Republicans block action on Bush trade pacts (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked action on three free trade agreements they have long supported to protest against President Barack Obama's decision to include a retraining program for workers hurt by trade in one of the bills.

"We gave the administration fair warning on this," said Senator Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, referring to the fight over the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.

"We made it clear time and time again that we would not stomach attaching a program as big as this on to these agreements. The president knew where we stood and he decided to ignore those who don't agree with him," he told reporters.

The deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia are expected to boost exports by $13 billion, helping to support or create tens of thousands of jobs.

But the dispute clouds chances of their approval by the end of July, as both the Obama administration and many Republicans have said they want.

Democrats accused Republicans of a political stunt aimed at hurting Obama ahead of the 2012 presidential elections, after demanding for years he send the deals to Congress for a vote.

"Today the agreements were there -- and Senate Finance Committee Republicans were not," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement.

"Americans need their leaders at work -- in their seats, eyes on the ball, pushing every day to enact policies that create jobs here at home, advance this country's economic recovery, and help our working families."

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus canceled a Thursday meeting of the panel after the Republican boycott.

Hatch said Republicans were making a principled stand and tried to persuade Democrats to reschedule the meeting to give senators more time to review the legislation and the 97 amendments expected to be offered.

"Why isn't this reasonable to give the senators on the committee the time to consider these agreements? What is the White House afraid of?" Hatch said.

$1 BILLION A YEAR

TAA was broadened in 2009 to cover more workers and provide more healthcare assistance. But those new benefits, which boosted the cost of the program to about $1 billion per year, expired early this year and Republicans in the House of Representatives, fresh from their victory at the polls in November, balked at renewing them.

That made Obama's job to win approval of the trade pacts more politically difficult since many Democrats blame previous agreements for the loss of manufacturing jobs.

In May, the White House warned it would not send the trade deals to Congress for votes until there was also a deal to renew TAA. They negotiated a compromise TAA program with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, a Republican, and stuck it in the implementing bill for the South Korea deal, although Camp did not agree to that move.

Baucus, a Democrat, said U.S. exporters would pay a price for the setback.

"Every day we delay, we lose ground to our competitors. Tomorrow, Korea's trade agreement with the European Union goes into force. In August, Colombia's deal with Canada enters into force," said Baucus.

He said after the aborted meeting that he still hoped for action in July on the pacts.

The House Ways and Means Committee could take up the agreements next week, but Republicans in that chamber also are insisting on a separate vote on TAA.

The three deals were signed during the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush and have been languishing for more than four years.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a letter to Baucus and Hatch, said it strongly supported both the trade deals and renewal of TAA, as well as two trade programs for developing countries included in the Senate draft version of the Colombia implementing bill.

"A U.S. Chamber study has warned that the United States would lose more than 380,000 jobs and $40 billion in export sales if the pending agreements suffer further delays," said R. Bruce Josten, the group's executive vice president.

(Additional reporting by Donna Smith; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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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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US trade official 'dumbfounded' by GOP boycott (AP)

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration's top trade official said Friday he is "dumbfounded" and "shell-shocked" by Senate Republicans who blocked action on three free trade agreements the GOP largely supports.

In an interview with The Associated Press, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said he was caught by surprise when GOP senators didn't show up at a hearing Thursday to consider trade pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. Republicans object to Democrats' decision to link the deals to the renewal of a program that retrains workers hurt by foreign trade, and want to consider the program separately.

"I'm dumbfounded," Kirk said. "The Republicans for the most part said, `You get these agreements here, we'll pass them tomorrow, send them up.'"

The GOP boycott came after the White House heralded a bipartisan agreement between Senate Democrats and House Republicans over extending the retraining program, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA. But Republicans say that was an agreement about the size and scope of the extension of the training details, not the process for getting it through Congress. Republicans want to send the training program to the floor separately.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said it shouldn't have come as a surprise to the administration that Republicans had outstanding issues heading into Thursday's planned hearing.

Sen. Hatch "was clear about his serious concerns when the administration took the unprecedented path of including an unrelated spending measure" in a trade agreement, Hatch spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier said Friday.

Meantime, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York argued Friday that Republicans are purposefully sabotaging the economy to improve their election chances.

"In recent months, on issue after issue, they are opposing things they have supported in the past, almost all of them focused on the economy," Schumer said. "They seem to be tying themselves in a pretzel of contradiction."

The political posturing from both sides of the aisle leaves the fate of the three trade deals uncertain.

The administration and many Republicans have said they want to pass the trade deals by the time Congress breaks for August recess. If the deals don't pass this summer, political considerations could make it difficult for President Barack Obama to reintroduce the pacts in a re-election year. Unions and labor leaders — both are core constituencies for the president — are largely opposed to the free trade agreements.

For now, Obama is touting the deals as job creators that could give a much-needed jolt to an economy saddled with 9.1 percent unemployment.

"Right now, Congress can advance a set of trade agreements that would allow American businesses to sell more of their goods and services to countries in Asia and South America, agreements that would support tens of thousands of American jobs while helping those adversely affected by trade," Obama said Wednesday.

The U.S. signed the trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia in 2007 under President George W. Bush. But the then-Democratic-led Congress never brought the agreements up for vote, giving the Obama administration time to renegotiate areas it found objectionable.

U.S. trade officials spent months negotiating outstanding issues on the pacts, reaching an agreement in December on the deal with South Korea, the largest and most highly sought-after of the three. The administration says the trade deals combined would support more than 70,000 jobs and boost U.S. exports by about $13 billion.

Republicans have pressed the administration for months to submit the bills to Congress, saying delays were causing billions of dollars in losses for U.S. farmers and manufacturers 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, and the Senate Finance Committee has not announced when it will make another attempt to consider the agreements.

Kirk said he's still optimistic lawmakers will come to an agreement this summer.

"I hope the imperative of doing something good for this country will override the appeal of scoring political points short-term," he said.

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Associated Press writer Jim Abrams contributed to this report.

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Julie Pace can be reached at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

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Republicans call Obama trade policy "schizophrenic" (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top Senate Republicans on Tuesday accused President Barack Obama of a "schizophrenic trade policy" and urged him to send free trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama to Congress without further delay.

In back-to-back speeches on the Senate floor, Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Orrin Hatch blasted the White House for refusing to submit the agreements until lawmakers agree to renew the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program at or near 2009 levels.

"At a time when 14 million Americans are looking for work, they actually want to hold off on these known job-creating agreements in exchange for a green light to spend more money. It's astonishing," McConnell said.

The five-decade-old TAA program, which was expanded in 2009 to around $1 billion a year, provides retraining and healthcare benefits for workers who have lost their job because of import competition or their workplace relocating overseas.

Many Republicans argue the program is a waste of taxpayers' money as Congress looks for ways to cut the huge budget deficit. They also say it is unfair that workers who lose their jobs because of foreign competition get more generous unemployment benefits than most other workers.

"We need to separate these issues, deal with them independently, and move ahead with these trade deals," which the White House itself has estimated would create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs, McConnell said.

He said Democrats were holding up the pacts to get a better deal for union groups that oppose them.

At a news conference, McConnell told reporters Republicans "would be happy" to consider TAA if it was coupled with legislation to give Obama trade promotion authority to negotiate new trade agreements.

That authority, which expired during the second term of former President George W. Bush, allows the White House to negotiate trade deals that Congress must approve or reject without making any changes.

Obama has not asked for the authority, but his administration is negotiating a regional trade agreements with eight countries in the Asia Pacific region.

APPROVAL THIS YEAR

Carol Guthrie, a spokeswoman for the Trade Representative's office, said Obama was "committed to passing all three trade agreements this year as well as extending Trade Adjustment Assistance."

The administration has been moving toward the first step in congressional consideration of the agreements, the so-called "mock markups" held by the Senate Finance Committee and the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee before the White House formally submits the pacts, she said.

"Congress can keep faith with America's workers by reaching an agreement on TAA by the time that work is done, so that these agreements are not delayed," Guthrie said.

Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, accused the White House of professing to support the trade agreements while coming up with one excuse after another not to send them to Congress for a vote.

"This schizophrenic trade policy is doing nothing but hurting American workers and undermining our recovery," Hatch said, adding he believed each pact would pass with bipartisan support if Obama submitted them.

He said he feared the 2012 elections could doom the trade agreements if Obama does not send them to Congress soon for a vote.

"I'm afraid that if these agreements aren't submitted this summer, they never will be," Hatch said.

"If the expanded TAA program can stand on its own merits, as each of the FTAs can, then it should be introduced and voted on separately from the FTAs," he said, referring to the free trade agreements.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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