I get back from lunch and it looks like it’s been a crazy day in the House. Apparently the Democrats killed Obamatrade:
NY TIMES — House Democrats rebuffed a dramatic personal appeal from President Obama on Friday, torpedoing his ambitious push to expand his trade negotiating power — and, quite likely, his chance to secure a legacy-defining trade accord spanning the Pacific Ocean.
In a remarkable rejection of a president they have resolutely backed, House Democrats voted to kill assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has stood by for four decades. By doing so, they brought down legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress — before it could even come to a final vote.
“We want a better deal for America’s workers,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader who has guided the president’s agenda for two terms and was personally lobbied by Mr. Obama until the last minute.
“We’re not quite there, but we’re getting close,” said Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. At a hearing, he used a wedge of cheese to point out barriers to United States dairy exports.Obama’s Trade Deal Faces Bipartisan Peril in the HouseMAY 31, 2015
Republican leaders tried to muster support from their own party for trade adjustment assistance, a program they have long derided as an ineffective waste of money and sop to organized labor. But not enough Republicans were willing to save the program.Republican leaders then passed a stand-alone trade promotion bill, but that would force the Senate to take up a trade bill all over again. And without trade adjustment assistance alongside it, passing trade promotion authority in the Senate would be highly doubtful.
Apparently Obama’s ‘my way or the highway’ approach didn’t work too well, as he insulted Democrats to try and get their vote:
So apparently this is all dead right now? It sounds like it.