House Sends Trade Adjustment Assistance to President’s Desk

[yallerdawg]

http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/house-sends-trade-adjustment-assistance-presidents-desk/?dcz=

The House did Thursday what two weeks ago might have seemed impossible: Cleared for President Barack Obama the second and third of four necessary components to his ambitious and contentious trade agenda.

Lawmakers voted 286-138 on a bill to establish broad trade preferences and extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which facilitates trade between the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa.

The bill became a vehicle to also pass Trade Adjustment Assistance, which aids U.S. workers displaced by global trade agreements, and language to change TAA’s original offset, which would have used sequester cuts to Medicare.

All that’s left now is a bill to strengthen the customs process, which both chambers will go to conference on in the coming weeks.

[Faux pas]

1. This is all I got

...

[yallerdawg]

2. Labor got in, too.

Even the AFL-CIO, which has been withholding donations from congressional Democrats and campaigning against pro-trade lawmakers, stood down this week.

“We do not have confidence that the White House would hold out for a stronger TAA bill if this one were to fail,” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka wrote to members Wednesday. “Therefore we urge you to vote your conscience, and we will respect your decision, whatever it may be.”