President Barack Obama on Tuesday collided politically with his own party when Senate Democrats stalled consideration of a trade measure that would give the administration greater authority to negotiate more freely with other countries.
The Senate vote was a sharp blow to the president’s efforts to win approval for a new Asia-Pacific trade bill that has emerged as a top agenda item for Obama. Only one Democratic senator, Tom Carper of Delaware, voted with the president.
Administration officials and Republican leaders immediately said they would bring a measure back to the Senate floor.
But the setback highlighted the president’s failure so far to convince Democratic lawmakers, labor union leaders and environmental groups that the 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership would help the U.S. economy. Obama has argued that the pact would open markets, promote better labor conditions abroad, and protect endangered species and the environment.
Obama has made the trade deal one of his top priorities, and to bolster his ability to finish negotiating the still-secret terms of the accord he has asked Congress to give him “fast track” trade authority. But a procedural motion to open up debate of the fast-track legislation failed by a 52-45 vote, falling short of the 60 votes needed to begin consideration of the complex Pacific trade accord.
Before the vote, White House press secretary Josh Earnest played down crumbling support for the legislation as merely a “procedural snafu” — a phrase he repeated 10 times — that could be worked out in the coming days. Earnest said fast-track authority was “critically important to the future of our economy.”
But in the Senate, the measure’s failure seemed to be more than a snafu. The trade accord has sparked a Democratic revolt and laid bare a spat between Obama and liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. And it has embittered labor union leaders who feel they helped elect Obama and have received little for their efforts.
Moreover, Senate Democrats — including the handful who have supported Obama’s trade push — said they were not inclined to move forward with debate unless Republican leaders provided assurances that related pieces of trade-related legislation would move in tandem.
That group included Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who negotiated the trade package with top Republicans in the House and Senate and who has been a rare ally of Obama’s trade agenda inside the president’s party.
“Until there is a path to get all four bills passed,” Wyden said after a lunchtime meeting with fellow pro-trade Democrats, “we will — certainly most of us — have to vote no.”
As the vote was faltering in a midday roll call, the bloc of Democrats willing to support the trade legislation was summoned to the White House for a meeting with Obama and top deputies to try to forge a compromise, according to congressional and administration officials. But it was too late.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that Republicans were willing to attach “trade adjustment assistance” — which would provide funding authority for worker assistance programs — to the fast-track bill. But he made no pledge to include a trade enforcement bill — which would, among other things, take aim at alleged Chinese currency manipulation and is opposed by the administration — or a fourth bill concerning trade with Africa.
McConnell said those provisions could be attached by amendment to the bills under consideration.
“We want to pass this and get this to the president’s desk,” he said. “It’s the Democrats who are standing in the way of what is one of the president’s prime domestic policy plans for the economy of this country.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, one of the Senate’s fiercest opponents of free trade, said late Monday that the vote to proceed would fail unless Republicans made a more solid commitment to take up the related bills.
But Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Monday that there was “no compromise that can be reached that is going to link all four bills together.”
Moving all four trade bills in tandem, he said Tuesday, is “not what we agreed to. It’s not what we went forth on. It’s not what everybody understood, and it’s strange to me that they would change their commitments at the last minute.”
The challenge for Obama is not convincing anti-trade hard-liners such as Brown but rather convincing a core group of pro-trade Democrats, such as Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., to back trade promotion authority, the formal name for the fast-track bill. TPA gives the president the power to negotiate an international deal that Congress can approve or reject but not modify.
“I don’t think today’s vote is a death knell for TPA,” Coons said. “But it is a very strong warning shot to the majority leader and those who would advance TPA that without worker protections, without enforcement provisions, they will likely not move forward.”
McConnell was the only Republican to vote against proceeding, a tactical move giving him the ability to quickly hold another vote later if circumstances change. Whether that would happen later this week or whether the standoff could extend through next week and into a weeklong Memorial Day recess remained unclear Tuesday.
