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On June 23, 2015, Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim write on Politico:
The Senate narrowly agreed Tuesday to salvage President Barack Obama’s trade agenda, after several Democrats sided with GOP leaders to break a filibuster on standalone fast-track trade legislation.
The vote to advance the bill clears the way for Trade Promotion Authority legislation to become law by the end of the week. The House has already cleared the legislation and final passage is expected in the Senate by Wednesday.
The tight vote came as Democrats wavered on whether to trust Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to follow through on a joint pledge to shepherd into law both the fast-track bill, dubbed Trade Promotion Authority, and a measure to help laid-off workers known as Trade Adjustment Assistance. TPA will allow Obama to complete the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, but Democrats have long insisted that it be accompanied by TAA, which provides aid and job training for workers who lose their jobs to trade.
“I have been assured that the House and the Senate will take up TAA and the enforcement legislation,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who was concerned as late as Monday that the workers’ aid bill would not pass. “I appreciate the speaker saying he’s going to take it up this week and Sen. McConnell filing cloture on it.”
The Senate already passed a TPA/TAA package in May, but McConnell and Boehner split TPA from TAA after the package could not pass the House. On Tuesday, Democrats sought the strongest assurances possible that GOP leaders will see that fast-track and TAA pass, as well as a customs enforcement bill and a measure to boost trade with African countries.
Top Republicans moved to calm the jittery Democrats on Tuesday morning. Boehner said he “remains committed” to the pieces of the trade package that Democrats want; McConnell came to the Senate floor to declare the same.
“That is what my friends on the other side have said they wanted, and that is what can be achieved by continuing to work together,” McConnell said, pleading with Democrats and Republicans to “keep working together and trusting each other.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who helped write the trade legislation with Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), spent Monday evening working the phones to keep as many pro-trade Democrats as he could on board. With the newly announced opposition of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), leaders could only lose two pro-trade Democrats.
Wyden said he spoke with House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Monday night to press GOP leaders to include the wishes of pro-trade Democrats in the customs legislation when the House and Senate iron out their differences. And Wyden said it was time for Congress to “set a new course” and move beyond past mistakes in trade deals of the 1990s by passing TPA.
“Congress has an opportunity with this legislation to show that it can work in a bipartisan way to take on one of the premier economic challenges of our time,” Wyden said. “I urge all in the Senate to vote ‘yes.’”
But it was an extraordinarily difficult vote for many Democrats, as they found themselves under heavy pressure from unions and progressives. Senate Democrats supportive of the fast-track trade legislation huddled on Monday night to for a strategy session, but most remained mum after about how they would vote.
With the legislation hanging in the balance, anti-trade labor and liberal groups stepped up their last-minute whipping efforts.
“Without assurances that TAA will pass the House, or that the customs bill will ever see the president’s desk, considering Fast Track prematurely could compound its expected negative impacts, leaving U.S. workers in the lurch,” William Samuel, the AFL-CIO’s director of government affairs, wrote in a letter to senators ahead of Tuesday’s key procedural vote.
And Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), one of the most vocal opponents of the fast-track bill, railed against TPA moments before the vote, accusing Congress of turning its “moral” obligation to assist the working class.
“How shameful,” Brown said. “We’re making this decision knowing that people will lose their jobs because of our action.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/senate-trade-agenda-119326.html?hp=t3_r
Well, get prepared for another round of serious job lay-offs in the interests of bolstering manufacturing in low-wage foreign countries! Our so-called representatives knowledge this in that they are counting on the Republicans to approve the Trade Adjustment Assistance bill to help workers get retrained. Retrained to do what––lower paying jobs?
We need to start manufacturing our own products needed and wanted by our society, not outsource more manufacturing to low cost labor countries.
The promise of the Republicans to support the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) bill is more welfare payouts to the expected millions of American works whose jobs will be directly or indirectly eliminate due to the implementation of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement with Asian countries. The TPP is designed to enable the largest corporations to completely monopolize the OWNERSHIP of all future wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets on a global scale.
Why President Obama has become the out-front advocate for this is unbelievable!! And what about all the Congressmen and Congresswomen and Senators who have sold out the American people? The agreement will promote the interests of giant, multinational corporations over the interests of labor, environmental, consumer, human rights, or other stakeholders in democracy, AND FURTHER CONCENTRATE OWNERSHIP OF THE NON-HUMAN PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL MEANS OF PRODUCTION!
The REAL STORY is a story about the collusion among a globally wealthy ownership class to further concentrate private sector ownership in ALL FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital asset creation on a global scale. A sorta FREE TRADE ON STEROIDS!
