House members who haven’t made up their minds about President Obama’s trade agenda are this week in the middle of a tug-of-war before crucial Friday votes on the matter.
Supporters of bestowing the president with Trade Promotion Authority are currently engaged in horsetrading with undecided Dems, while opponents of the deal from both parties are pushing transparency measures that they hope, if passed, would expose a bad deal.
The on-the-fence bloc is currently rather significant, comprising roughly one-in-three House seats, according to an article published Wednesday by The Hill. The congressional daily said that members who have kept mum on how they currently intend to vote are either genuinely undecided, anxious about disappointing colleagues, or attempting to extract concessions from pro-trade leaders.
In the case of the latter, Republican leaders in the lower chamber are attempting to entice recalcitrant Dems by negotiating the appropriate levels of funding to help workers who are expected to be laid off as a result of deals catalyzed by the TPA.
But GOP leadership only looks set to offer the augmented “Trade Assistance Authority” outside of the TPA-TAA deal passed by the Senate—a move that would smooth passage of “fast-track” without tethering it to the crucial aid package, much to the chagrin of liberals.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has, however, made the Senate-passed TPA-TAA bill more palatable to her caucus by getting Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) to strip the legislation of a provision that would have put a cap on Medicare spending in order to finance the trade initiative.
Many trade deals in the past decade have been passed through significant sausage making, but those deals haven’t always stood the test of time. In 2001, then Rep. Jim Demint (R-S.C.) agreed to a TPA bill in exchange for “assurances from leaders they would help protect the South Carolina textile industry,” according to The Hill. By 2007, however, there were no textile factories left in South Carolina.
While there have been textile factories built in the state since then, the industry is a shadow of its former self. Last year, the state textile manufacturing sector employed about 14,000 people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2001, when DeMint was promised the industry wouldn’t be left without protections, it employed 39,340 South Carolinians, according to BLS.
Meanwhile, staunch opponents of TPA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement whose passage it would smooth, have introduced legislation that would force the administration to declassify all trade deals for two months before asking Congress to use fast-track authority.
The author of the measure, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, (D-Ohio) said that TPA “has become more of a blank check for the executive” and said her bill would put “an end to this dangerous and irresponsible approach that replaces it with sunlight in the form of public access and accountability.”
Kaptur’s bill has fifteen cosponsors, including six conservatives.
Opponents of the TPP have decried the secrecy enshrouding negotiations over the deal. The White House has countered that a 60-day public review period before an up-or-down vote in Congress will suffice, in terms of transparency.
In a move that could help the pro-transparency anti-TPP caucus, on Wednesday, Wikileaks published a Dec. 17, 2014 draft healthcare annex to the agreement. Firedoglake’s Kevin Gosztola described the leaked deal as seeking to enable “pharmaceutical companies to fight the ability of participating governments to control the rise of drug prices.”
