[CTC] House Passes Fast-Track Trade Bill, but Senate Outcome Uncertain

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/house-passes-fast-track-trade-bill-1434645208

House Passes Fast-Track Trade Bill, but Senate Outcome Uncertain
Revised bill to expand Obama’s trade-negotiating authority moves back to Senate

By SIOBHAN HUGHES
Updated June 18, 2015 8:52 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—The House passed legislation Thursday to ease trade pacts through Congress, as Republicans and some Democrats revived hopes for President Barack Obama <http://topics.wsj.com/person/O/Barack-Obama/4328>’s trade agenda less than a week after liberals sank a similar bill.

The House’s 218-208 vote sends the measure to the Senate where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell <http://topics.wsj.com/person/M/Mitch-McConnell/7788> (R., Ky.) wants to pass the bill as soon as next week. Fast-track authority would give Mr. Obama the power to submit trade deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote, without amendments.

But the bill’s fate is intertwined with a related measure to help workers hurt by international trade. Many pro-trade Senate Democrats say they won’t vote for the fast-track bill without evidence that the worker-aid program, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, will pass both chambers. 

House and Senate Republican leaders have committed to separately passing the workers’ assistance extension. Late Thursday, Mr. McConnell said that passage of the fast-track bill was within striking distance, but that it would take “trusting each other to get there.”

But Democrats are anxious about whether GOP leaders can deliver. They see the package as four parts: Fast-track, the workers assistance, a separate enforcement measure that would give the U.S. stronger tools to combat against unfair trading practices and one to extend trade preferences with sub-Saharan African nations. 

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said he and other pro-trade Democratic senators want to make sure all four items get enacted. 

Labor unions and allied groups of the left vowed to pressure Senate Democrats to oppose fast track, saying the battle isn’t over yet. “If it weren’t for this massive corporate coalition and all their power and money, this whole trade agenda would be sitting on a curb someplace,” said Lori Wallach, senior trade expert at Public Citizen, which has been fighting the trade bill.

Business groups encouraged the Senate to pass the fast-track bill, noting that it already passed an earlier version last month that was connected to the worker-aid program. “We now call on the U.S. Senate to once again reaffirm its commitment,” said U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue.

The next critical moment comes early next week. Senate fast-track supporters would need to line up 60 votes to get around a procedural hurdle before passing the bill. That is an open question because some of the 14 pro-trade Democrats are wavering. Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.) said Thursday that he wants all four bills to pass together instead of one by one. 

Mr. McConnell made clear that wouldn’t happen, saying Thursday that a vote on the fast-track bill would come first, followed by a vote on the trade preferences bill. Mr. McConnell said that the workers-aid program would be attached to the trade preferences bill. He promised that Republican votes would “be there to pass” the worker-aid measure—“reluctantly, not happily, but they will be there if it means getting something far more important accomplished for the American people.” 

In May, 14 Democrats joined 48 Republicans to pass, 62-37, the fast-track bill, formally known as Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA.

Mr. Obama has long pushed for fast-track authority, which many past presidents have had. The power is seen as necessary to wrap up a 12-nation trade pact among countries around the Pacific Rim and possibly, later, a pact with European nations. 

Talks over the Pacific accord are nearly complete but have come to a standstill because U.S. trading partners are unwilling to make their best, final offers until Congress signals it is on board with the talks and won’t amend any agreement. 

House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi <http://topics.wsj.com/person/P/Nancy-Pelosi/5361> (D., Calif.), sank the fast-track package last week by voting against a key component which would extend the program to help workers hurt by foreign competition. In response, House Republican leaders stripped out that portion of the bill. 

Instead, House Republicans brought a stand-alone fast-track measure to the floor Thursday; it received the support of 190 Republicans and 28 Democrats. The vote showed the staying power of the 28 pro-trade Democrats, who also voted for fast-track authority last week, when the trade-negotiating power was part of the larger measure. 

Even with the leaders’ commitments however, supporters of TAA are concerned that Republicans, who are in the majority in both chambers, would oppose it. Many Republicans call the program an inefficient form of government welfare, and persuading Republicans in both chambers to support it could present a challenge.

Rep. Jim Himes, a pro-trade Democrat from Connecticut who met Wednesday with Mr. Obama, said the president said he would sign the fast-track bill into law before Congress had passed a bill to renew the workers’ aid program. 

While such a move would put pressure on House Democrats to reverse course and vote for a workers’ aid program they had previously voted against to scuttle the fast-track bill, the action could cut both ways. Some pro-trade Senate Democrats could withhold their support for the fast-track bill if they thought Mr. Obama was giving up his leverage to force passage of the assistance program.

“I can’t predict that,” Mrs. Pelosi said on Thursday when asked if she thought both the fast-track bill and the Trade Adjustment Assistance, also known as TAA, would pass. “I don’t see a path right now for TAA.”

The passage of a narrower fast-track bill through the House itself depended on the willingness of the small group of pro-trade Democrats to trust that Mr. McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner <http://topics.wsj.com/person/B/John-Boehner/6252> (R., Ohio) can fulfill their promise to find a way to separately renew the workers’ aid program. Mr. Obama, who has closely coordinated with the two Republicans, worked this week to build that trust, meeting with pro-trade Democrats to convince them there was a separate path for the renewal of TAA, which expires at the end of September. 

“The only legislative strategy that the president will support is a strategy that results in both TPA and TAA coming to his desk,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Wednesday. “There are a variety of ways to do that.”

Liberal groups weren’t convinced, and one outlined plans to take revenge on Democrats who voted for the fast-track bill. “Any Democrat in Congress who trusts John Boehner or Mitch McConnell to pass Trade Adjustment Assistance, that will actually help working families, deserves to lose their job,” said Jim Dean, the chair of Democracy for America, in a statement. “Whether it’s this election cycle or election cycles to come, Democracy for America will actively search for opportunities to make sure they lose their jobs and are replaced with real Democrats committed to fighting growing income inequality, not enabling it.” 

— William Mauldin contributed to this article.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes at wsj.com <mailto:siobhan.hughes at wsj.com>



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