President Obama used his weekly address to urge House Democrats to reconsider extending a worker assistant program, which they refused to do Friday in a surprise vote.
The president tried all week to rally his party around a trade package, which would have extended Trade Adjustment Assistance, a safety-net program for workers displaced by trade deals. But at the last minute, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi opposed the bill, delivering a blow to one of Obama’s biggest agendas in his final term as president.
“Trade Adjustment Assistance provides vital support, like job-training and community college education, to tens of thousands of American workers each year who were hurt by past trade deals … the House of Representatives has chosen to let it expire in just a few months, leaving as many as 100,000 American workers on their own,” Obama said.
The measure was coupled with another one giving the president trade promotion authority, a controversial provision allowing Obama to negotiate trade deals that can’t be amended or filibustered by Congress. Republican leaders, who support trade promotion authority, or “Fast Track,” hoped to gain enough Democratic support for it by pairing it with the TAA extension.
That provision got a majority vote — but under House rules it could only succeed if the TAA measure had passed as well. The twin measures aren’t dead, as the House intends to hold a second vote next week, but the Friday vote does bode poorly for Obama’s trade aspirations.
Congress should do the “right thing” and pass the trade package, Obama said in his address.
“If I did not think that smart new trade deals were the right thing to do for working families, I wouldn’t be fighting for it,” he said.
