane June 12 at 2:22 PM

President Obama suffered a major defeat to his Pacific Rim free trade
initiative Friday as House Democrats helped derail a key presidential
priority despite his last-minute, personal plea on Capitol Hill.

The House voted 302 to 126 to sink a measure to grant financial aid to
displaced workers, fracturing hopes at the White House that Congress
would grant Obama fast-track trade authority to complete an accord with
11 other Pacific Rim nations.

“I will be voting to slow down fast-track,” House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on the floor moments before the vote, after
keeping her intentions private for months. “Today we have an
opportunity to slow down. Whatever the deal is with other countries, we
want a better deal for American workers.”

The dramatic defeat could sink the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a
sweeping free trade and regulatory pact that Obama has called central
to his economic agenda at home and his foreign policy strategy in Asia.
Obama’s loss came after a months-long lobbying blitz in which the
president invested significant personal credibility and political
capital.

Republican leaders, who had backed the president’s trade initiative,
pleaded with their colleagues to support the deal or risk watching the
United States lose economic ground in Asia.

“The world is watching us right now,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said
before the vote.

Obama had rushed to Capitol Hill on Friday morning to make a last-ditch
plea to an emergency meeting of the Democratic caucus. The president
urged members to vote with their conscience and “play it straight,”
urging them to support the financial package for displaced workers,
which Democrats have long supported.

“I don’t think you ever nail anything down around here,” Obama told
reporters on his way out of the Capitol. “It’s always moving.”

But anti-trade Democrats pushed hard to block the financial aid plan,
knowing that its defeat would also torpedo a companion measure to grant
Obama fast-track authority to complete the TPP. That bill was later
approved with overwhelming Republican support in what amounted to a
symbolic vote because it could not move forward into law without the
related worker assistance package.

The legislation is now paralyzed in the House — “stuck in the station,”
as Pelosi described in her speech. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-
Ohio) has decided to give Obama the weekend to try to coax enough
Democrats into supporting the worker assistance package by bringing it
up for reconsideration next Tuesday.

In a message on Twitter, AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, one of
the most vehement opponents of the trade deal, hailed Pelosi as “a
champion for workers.”

Obama made an impassioned plea during his visit to Capitol Hill. But he
appeared not to have changed many minds among fellow Democrats. After
the president departed, two anti-trade Democrats, Louise Slaughter of
New York and Gene Green of Texas, came out of the meeting determined to
oppose Obama.

“I don’t want this trade bill to go through,” Slaughter, who represents
the economically depressed area of Rochester, said of the fast-track
bill.

Several members said Obama took no questions and received applause on
several occasions when discussing his previous efforts to deliver on
Democratic priorities.

Lawmakers said the White House had pushed harder on trade than any
legislative issue since the health-care reform effort during his first
year. After keeping trade on the back burner, Obama joined forces with
business-friendly Republicans after the midterm elections in pursuit of
a rare bipartisan deal and launched a fierce effort to win support from
his usual Democratic allies over the intense opposition of labor
unions.

“The president and his counselors understand that this is a legacy vote
for his second term,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who supported
the fast-track bill, said Thursday. “It’s a philosophical battle, a
political battle and an economic battle. The president finds himself in
the crossfire with the base.”

The debate among Democrats has at times been raw and personal, and it
has exposed old divisions on trade as the party attempts to coalesce
around a common agenda ahead of the 2016 campaign to select Obama’s
successor. Other Democratic leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), have questioned Obama’s commitment to workers and the middle
class, while union officials accused the president of marginalizing
them.

“I would ask that you not mischaracterize our positions and views —
even in the heat of a legislative battle,” Trumka wrote this week in a
letter to the president. “You have repeatedly isolated and marginalized
labor and unions.”

White House officials had cast the dispute with labor as a difference
of opinion that does not reflect a deeper divide within a party focused
on stemming the nation’s growing wealth divide. Obama has framed the
12-nation TPP as a way to lock in rules to ensure U.S. economic primacy
in the fast-growing Asian-Pacific region against increasing competition
from China. In the president’s view, that would benefit American
workers as the world’s economy shifts toward high-tech industries in
which the United States maintains an advantage.

A failure on fast-track could lend weight to Chinese claims that the
United States does not have staying power in Asia.

The president’s pitch was met with widespread skepticism among
Democrats who blame past trade deals for killing jobs and depressing
wages for Americans in traditional manufacturing work.

On Thursday night, Obama made a surprise visit to the annual
Congressional Baseball Game for Charity at Nationals Park to woo Pelosi
and other Democrats.

“The president is personally engaged on this,” Wyden said Thursday.
“He’s all in.”

Despite the intensive campaign, however, Obama struggled to convince
more than a sliver of House Democrats to back his push for the fast-
track authority. The legislation would have allowed him to submit the
trade pact to Congress for a vote in a specified timetable without
lawmakers being able to amend it.

The White House has called such powers crucial to persuading the other
11 nations involved in the TPP negotiations to put their best offers on
the table in the final round of talks this summer.

But opponents said they feared that approving the fast-track measure
would be akin to ratifying a pact that is still being negotiated and
whose terms have been kept largely hidden from public view. (Lawmakers
are permitted to read draft sections of the agreement in a classified
setting and are prevented from talking about specifics in public.)

On Thursday, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other Obama
aides huddled with House Democrats in a bid to alleviate objections.

But at each turn, the administration was met by a determined coalition
of opponents, made up of labor unions, environmental groups and
progressive Democrats. Led by Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), the
coalition has been meeting for two years with individual Democrats, and
with small groups, to pressure them to oppose a fast-track bill.

Trumka met with the same House Democrats on Thursday soon after the
White House officials had departed.

Mike DeBonis and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

----------


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/us/politics/obamas-trade-bills-face-tough-battle-
against-house-democrats.html

House Rejects Trade Bill, Rebuffing Obama’s Dramatic Appeal

By JONATHAN WEISMANJUNE 12, 2015

WASHINGTON — House Democrats rebuffed a dramatic personal appeal from
President Obama on Friday, torpedoing his ambitious push to expand his
trade negotiating power — and, quite likely, his chance to secure a
legacy-defining trade accord spanning the Pacific Ocean.

In a remarkable rejection of a president they have resolutely backed,
House Democrats voted to kill assistance to workers displaced by global
trade, a program their party created and has stood by for four decades.
By doing so, they brought down legislation granting the president trade
promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be
amended or filibustered by Congress — before it could even come to a
final vote.

“We want a better deal for America’s workers,” said Representative
Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader who has guided
the president’s agenda for two terms and was personally lobbied by Mr.
Obama until the last minute.

Republican leaders tried to muster support from their own party for
trade adjustment assistance, a program they have long derided as an
ineffective waste of money and sop to organized labor. But not enough
Republicans were willing to save the program.

Republican leaders then passed a stand-alone trade promotion bill, but
that would force the Senate to take up a trade bill all over again. And
without trade adjustment assistance alongside it, passing trade
promotion authority in the Senate would be highly doubtful.

The vote was an extraordinary blow to Mr. Obama, who went to the
Capitol on Friday morning to plead personally with Democrats to “play
it straight” — to oppose trade promotion if they must but not to kill
trade assistance, a move he cast as cynical. On Thursday night, he had
made an unscheduled trip to the annual congressional baseball game to
try to persuade Ms. Pelosi.

But a president who has long kept Congress at arm’s length may have
paid a price. Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, said Mr.
Obama mustered rousing applause Friday morning as he went through the
battles he had fought with fellow Democrats — on labor organizing,
health care access and environmental protection. But he could not
change minds.

“I wish there had been much better outreach,” Mr. Cuellar lamented.

------------

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/barack-obama-capitol-hill-trade-deal-118927.html

Dems deal Obama huge defeat on trade

By Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Lauren French

6/12/15 8:56 AM EDT

In a staggering blow to President Barack Obama’s trade agenda, the
House easily defeated a measure to help workers displaced by free trade
known as Trade Adjustment Assistance. The aid package was critical to
securing Democratic support for fast-track trade authority for the
president, which he’s seeking to complete the 12-nation Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade pact. The vote was 126-302.

The vote came after President Barack Obama, in a last-ditch effort,
went to the Capitol Friday and asked House Democrats to “play it
straight” on a decisive vote just hours away.

Obama spent roughly 45 minutes with Democratic lawmakers, taking no
questions but telling his party to “vote your values,” according to a
source in the room.

But Democratic lawmakers rebuffed him hours later, voting
overwhelmingly to scuttle the trade package that was a centerpiece of
the president’s second-term agenda. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-
Calif.), had remained silent for weeks on the trade issue, went to the
House floor shortly before the vote to speak against free trade deal.

“Whatever the deal is with other countries,” she said, “we want a
better deal for America’s workers.”

With his trade push on the ropes, Obama headed to Capitol Hill Friday
morning to plead with his party to bail him out. The president needed
to convince Democrats to back a measure, known as Trade Adjustment
Assistance, that would provide aid and retraining to workers who lose
their jobs to trade agreements. The TAA bill was intertwined with
legislation to give Obama Trade Promotion Authority.

House Democrats — most of whom have been firmly entrenched in their
position for weeks — emerged from the meeting with the president still
divided. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a pro-trade Democrat from Oregon, said
Obama “hit it out of the park.”

“It was a powerful presentation,” Blumeuaer said. But another
supporter, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said afterward it would be an
“uphill climb to get to 217,” referring to the number of votes needed
to pass a bill.

That turned out to be an understatement.

“TAA has always been an absolute admission to me that there is going to
be lots of lost jobs,” Rep. Louise Slaughter, a top House Democrat from
New York, said before the vote. Multiple Democrats echoed that
sentiment on the House floor.

There was also palpable anger at the president leading up to the vote.
Rep. Peter DeFazio said he thought Obama “tried to guilt people and
impugn their integrity.”

“There was a number of us who were insulted,” DeFazio (D-Ore.) said in
an interview after the meeting with Obama.

Obama acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding the Friday vote, which
turned out to be much more lopsided than anyone expected.

“I don’t think you ever nail anything down around here it’s always
moving,” the president told reporters after he spoke with lawmakers for
roughly 40 minutes.

Republicans and Democrats were predicting ahead of the vote that TAA
was headed for defeat — bringing fast track down with it — unless the
dynamic dramatically shifted this morning. Obama’s visit to Capitol
Hill, a rare round of personal lobbying by a president not known for
his relationships with lawmakers, was designed to do just that.

Obama arrived at Pelosi’s second-floor Capitol office suite at 9:41
a.m., waving to a small group of reporters gathered in the hallway. He
walked into the House Democratic Caucus meeting with Pelosi and Rep.
Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the assistant minority leader.

Obama also made an appearance at the congressional baseball game on
Thursday night, and top administration officials — including Labor
Secretary Thomas Perez, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and White House
Chief of Staff Denis McDonough — have been meeting with Democrats for
the past several days.

Some Democrats were clearly unmoved by the direct appeal from the
commander-in-chief.

“We’re going to win today,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), a member of
the Ways and Means Committee, declared before the meeting with Obama.
“No on both.”

The eleventh hour drama came as top lawmakers and aides said they had
no idea going in how Friday’s momentous vote would play out.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) had been mum on both bills bill, which created an
opening for liberal opposition to TAA to swell. House Minority Whip
Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he planned to vote for TAA, but didn’t signal
his position on the larger fast-track bill. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.),
the assistant Democratic leader, was undecided.

House Republican leaders needed a large number of Democrats to vote for
TAA in order for it to pass.

“I think Republicans are going to provide a share of their votes based
upon what Republicans have done in the past, and it’s up to the
Democrat leadership and the president to get Democrats on board,” Rep.
Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio) said on Thursday. He, along with House Ways and
Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), led the pro-trade whip
operation.

Democrats have traditionally backed TAA, with its focus on helping
struggling unemployed workers. But Democrats complained to White House
officials this week that the TAA package was too small, and argued the
president should be leaning on Republicans to enlarge it.

But many Democrats came to view the jobs assistance bill as a way to
sink the entire trade package.

Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sandy Levin (Mich.), the top Democrat
on the Ways and Means Committee, led the push for Democrats to vote
against TAA. And they were joined, in the end, by Pelosi.

Defeating the jobs aid bill, the Democratic leader said minutes before
the vote, “is the only way we will be able to slow down fast track.”

-----------

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/244835-house-deals-humiliating-blow-to-obama-in-trade-
fight

House deals humiliating blow to Obama in trade fight
 
By Cristina Marcos - 06/12/15 01:49 PM EDT

Defying President Obama, House Democrats on Friday rallied to vote down
legislation granting aid to workers displaced by trade, dealing a
potentially fatal blow to the fast-track legislation that had been
scheduled to hit the floor.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats voted to sink the package in the
126-302 vote despite an impassioned plea from the president, which he
delivered in person during a rare morning visit to Capitol Hill. A
majority of Republicans also opposed the bill.

The vote came minutes after a dramatic floor speech by House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who rebuffed lobbying by Obama to vote
against the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program.

Pelosi noted that Democrats have traditionally backed TAA, but sided
with liberals in her conference who argued a vote against the program
was the only way to stop fast-track.

“If TAA slows down the fast track, I’m prepared to vote against TAA,"
Pelosi said.

Other members of Pelosi's leadership team, including House Minority
Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Reps. James Cyburn (S.C.) and Steve Israel
(N.Y.), voted yes.

On the GOP side, Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) cast a vote in favor of
TAA. House Speakers cast floor votes on relatively rare occasions.

Only 40 Democrats backed TAA while 144 voted against it. On the GOP
side, 158 Republicans voted "no" while 86 Republicans voted "yes."

The vote against TAA is a humiliating defeat for Obama, who had spent
weeks lobbying House Democrats to support his trade agenda in the face
of overwhelming opposition from liberal groups and organized labor.

Under the procedure established for considering the trade package, TAA
had been packaged with fast-track authority, and a vote against either
doomed the total package.

In a slight surprise, HouseMajority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)
announced after the TAA vote that the House would still vote on the
fast-track measure, as well as a separate customs bill.

In the vote on fast-track, the measure was approved in a 219-211 vote.
Twenty-eight Democrats backed fast-track, while 54 Republicans voted
no.

Labor groups, including the AFL-CIO, lobbied Democrats to oppose TAA as
part of a last-ditch effort to keep the fast-track legislation from
coming up for a vote.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who spearheaded the revolt, said that the
TAA measure was “underfunded and wouldn't do enough to help displaced
workers.”

“It comes down to one question: Do we support hard working Americans or
do we abandon them?” DeLauro said. “A vote for these bills is a vote
against jobs and it’s a vote against wages.”

Other Democrats who oppose the fast-track bill rebuked their colleagues
for opposing TAA, arguing the vote threatens to keep the assistance
from being part of the final package sent to Obama.

“I refuse to put displaced workers at risk for the sake of a political
tactic,” said Rep. David Price (D-N.C.).

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who led the
GOP effort to whip votes for the trade bills, warned that defeating the
trade package would make the U.S. look unreliable on the international
stage.

“The world is watching this,” Ryan said during floor debate. “If we
establish TPA, we are saying on a bipartisan basis, we want America to
lead.”