Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has yet to say how she will vote. TRADE Dems weigh last-ditch move to sink trade bill They’re torn over whether to oppose worker aid again to register their opposition to Obama’s larger trade agenda.

With the Senate poised to clear a high-profile trade bill sought by President Barack Obama, the onus is shifting back to House Democrats. And the big decision they’re wrestling with is this: whether to vote against a related worker aid program they’ve long supported in a last-ditch bid to derail fast-track.

At this point, it looks as if a number of House Democrats who voted against Trade Adjustment Authority when it was linked to fast-track are now open to backing it. Democrats say some labor officials who gave them a pass on the first round are urging them to support it.


They are bowing to the larger reality that the fight over fast-track is over, and they lost.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) have yet to say publicly how they will vote when the House takes up TAA legislation, although Hoyer told Democrats on the floor Tuesday night that he would support the measure, according to Democratic sources.

The TAA vote could happen as early as this week as part of a bill to expand trade with Africa.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who led the charge against the TAA bill last time as a means to defeat fast-track, wouldn’t commit to voting against it again.

“We’re going to see what happens here and what’s coming and what the issue is,” DeLauro said Tuesday night. The Connecticut Democrat declined to go further, saying she was focused on the 2016 Labor-HHS-Education spending bill and hadn’t figured out her position on TAA.

If House Democrats vote against TAA and it’s defeated a second time — which seems highly unlikely — it would put Obama in the awkward position of deciding whether to sign a fast-track bill without government help that Democrats say is essential for workers whose jobs move overseas because of free trade.

Obama appeared at a fundraiser for House Democrats on Friday in San Francisco, and both the White House and Pelosi insist their relationship is fine. However, some Democrats opposed to the president’s trade initiative will be watching the California Democrat for signs on how they should vote on the TAA measure, which Obama wants.

Republican leaders separated the fast-track bill, known as Trade Promotion Authority, from TAA as a way to isolate House Democrats and stop them from using worker aid as a bargaining chip. That strategy appears to be on the brink of succeeding, after the Senate voted Tuesday to advance TPA with an assurance from GOP leaders that they’d take up TAA in subsequent votes.

Now, House Democrats will have to choose whether to try and block worker aid again, even though the fast-track bill is likely to become law regardless of how they vote on TAA. Critics have said doing so would be tantamount to punishing laid-off workers because Democrats lost the bigger political fight.

And all of this is playing out against the backdrop of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a mega-trade deal involving the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations that Obama hopes to push through as a key part of his economic agenda.

Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said it was time for Democrats opposed to fast-track, like him, to admit they lost and back TAA.

“I’m very concerned. The battle over TAA was to try and stop TPP and TPA because TPP was going in the wrong direction,” Levin said. “It was wise for us to try that, and we came close to defeating TPA. Now we face a different situation, and as someone who was an original author of TAA, I want to be sure that we end up with TAA. … We need to understand that the situation is different.”

However, some die-hard opponents of fast-track complain the current TAA measure is flawed and say they will continue to oppose it.

“It’s entirely inadequate for the hundreds of thousands of jobs we’re going to lose, so there is not much of a reason to vote for it. It’s totally inadequate,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.).

The uncertainty among House Democratic leaders about how to proceed underscores how divisive trade has become within the party, and how determined labor and progressives are to defeat the fast-track bill. The Senate is expected to approve the aid measure this week, and Obama has been courting lawmakers aggressively for their support.

Hoyer, who broke with Pelosi and the majority of other Democrats to back TAA earlier this month, said earlier in the day he wouldn’t “speculate” on which way he would vote until the Senate sends the House a worker assistance bill.

“We haven’t seen the TAA [bill] yet,” Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday. The Senate isn’t expected to have a final vote on TAA until later this week. “I am not going to speculate until we see the bill.”

When pressed by reporters — a half-dozen times in total — Hoyer declined to offer any further clue about how he would vote.

Pelosi’s office said she’s discussing the issue with fellow Democrats. A Democratic leadership aide said Pelosi, who voted against both TAA and fast-track, wouldn’t decide until after a Democratic Caucus meeting Wednesday. Senior Democrats were also gathering Tuesday evening for two leadership meetings focusing on the trade vote.

When the trade package hit the House floor two weeks ago, Pelosi refused to say how she planned to vote until right before the voting started, when she announced her opposition.

The majority of House Democrats opposed both bills after unions made the trade votes a litmus test. It’s unclear how aggressively unions will target members on a stand-alone aid bill, but top activist groups like the AFL-CIO and the Coalition to Stop Fast Track have linked the fast-track and TAA votes over the past week, slamming Democrats who back either measure.

Pelosi and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke over the weekend about the upcoming TAA vote, according to a Democratic leadership aide.

Unions kept pressure up on senators early this week with protests at the district offices of wavering Democrats. The United Food & Commercial Workers International Union had planned events in California, Delaware, Florida and Maryland to ratchet up pressure on Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Tom Carper, Chris Coons, Bill Nelson and Ben Cardin, among others.

Doug Palmer contributed to this report.