The House on Thursday passed the first of four bills in a critical trade package that would ultimately allow President Obama to secure expedited international trade agreements.
The House voted 397-32 to pass the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which will allow sub-Saharan nations to continue to export goods to America duty free, including oil and clothes.
The legislation also included a provision the Republican majority negotiated with Democrats that would change the way the federal government would pay for a trade adjustment assistance program for displaced workers. Instead of taking funds from Medicare, the TAA money would come from enhanced tax law enforcement.
Despite winning the change to TAA funding, Democrats may not support legislation creating the program, which is up for a vote tomorrow.
The Trade Promotion Authority bill (TPA) is the measure that would authorize President Obama to secure expedited trade deals, which most Democrats oppose because they believe it will kill jobs. Democrats know that voting against the TAA would in effect kill the TPA bill, and some are considering a “no” vote to kill the TPA.
“It seems like you complicated that by not allowing the House to have two separate votes on two completely separate issues,” Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said to the GOP during floor debate.
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a chief negotiator in favor of the trade package, said that the two provisions arrived attached as one bill from the U.S. Senate, where it passed last month.
House Republicans, Ryan said, are allowing two different votes through a special parliamentary procedure.
“The bill came over from the other body together,” Ryan said. “That is why they are not two separate bills, but they are separate votes.”
The House is scheduled to take up both the TAA and TPA legislation on Friday.
Democrats are expected to make up the majority of votes on TAA, while the vote is expected to be very close on TPA.
Democratic leadership aides tell the Washington Examiner that Republicans will need to come up with approximately 200 GOP votes to help achieve a 217-vote majority needed to pass the TPA legislation.
Republicans and Democrats in favor of the bill, including President Obama, are intensely lobbying lawmakers. White House spokesman Josh Earnest warned Democrats Thursday that if they voted against TAA in order to kill the Trade Promotion Authority legislation, the current trade assistance program for workers would expire.
“What that means is it means that if you’re a member of Congress, and you vote against trade adjustment assistance this week, you are adding your name to the death certificate of trade adjustment assistance because it will go away,” Earnest told reporters in the daily press briefing.
