WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is making an 11th-hour appeal to Democrats to rescue his landmark trade bill just hours ahead of showdown votes in the House.
The president’s rare last-minute visit to Capitol Hill Friday morning suggested the legislation was short of votes and in jeopardy. With many Democrats in open rebellion against their president on this issue, Obama sought to stave off a humiliating defeat at the hands of his own party on a top second-term priority.
The outcome was uncertain and the drama was intensifying heading into afternoon votes. In frantic last-minute maneuvering, liberals turned against a favored program of their own that retrains workers displaced by trade. Killing the program would kill the companion trade bill, and many Democrats and labor leaders advocated just that.
The move caught the GOP off-guard. House Republicans, already in the awkward position of allying themselves with Obama, found themselves being asked by their leaders to vote for a worker retraining program that most have long opposed as wasteful. Many were reluctant to do so, leaving the fate of the entire package up in the air, and Obama facing the prospect of a brutal loss — unless he can eke out what all predict would be the narrowest of wins.
“If we have to pass something that’s a Democratic ideal with all Republicans to get the whole thing to go,” said Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., “we could be in trouble.”
The main trade bill at issue would give Obama so-called “fast track” authority to negotiate trade deals that Congress could approve or reject, but not amend. He hopes to use the authority, already agreed to by the Senate, to complete a sweeping pact with 11 other Pacific Rim nations which would constitute the economic centerpiece of his second term. Obama says such a pact with Japan, Mexico, Singapore and other nations constituting 40 percent of the global economy would open up critical new markets for American products.
Business groups like the Chamber of Commerce crave the deal; labor unions are ardently opposed, pointing to job and wage losses from earlier trade pacts opponents say never lived up to the hype from previous administrations.
Those colliding interests have produced unusual alliances on Capitol Hill, with House Republicans working to help a president they oppose on nearly every other issue, and most Democrats working against him.
Yet in a convoluted series of events Thursday, the fast-track bill, long the main event, seemed to fade in importance even as Republicans began sounding confident it would command enough votes to pass. Instead, Democrats began eyeing the possibility of taking down the related Trade Adjustment Assistance bill — a maneuver that would be made possible only because of how House leaders decided to link the two of them in rules governing how they would come to a vote.
Republicans said that the sequencing was determined at the behest of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Pelosi, trying to maintain leverage, has remained noncommittal on the whole issue to the end, even as she worked behind the scenes with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, this week to solve a last-minute hang-up involving Democratic concerns about cutting Medicare funds to pay for worker retraining.
The intricate solution to the Medicare issue lay in finding another revenue source —various tax penalties — and also lining up the votes in a certain order that made passage of the fast-track bill contingent on passage of the trade adjustment bill. That created the opening for Democratic fast-track opponents to take aim at the trade adjustment measure.
“The TAA is the handmaiden to facilitate the whole deal,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. “We have the potential to stop this whole train.”
Friday’s outcome appears to depend on how many Democrats defect on the trade adjustment bill — and whether Republicans can make up their numbers. The biggest questions hanging over the House late Thursday were: How many of the 188 Democrats will vote against TAA because it’s the best way to kill fast track? And how many of the 246 Republicans might hold their noses and vote for the jobs program in a bid to save fast track?
The trade issue’s divisiveness was evident when the House voted narrowly, 217-212, on a procedure Thursday to advance the package to Friday’s expected showdown.
The White House, recognizing the precarious position the package is in, dispatched top officials to Capitol Hill Thursday to meet with Democrats, and Obama himself made a surprise appearance at Thursday night’s annual congressional baseball game. Arriving as Democratic and Republican lawmakers faced off at Nationals Park, Obama was greeted with chants of “TPA! TPA!” from the GOP side — the acronym for the Trade Promotion Authority fast track bill.
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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Have you ever seen Obama move so fast to help the middle class?
No.
Why. Because he doesn’t give a rats what-do-you-call it about the middle class.
Let this image: Obama rushing to get votes to pass a piece of legislation to install a corrupt global judiciary to trump US laws - let this image define Obama’s tenure in office.
Let these numbers define Obama’s legacy:
The asset values of 93% of Americans has declined under Obama. The asset values of the top 7% have risen 28%.
I have never seen Obama fight this hard and put as much pressure on Congress as he is now doing. He has teamed up with the Republicans to fight the Democrats. He has teamed up with the oligarchs to fight the middle class and the poor. Everything I hope for and dream about as a Democrat Obama has either opposed or dragged his feet on or given only token support to. Obama is a corporate Democrat, a pawn of Wall Street, a neoliberal (in the worst sense of the word.) I’m even starting to think he is a neocon. No politician in my lifetime has disappointed me as much. This makes me unbearably sad.
This is the wrong bill for possibly a good idea. The secrecy and the whole idea of fast track are big issues and lead to the conclusion that there is definitely something to hide. Why Obama goes with this approach baffles me.
I say, shitcan the whole deal, start over with something the Democrats write and believe in and if anyone is going to be pissed off about it, let it be the fricking corporations and their minions, the Republican establishment. Why give Boener and McConnell a win at our expense?
Trade deal, potentially a good thing.
Fast track, deal breaker and suspicious.
Singular authority for fast track, worse on top of bad.
A couple of points:
There was a recent column about how the crafting of the US Constitution was itself a closed-door meeting of political elites, necessary due to the difficulty of publicly negotiating a complex agreement with multiple parties. Here is a llnk: http://www.blue-route.org/blog/blog/economy/fast-track-gave-u-s-constitution.
Also, the National Conference of Mayors – made up largely of elected Democrats – endorsed the proposed Asia trade agreement.
Also, the Los Angeles Times reports that Mexican farm workers won what are described as “landmark” concessions on wages, benefits and workplace conditions.
Here is the link: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/farm-laborers-in-mexico-win-raises-benefits-in-landmark-deal/ar-BBkKL7q
Any thoughts on possible ramifications of this development, or on how it might impact the dynamics or momentum on the TPP negotiations?
My assets haven’t declined, at least since Obama got the economy back on track and I’m not rolling like a lot of people in my line of work are again. I’ve got great insurance now and all of my children are working steady full time jobs which wasn’t the case in '08, '09 and '10 after the Bush debacles. In fact, I cringe to imagine where we would’ve wound up without President Obama’s leadership.
This TPP thing is highly suspicious but it far from encapsulates the President as you are pushing for.
Your numbers reflect what you want them to reflect but are very fishy compared to many other measuring sticks. The rich getting richer isn’t exactly a new thing or something that Obama created, that is purely blindered horseshit.