[CTC] Clinton and Pelosi leave Obama in the lurch on trade deals

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-and-pelosi-leave-obama-in-the-lurch-on-trade-deals/2015/06/15/04baba5e-12e3-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-and-pelosi-leave-obama-in-the-lurch-on-trade-deals/2015/06/15/04baba5e-12e3-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html>
 
Clinton and Pelosi leave Obama in the lurch on trade deals
 
The Washington Post
By Paul Kane and David Nakamura
June 15, 2015
 
One measure of how dire President Obama’s position on trade has become is the short 48-hour span in which he was left completely in the lurch by two of the most powerful figures in Democratic politics: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

First Pelosi, on Friday afternoon, threw in her lot with a rank-and-file rebellion against Obama’s trade initiatives, backing Democrats who blocked a legislative package that otherwise has bipartisan support to advance. Then on Sunday afternoon, Clinton used a series of high-profile stops for her front-running campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to distance herself from the president.

The moves left Obama without any major allies on Capitol Hill or on the campaign trail promoting the 12-nation deal that he thinks is key to global leadership and helping the domestic economy. With a possible do-over vote coming Tuesday in the House, its outcome appears destined for another rebuke to Obama from his usual allies in Congress.

No one is declaring the trade agenda dead, but as long as Clinton and Pelosi decline to lend a hand, its prospects appear murkier than ever. Although the former secretary of state steered clear of the legislative specifics, she signaled Sunday that she will stand with Pelosi.

“When she finally declared herself that she would have to oppose it, because it didn’t do enough for the American worker, my view is the White House should call Nancy and a few other of the Democrats,” Clinton said while campaigning Sunday in Burlington, Iowa.

Senior Republican advisers, as well as some White House officials, noted that Clinton’s remarks were directed toward the merits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal Obama is close to completing. Currently, the House is stuck in its consideration of a legislative package with the centerpiece of Trade Promotion Authority, which would set up expedited procedures for Congress to vote on any future trade deals.

Most Democrats, along with their supporters in the labor movement, oppose expanded trade deals because they say they help the financial bottom line of multinational corporations without doing enough to boost wages of U.S. workers or to protect human rights of overseas workers. Together, they have tried to sink the fast-track legislation because without it, Obama has said he will not be able to complete the TPP negotiations.

Once it became clear last week that fast-track authority had majority support, opponents turned to another piece of the legislation to stall the momentum. Under the complicated process deployed by House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Democrats were expected to carry the lion’s share of votes for a worker retraining program to help those displaced by global competition, while Republicans would deliver a vast majority of the votes for trade promotion.

Instead, Democrats overwhelmingly rejected a program that they otherwise support. The other pieces — including trade authority — won approval, but without the passage of the worker program, Democrats can hold Obama’s broader trade agenda hostage in the House.

By giving tacit support to Pelosi’s move, after weeks of silence on the issue, Clinton essentially sanctioned the hardball tactics deployed by union officials.

“The president should listen to and work with his allies in Congress, starting with Nancy Pelosi,” Clinton said Sunday at her first Iowa campaign stop. She said that portions of the TPP were not good enough and that “there should be no deal” unless they are changed.

Those remarks surprised some in Washington’s foreign policy community. As secretary of state, Clinton had been Obama’s most effective global advocate for the TPP, calling it critical to the administration’s attempt to shift U.S. attention and resources toward Asia to meet China’s rise. Clinton called the accord the “gold standard” of trade agreements during a speech in Australia in 2012.

Several of Clinton’s top State Department advisers — including her No. 2, James Steinberg, and her Asia deputy, Kurt Campbell — have continued to be forceful advocates for the trade pact since leaving the administration. In a recent speech, Campbell said the United States would not get a passing grade in Asia if the TPP fails no matter what else the administration does in the region.

“This shift will come as a huge surprise and disappointment to her former counterparts in Asia,” Michael Green, the senior Asia director in the National Security Council for President George W. Bush, said in an interview Sunday.

Officially, the administration says there are ways to get around the Democratic blockade. “Oh, I don’t think we need a Plan B here, because there are so many different pathways that can get you to the finish line in the House,” Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Those paths are harder to find, however, without vocal support from Pelosi or Clinton.

Just 40 Democrats voted to support worker training, joined by 86 Republicans, almost 100 votes shy of a majority. Turning around that many votes by Tuesday is daunting, to say the least.

Republicans, who generally oppose the worker assistance program, said they cannot be expected to bring too many more votes for it. Boehner could try to redraft the debate’s rules and turn it into a single vote, as the Senate did last month, but advisers said such a move might spark a conservative revolt and upend the carefully crafted coalition — the TPA side of the vote passed Friday by just a handful of votes.

Another option would be to try to pass trade authority without the worker program and send it back to the Senate, but that might result in defeat, as most of the 28 Democrats who supported TPA demand that in exchange they get worker funding.

Pelosi and Boehner had negotiated fixes to the funding worker training, leading some of Pelosi’s closest allies to think she would support that piece of the trade package and oppose the broader trade authority.

Her confidants have said that she kept her powder dry and informed Obama that she was “leaning no” before he made a personal plea to Democrats on Friday at the Capitol.

Given the strong feelings against the trade deal, Pelosi took a hands-off approach for several weeks. She set up many meetings with Obama’s senior staff members and Cabinet officials, and her advisers said she gave the president room to make his case to the caucus.

After Obama left the Friday morning huddle with Democrats, boisterous lawmakers took to the microphones to urge a humiliating defeat for the president. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a liberal from Obama’s home town of Chicago, shouted so loudly that she could be heard outside the closed-door session.

“Vote no,” she said.

Once it became clear that a strong majority opposed Obama, Pelosi decided to join their ranks in a Friday afternoon floor speech. Two days later, Clinton declined to support Obama.


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