How Congress Voted on Trade
On Friday the House passed the TPA and rejected the TAA — all because of the TPP. Negotiations continue. Lost? We’ve got your back.
This article was updated on June 23, 2015.
Trade Promotion Authority (Fast-Track)
The United States is currently negotiating two major trade deals. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, and the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership, or TTIP. Although the deals are negotiated by the President, only Congress has the authority to make the changes to law that the deals could require.
Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, would “fast-track” the TPP and TTIP once they are finalized. This means that Congress will consider the deals without the opportunity for senators to filibuster or for members of either chamber to propose an amendment. It will be an up-or-down vote. Congress is deliberating whether to tie its hands together now in order to prevent the trade deals from unravelling once its members get a look later.
Senate Votes
First Vote (with TAA)
TPA had passed the Senate, back on May 22, 62-to-37 in a vote that combined the TPA with the TAA (see below) in a bill called the Trade Act, H.R. 1314. The vote was mostly along party lines, with Republicans backing President Obama’s goals for a trade deal.
Five Republican senators voted against, including Sen. Rand Paul (KY) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (AL). Fourteen Democratic senators voted in favor, including Sen. Patty Murray (WA), Sen. Benjamin Cardin (MD), and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA).
(The Senate fast-tracked the TPA itself. It co-opted H.R. 1314, a bill previously about tax-exempt organizations, and replaced the text of the bill in whole with the TPA and the TAA (see below), calling the new bill the Trade Act. So you may see the title of the vote may reflect the bill’s original subject in some places.)
Second Vote (without TAA)
After receiving from the House a new bill with TPA alone, the Senate passed cloture 60-to-37, on June 23, paving the way for a final up-or-down Senate vote on TPA.
Senators Cardin (D-MD) and Cruz (R-TX) changed their votes from Yea to Nay compared to the previous vote that combined TPA and TAA.
The new bill became the vehicle for passage of TPA. The bill was initially about the retirement funds of federal law enforcement officers and firefighters. The bill the Senate passed combined those provisions with the TPA.
House Votes
The House voted on TPA twice. The first time was after the Senate had given the House a bill that combined the TPA and the TAA (see below) into the Trade Act, H.R. 1314. The House took the unusual route of voting on the two parts separately on June 12.
The TPA initially passed the House 219-to-211. As in the Senate, the House vote was predominantly along party lines, with Republicans supporting the President’s trade deal.
The TPA was only “Title 1,” meaning the first part, of the Trade Act. Because the House did not pass the remainder of the bill (Title 2, which is the TAA, see below), this bill could not move forward.
The House voted on, and passed, TPA again on June 18 in a stand-alone bill without TAA. The vote was virtually identical to the previous week’s TPA vote with one exception: Rep. Ted Yoho (R, FL-3), who spoke harshly against the TPA in a statement last week, voted in favor of it this second time. (See our coverage of the second vote.)
House leaders separated the TPA from the TAA by moving TPA into H.R. 2146, a bill about the retirement funds of federal law enforcement officers and firefighters. The old provisions of the bill were retained when TPA was added to the end of this bill. This combined bill went to the Senate (see above).
(In fact, it went back to the Senate. H.R. 2146 had previous passed the House and the Senate, but the Senate passed it with a technical change — see our summary. Rather than concurring in the Senate’s technical change, the House added TPA.)
More on the TPA
The TPA would grant the President the authority to enter into trade agreements with foreign nations. It includes a list of negotiating objectives which these trade agreements should work towards. To maintain Congressional oversight, it would mandate that during the process of trade negotiations the United States Trade Representative (USTR) must meet with and provide access to classified or important documents at the request of any Member of Congress. The USTR would also be required to consult with any member of Congress that chooses to be designated a Congressional Adviser on Trade Policy and Negotiations.
Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA)
What is it?
While considering whether to fast-track the final deals, Congress also considered Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA. Trade adjustment assistance was initially created in the Trade Act of 1974 to provide benefits for workers and firms that have been negatively affected by trade agreements. It granted benefits such as job search and training assistance and monetary compensation. The new TAA would drop certain programs and grant more state control over job training assistance. It would also extend and reform the Health Coverage Tax Credit, which would assist workers qualified for TAA with healthcare costs.
Trade Promotion Authority and Trade Adjustment Assistance … have always been a package deal in Congress. Republicans support TPA because it leads to new trade agreements, while Democrats accept TAA as a consolation prize, because it mitigates the effect of outsourcing.
As a package, the TPA and TAA together make for a deal that the Democrats and Republicans were expected both to accept. But that did not happen.
The Votes
The Senate passed the TAA mostly along party lines in the combined vote described above.
But by combining the TAA with the TPA into one bill, the Senate had given opponents of the TPA a second opportunity to defeat it. Although Democrats overwhelmingly support the TAA, they voted against it to tank the whole bill. In the June 12 House vote on TAA, 144 Democrats joined 158 Republicans against the TAA. The vote was 126 (for TAA) to 302 (against TAA):
It is not clear to us why the bill was voted on in parts, but Speaker John Boehner probably believed that the package was more likely to be approved in parts than together — i.e. if Democrats hadn’t voted strategically. Had the TPA and TAA been voted on together, as it had been in the Senate, the result might have been different.
You may see in the roll call vote record that Rep. John Boehner, the Speaker, voted against the TAA, but this was for procedural reasons only.
(The TAA was Title 2 of the Trade Act. The vote was on Title 2 except section 212. Section 212, the Senate’s attempt to offset the cost of the TAA with a reduction in funding for Medicare, did not even get a vote in the House.)
The Two Trade Deals (TPP and TTIP)
The United States is currently negotiating two major trade deals. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is a deal being negotiated between 11 countries around the Pacific Rim (including us). These countries are seeking a new trade deal because of China’s obstructionism since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. The TPP is a deal to establish free trade between the member countries, which proponents believe will strengthen our economy. But the deal is being negotiated in secret, and watchdogs like Public Citizen are concerned the TPP will bind the United States in areas outside of conventional trade, including the regulation of financial markets and even free speech.
The U.S. is simultaneously negotiating the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union. This deal is also being negotiated in secret.
Neither deal has been figured out yet, and what Congress voted on last week was whether to fast-track its consideration of the deals once they are finalized.
