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Distrust between White House, GOP leaves free trade bills in limbo
With only one week left of the summer recess, the White House and House Republican leadership are still missing a key ingredient needed to pass three long-delayed pending free trade agreements — trust.
During the past several months, congressional negotiators and the Obama administration have narrowed their differences, and earlier in the summer, passage of the deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama seemed imminent.
President Obama has spent most of August urging Congress to pass the deals, although the White House hasn’t sent them to Capitol Hill.
The administration is vowing to send the trade deals to Congress as long as Republicans agree to push through Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a worker-retraining program that is the primary demand of Democrats.
“The only thing preventing us from passing these bills is the refusal by some in Congress to put country ahead of party,” Obama said recently.
“Those trade bills are teed up. They’re ready to go. Let’s get it done.”
Obama’s comments fueled the frustration of Senate and House Republicans who have been clamoring for months to get the trade deals to the Hill.
In an Aug. 20 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Trade subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said “Congress can’t pass the agreements ‘right now’
because it doesn’t have them. They are still sitting on the president’s desk. Seriously.”
Senate and House GOP leaders have told the Obama administration they’ve got the votes to pass TAA, but those promises haven’t been enough to break the impasse, as the road to passage is rooted in an unresolved process.
Senate Republicans led by Rob Portman (Ohio), the former U.S. trade representative, and Roy Blunt (Mo.) say they can provide the filibuster-proof votes to pass TAA, seemingly calming administration concerns.
But the problem lies in the House and whether the White House is willing to trust those promises made by the Republican leadership to produce enough votes for TAA.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Camp say they have the votes to pass the worker-aid program, but the White House has remained unconvinced.
During the July mock markup, Camp made assurances that TAA will be considered, but that didn’t quell Democratic concerns that the program could get left behind when the trade deals gain approval.
Camp does have some clout. He helped craft a deal with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the White House that streamlines TAA and ensures it is offset by spending cuts.
Democrats have remained skeptical.
“We’ve learned before [that Republicans’ assurances are] an assurance of nothing,” House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) said last month.
Boehner has agreed to bring the trade bills and TAA, although he hasn’t provided any details on the process.
One avenue is for the House to approve a Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) bill, which expired in December, followed by Senate approval of GSP with the attachment of TAA.
That amended bill would return to the House, and then the Obama administration would submit the three deals.
The House would then hold four separate votes, one each on the trade deals and another on the TAA-GSP measure.
House Republicans should be able to push through the trade deals, but the lingering question is whether they can pass TAA. Until that’s certain, the White House is likely to remain wary of sending up the three bills until there’s a clear path.
Thus, the game of chicken goes on. And as the impasse continues, the White House won’t get TAA and Republicans can’t finish the trade deals, originally crafted during former President George W. Bush’s administration and tweaked by Obama.
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