hurricanemaxi
Joined: 08 Sep 2011
Posts: 66
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 Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2011 5:03 am Post subject: Senate Poised to Vote on Trade Aid That May Advance Accords |
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The Senate is debating and plans to vote today on the renewal of aid for workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition, a step that would open the way for President Barack Obama to submit three free-trade agreements.
Lawmakers are to consider a scaled-back version of Trade Adjustment Assistance negotiated by Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and Representative Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican as an amendment to a bill renewing tariff preferences for developing nations. Republicans led by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah failed in the past two days to trim the benefits and enact the aid only when trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama are signed into law.
Renewing the worker benefits would meet a condition Obama set before he would send Congress the trade accords reached under President George W. Bush and awaiting approval since 2007.
“It’s been four years that people have been hanging around waiting for these things to be submitted to the floor,” William Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council and a Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration, said in an interview. “I’m optimistic we can get all this done.”
Trade Adjustment Assistance augments health and unemployment benefits to workers who lose their jobs because of overseas competition. As part of stimulus legislation in 2009, it was expanded beyond manufacturing to include service workers such as call-center employees. Republicans say renewing the extended aid would be too costly when lawmakers are struggling to reduce the federal deficit.
Trade Deals
The proposal to renew aid for service workers, estimated by the Senate Finance Committee to cost $320 million annually, would continue most of the assistance through 2013 and provide retroactive benefits to those left out so far this year.
The South Korea trade deal, the biggest for the U.S. since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, would boost U.S. exports by as much as $10.9 billion in the first year in which it’s in full effect, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission. The accord with Colombia would increase exports by as much as $1.1 billion a year.
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