The House Passes the TPA, again

This afternoon the House voted, and passed, Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in a stand-alone bill without Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), sending it back to the Senate for approval. (See our previous coverage and full explanation of TPA, TAA, and TPP.)

One changed vote

Today’s 218–208 vote is virtually identical to last 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 afternoon. We called Yoho’s office for an explanation but have not yet heard back. (See this comparison of the two votes by our friend Joe Carmel.)

(The vote was on a different bill than last week — see below for explanation.)

Committee vote

TPA came to the floor as a standalone vote through a House Rules Committee vote which was 7-to-3 along party lines (see the committee’s report).

Two Republican members of the House Committee on Rules, who last night voted to split the TPA from Trade Adjustment Assistance, actually voted in favor of TAA last Friday: Reps. Tom Cole (R-OK4) and Steve Stivers (R-OH14).

The Democratic representatives Louise Slaughter (D-NY25), Jim McGovern (D-MA2), and Alcee Hastings (D-FL20) all voted against TAA last Friday — presumably to tank TPA — and voted against TPA again last night.

What happened

House leaders separated the TPA from the TAA this week 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 now goes to the Senate.

(In fact, it goes 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.)

The Senate will now have to decide whether to approve the House’s addition of TPA to H.R. 2146. But this is a removal of TAA from the original package deal. Senate Democrats may balk, but they may not have the numbers to vote the bill down.

This is the second vote in the House on TPA. The last vote was on the Senate’s Trade Act, H.R. 1314, that combined TPA and TAA. Although House Democrats support TAA, they voted against it last week to tank the whole bill (see our previous coverage and full explanation of TPA, TAA, and TPP). By doing so, they gave House Republicans the opportunity to pass the TPA alone and risk losing the one part of the trade deal they supported.