Senate GOP blocks hearing on free trade bills (AP)

WASHINGTON – Senate action on three stalled free trade agreements was cut short Thursday when Republicans refused to participate, objecting to linking the deals to renewal of a program that retrains workers hurt by foreign trade.

A Senate Finance Committee hearing on legislation involving agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama was canceled amid recriminations from both parties about playing politics.

There's bipartisan support for action on the pacts, holdovers from President George W. Bush's administration. Economists have said they could generate 250,000 jobs and increase U.S. exports by $13 billion.

But the Obama administration has said it wants the legislation to include renewal of expired sections of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides financial and job-retraining help to workers hurt by foreign competition. Republicans want to consider that separately.

"The president knew where we stood and he chose to ignore those who disagreed with him," said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the committee's top Republican. He spoke after GOP lawmakers announced they were boycotting the hearing and using a procedural tactic on the Senate floor to block it from occurring.

The committee chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont, said the move "means the opportunity to pass important job creation legislation is now delayed."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president believes the agreements are "economically vital" and that now is the time for Congress to act.

The trade deals were finalized in the Bush administration but were never taken up by the then-Democratic-controlled Congress.

The Obama administration has renegotiated the treaties to secure greater access for U.S. auto exports in Korea, change laws in Panama that made it a tax haven, and commit Colombia to acting to protect worker rights.

Republicans have pressed the administration to submit the bills to Congress, saying delays were causing billions of dollars in losses for U.S. farmers and manufacturers who are having trouble competing in those markets because of high tariffs.

The bills to put the trade deals in place need approval from the Senate committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, with the White House getting involved to help negotiate a final version that each chamber can pass or reject, but not amend.

The House committee has yet to meet on the issue.

House Speaker John Boehner's spokesman, Michael Steel, said Republicans were pleased that Obama was finally submitting the bills to Congress. But the GOP has maintained its position on the trade assistance program "and that is how we expect to proceed," he said.

Senate Republicans said there was no precedent for linking trade deals to a program they have supported in the past but which they now say is too expensive in an age of mounting deficits.

Committee Democrats disagreed and noted that a trade assistance bill was attached to the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s.

At issue are expansions in the program that were approved as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package. They extended benefits to people working in the service sector and made it easier for displaced workers to buy health insurance. Those sections expired in February and Democrats want them renewed, at least in part.

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Issa plans hearing on scandal-ridden education regulation (Daily Caller)

Top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa of California is quietly planning a hearing on a scandal-ridden new regulation just finalized by the Education Department, according to a June 13 letter he sent to New York Democrat Rep. Edolphus Towns.

The move comes as Issa has been investigating a related Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that was plagued by errors and, according to some GAO officials, political interference from top-ranking Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.

It is also in response to a May 24 letter from Towns requesting a hearing. Towns’ letter walks through some of the numerous issues facing the regulation, including the role of a group of Wall Street short sellers who lobbied the Education Department hoping to profit from strict new rules on the for-profit college sector.

June 2, the Education Department finalized the regulation, which puts strict new rules on for-profit or “career” colleges. The regulations were intended to address concerns from critics the schools use high pressure sales techniques to lure unprepared students into enrolling.

(Amid scandals, Education Department finalizes regulation on for-profit schools)

Issa suggests he’s planning to focus especially on the impact of the regulation on the economy.

“As I share concerns regarding the potential impact of this regulation on jobs, my staff has been closely following this regulation. In addition, the Committee is planning to schedule a hearing in the near future on the regulation,” Issa says in a June 13 letter to Towns.

As reported by The Daily Caller, Issa has been investigating an undercover sting unit at GAO that produced an error-ridden report on for-profit colleges, including interviewing the team that produced the report, staining the agency’s normally unimpeachable reputation.

The report was crucial to providing political momentum for the regulation. But in November, GAO issued a slew of corrections; the corrected version of the report paints a less critical picture of the schools.

Issa’s investigation is focused on the undercover team itself, not the for-profit proof per se. The team is described as having a history of faulty work.

As reported by TheDC, an internal GAO evaluation about what went wrong on the for-profit report faulted pressure from far left Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin as the reason for some of the reports “most obvious inaccuracies.”

The evaluation said “congressional staff” demanded the inclusion of numerous details in the report and, facing the “extreme short time frames” given to complete it, GAO “stretched whatever we could find” to fill in a key detail.

“They wouldn’t have included those references unless they felt bullied,” one former GAO official told TheDC.

But Harkin has angrily denounced the GAO’s allegations, his staff claiming his innocence publicly in a memo and privately in phone calls to key insiders.

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GOP-led House panel to hold Boeing hearing in SC (AP)

COLUMBIA, S.C. – A Republican-led House committee plans to hold a June 17 hearing in South Carolina on a federal board's suit alleging the Boeing Co. retaliated against Washington state union workers by building an assembly plant in this southern, right-to-work state.

The move by the hard-charging committee chairman, Republican Darrell Issa of California, represents the latest escalation of the fight between the National Labor Relations Board, which now has a majority of Democratic appointees, and Boeing and GOP elected officials.

The state's new Republican governor, Nikki Haley, has been hammering the Obama administration over the board's decision to sue Boeing for alleged labor law violations.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government announced Wednesday that the hearing will be held in North Charleston, home to Boeing's new 787 passenger aircraft assembly line. The committee has requested that NLRB general counsel Lafe Solomon appear at the hearing.

"This hearing will focus on how your actions against Boeing could impact the thousands of Boeing employees at a non-union worksite in South Carolina," Issa wrote Solomon on Tuesday. "You assert that you do not seek to close Boeing's operations in South Carolina, yet the relief requested would have that exact effect."

An administrative law judge in Seattle is set to consider the NLRB dispute June 14, with any subsequent decision subject to appeal to the board and a federal appeals court. Solomon cited that ongoing dispute as a reason to decline Issa's invitation. Issa said he would subpoena Solomon if necessary.

An NLRB spokeswoman said the agency had until Friday to respond to the committee's request.

The board sued Boeing in April, claiming the manufacturer located its assembly line in South Carolina to retaliate against Washington state union workers who went on strike in 2008. The NLRB wants that work returned to Washington state, even though the company has already built a new South Carolina plant — the largest single industrial investment in the state's history — and hired 1,000 workers.

Most 787s are being assembled in Washington state by members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Boeing expects to deliver the first one to a customer later this year, and with more than 800 orders, it's expected to be a major seller for years.

Boeing has said stopping work on 787s in South Carolina would be impermissibly punitive because it would effectively shut it down. The Chicago-based company has also taken issue with the labor board's claim that the company removed or transferred any work from its Puget Sound facility, saying all the work in South Carolina will be new and that no union member has lost a job over the action.

The wide-ranging dispute has drawn attention to the anti-union reputation of South Carolina, a right-to-work state where individual employees can join unions voluntarily, but unions cannot force membership across entire worksites. Like many others, the state also bars government employees from collective bargaining. In 2009, just 5.4 percent of the state's workers were covered by unions, according to federal Census data.

"This isn't about harming South Carolina employees," said Catherine Fisk, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine who specializes in labor issues. "What makes it, assuming the facts are proved, illegal for the company to decide to locate work in South Carolina rather than in Washington is the need to protect the Washington employees from retaliation and from the fear that they'll be retaliated against again in the future if they exercise their statutory rights."

Union issues also spill over into state government affairs. A week into office, Haley was sued by the Machinists union for saying the state would try to keep unions out of the Boeing facility. In a February show of disdain for unions, dozens of House members co-sponsored a now-stalled bill that would have exempted businesses from a proposed federal rule that they notify workers of their rights to unionize.

The executive director of a pro-union group said Wednesday that, while the congressional hearing is a distraction, the NLRB's legal case represents a crucial opportunity for parties on both sides to make their arguments — and for the federal agency to do its job.

"It's important for South Carolinians to know that it isn't about the status of the state as a right-to-work state. This is simply about the NLRB, the agency charged with enforcing our nation's labor law, doing its job," said Kimberly Freeman Brown of American Rights at Work. "The sad reality of it is that this is a political game that is being played out at a very serious time for workers in our nation's history."

Republicans and business groups say the board's efforts could stifle economic growth and prevent companies from expanding to other states where labor costs may be cheaper.

Saying he sees the case as an attack on right-to-work states and political payback to labor unions, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and other Republicans have tried unsuccessfully to put public pressure on the Obama administration to get the NLRB to back off. On Tuesday, DeMint sent a Freedom of Information Act request to NLRB seeking documents including communications with senior union officials, Congress and the administration. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said the NLRB complaint, if successful, would give unions a virtual veto over business decisions and punish states like South Carolina.

President Barack Obama's appointments have given the NLRB a Democratic majority for the first time in a decade, but it remains an independent agency unaccustomed to overt political pressure from the White House or Congress. Still, Republicans have doggedly attacked the Boeing lawsuit during at least two congressional hearings, and it was a prime topic during the GOP response to Obama's weekly radio address Saturday.

"Everything the NLRB has done up until this point is precedent-setting," said J.J. Darby, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business in South Carolina. "We're terribly disappointed that, when the economy is just now slowly starting to recover ... bureaucrats in Washington would do everything they do to tamp that down."

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Associated Press writer Sam Hananel in Washington contributed to this report. Kinnard can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

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