WASHINGTON — The House plans to vote Thursday on a bill to revive President Barack Obama’s fast-track trade proposal, members were told Wednesday.
The Republican majority’s chief vote counter, Rep. Steve Scalise, advised members of plans for the vote after leaders decided to attach the fast-track proposal, known as trade-promotion authority, to an unrelated bill.
The bill may pass, said Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, depending on assurances from Republican leaders that a separate measure assisting workers displaced by trade also would be approved.
The Republican plan is designed to bypass House Democrats’ refusal on June 12 to pass the workers’ aid plan as a means of blocking the fast-track bill from going to Obama for his signature.
House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a joint statement that said, “We are committed to ensuring both TPA and TAA get votes in the House and Senate and are sent to the president for signature.”
TAA is the worker-assistance program.
Most Republicans support the fast-track measure, sought by Obama to help his administration complete a Pacific Rim trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It would let the president submit trade pacts to Congress for an expedited, up- or-down vote without amendments.
The Republican plan would require the fast-track proposal to return to the Senate. The worker-assistance program, which expires Sept. 30, would be attached to another trade bill granting trade preferences to poorer countries, Kind said.
The fast-track and worker-aid measures passed the Senate in May as a single bill.
Boehner, an Ohio Republican, assured pro-fast-track Democrats in a meeting Tuesday that the worker aid program, called Trade Adjustment Assistance, will become law, said Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat.
“He said declaratively, ‘TAA will pass,’ ” Connolly told reporters.
While Democrats ordinarily support the aid for workers, many of them oppose fast-track on the grounds that trade deals have cost U.S. manufacturing jobs, and they used the procedural linkage between the two to stall fast track.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest stopped short of a veto threat if Republicans pass fast track without worker assistance but said “it won’t come to that” because any bill will require Democratic support, and they want worker assistance.
