Business’ push for trade legislation is down to one-on-one lobbying with lawmakers, Business Roundtable President John Engler said Monday, predicting a vote on the bill soon.
“It’s literally one-by-one, district-by-district, trying to close up the remaining undecided votes,” said Engler, the former governor of Michigan. “And there’s still some there. But we expect to succeed.”
Engler spoke about business’ push for legislation for Trade Promotion Authority Monday afternoon on a call with reporters to announce business CEOs’ economic projections for the year.
The executives who are part of the group downgraded their estimates of U.S. economic growth for 2015 and cited the slow growth as a motivation for their “all-out” effort to pass the trade legislation. They now see growth in the gross domestic product clocking in at 2.5 percent for 2015, down from 2.8 percent in an earlier projection, and business investment, sales and hiring all to be lower.
“Public policy does not support increased business investment,” said Randall Stephenson, the group’s chairman and the chairman and CEO of AT&T.
Stephenson said Trade Promotion Authority would be the top item to spur business investment. The legislation would provide the president with the authority to negotiate a trade deal that would receive an up-or-down vote on the deal in Congress, without amendments. It is considered essential to pursuing the current Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other countries and a future European trade deal.
Stephenson said the group’s members were engaged in an “all-out, full court press” on the bill, which has passed the Senate but faces Democratic opposition in the House. Passing the authority is a top priority for President Obama and GOP leadership.
Business Roundtable coalition members have engaged in a massive campaign for the bill, Stephenson said, including 153,000 letters of support, 146 opinion pieces, 50,000 constituent calls and emails to members of Congress, and 850 personal meetings with representatives.
The group is “hopeful that there will be a vote very, very soon,” Stephenson said. “We’re optimistic that something’s going to get done on this in short order.”
