Supporters of a controversial trade bill are increasingly confident they can secure the votes needed to pass so-called fast-track legislation when it hits the House floor, which could come as early as this week.
Still, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and other GOP leaders have not yet committed to bringing up Trade Promotion Authority by week’s end, a sign that while pro-trade leaders in the House are closing in on the 217 ayes they need to pass the bill, the contentious vote remains very close. Only about a dozen members remain undecided, most of them Democrats, and President Barack Obama is expected to make another lobbying push this week to try and win over wavering members of his party.
Republican aides predicted a decision by Wednesday on whether the measure would come up for consideration in the House this week, signaling it does not have the votes to pass quite yet.
Support for fast-track — which allows Congress up-or-down votes to approve trade packages while barring amendments — is a rare point of agreement between Obama and Hill Republicans. And enacting fast-track would be a major victory for the president, who needs the expedited authority to finalize a huge Pacific trade accord, the centerpiece of Obama’s economic agenda.
In fact, with bitter fights looming over government spending this summer, it may be the last time for months that Obama and GOP leaders work together in relative harmony.
Congressional sources estimate the pool of undecided members at just over a dozen lawmakers — mostly Democrats torn between supporting Obama’s quest for a historic Pacific Rim trade deal and traditional party backers like labor unions, who have turned the TPA vote into a litmus test for deciding whether to support incumbents heading into 2016.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind, the lead Democrat whipping for the legislation, need at least 217 members to support the deal for it to pass, though congressional sources say both sides want 220 to 225 “yes” votes lined up to avoid the possibility that any one lawmaker could be tagged with casting the deciding vote. So far, more than 18 Democrats have publicly committed to supporting the legislation.
“Over the last few weeks, we have gained more support amongst House Democrats to pass a trade promotion authority bill that will strengthen fundamental labor and environmental rights protections and gives the American people at least 90 days to review every line, every word and every comma in the trade agreement before the House will vote on an agreement,” Kind said.
Kind added, “I am confident that we are going to have the Democratic votes needed to pass TPA.”
Selling fast-track to the House Democratic Caucus has always been the major hurdle, as the overwhelming majority of Republicans support the measure.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland have said they are committed to finding a “path to yes.” But they have otherwise refused to signal which way they are leaning on fast-track.
Pelosi and Hoyer want to avoid embarrassing Obama with a losing vote but are caught between competing loyalties to the president and their deeply progressive caucus. Labor unions believe Pelosi will ultimately side with them and vote against the package, but the White House has said privately it thinks the California Democrat is more inclined to support the bill when it comes to the floor for the vote.
On the whole, though, House Democrats oppose the measure. Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, have lobbied aggressively against fast-track because of larger concerns about labor and environmental standards and currency manipulation in the forthcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership. The massive trade package, which includes the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries, is still being negotiated.
“The majority of the House of Representatives knows the bill passed by the Senate is bad policy that would cost American jobs, depress our wages, and put seniors’ health and the safety of our food supply at risk. That is why there is such broad opposition,” DeLauro said Sunday in a statement issued by her office.
DeLauro, who has claimed for weeks she has the votes to defeat fast-track, has the backing of labor unions that are pledging to pull support from any vulnerable Democrat who votes for the trade legislation. Labor activists have already pledged to run $84,000 in TV ads in Rep. Ami Bera’s California district to punish the Democrat for his full-throated endorsement of fast-track.
“For huge numbers of us, it is a mistake to grant ‘fast-track’ while there remain major problems on so many issues with the TPP negotiations,” Levin said in a statement to POLITICO. “At this critical stage in the negotiations, Congress should not give the Administration a blank check on resolving those issues, leaving itself only with [a] yes or no vote after the agreement is done. We need a TPP that is clearly on the right track.”
With so much at stake, Obama has launched a lobbying blitz to push supporters his way. He’s spent the past two weeks calling up Democrats who were on the sidelines to assuage any lingering concerns. A number of those lawmakers, like Reps. Jim Himes of Connecticut and Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, have since signaled their support for fast-track.
Still, the vote margin has remained largely static, with both sides fiercely fighting over a small pool of undecided lawmakers. But the pro-trade wing won an unexpected victory over the weekend when Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) announced she would support fast-track — after previously signing on to letters voicing her opposition to the measure.
“Far too many things are getting lost in an important debate that has listed wildly between public policy, theatre, and threat. But a few things to me have become crystal clear, and these are what I’m going to let guide my vote when fast track hits the House floor in the coming weeks,” Rice wrote in an op-ed in The Hill. “Lost in the ensuing dust-up is that the fast-track legislation recently passed by the Senate outlines unprecedented requirements to address the worker-protection problems of NAFTA. It sets high labor and environmental standards, and ensures that trade sanctions can be imposed on any country that fails to meet these marks.”
Republicans are closely watching numbers on their side, too, with party leaders buoyed by the support they received throughout the week. Boehner, McCarthy and Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a key player in the fast-track fight, hosted a Wednesday meeting with trade associations, agriculture groups and manufacturers that drew 150 attendees. And lawmakers were treated to pizza in Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s office during a series of late-night votes that attendees said came with a side order of trade lobbying.
There is less dissent among the GOP Conference, but still, Boehner and McCarthy want to get their numbers closer to 190 before scheduling a vote. Ohio Republican Rep. Pat Tiberi, a close ally of Boehner’s and a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said over the weekend that trade is vital to growing the economy — a key selling point of the GOP leaders’ push to woo Republicans not thrilled with giving Obama more executive authority.
“If we pass TPA, we’ll be able to make agreements that give us access to billions of new customers,” Tiberi said in the weekly Republican address. “And our workers will be able to compete for that business on a level playing field, where we know we can outwork anyone.”