White House launches frantic campaign to save trade deal

Trying to close out a tight game after a day when his trade agenda reached the brink of failure, President Barack Obama made a last-minute, unscheduled run to the congressional baseball game Thursday night.

Popping up out of the Democrats’ dug-out at Nationals Park with 24 White House beers on offer for the winning team, Obama was greeted with Republicans chanting “TPA, TPA!”


The appearance, not on the president’s schedule and not expected until just before he got into the motorcade, topped a day of heavy lobbying from administration officials trying to save fast track authority after House Democrats’ internal struggles pushed Obama’s top legislative priority perilously close to defeat.

Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough finished the afternoon in a meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whom the White House has been counting on to help bring the trade deal over the line — but who in the last few days seemed on the brink of derailing the legislation over a dispute about paying for Trade Adjustment Assistance, a safety net program for workers displaced by trade deals.

Pelosi was the first member Obama greeted as he arrived at the game, followed by Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), the Democrats’ team manager for the game and a fast track opponent. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), an undecided vote on TPA who’d voiced concerns over TAA, was at Obama’s side most of the time.

The president didn’t do any formal lobbying, but waved to a cheering crowd. The point was less to appeal to members directly than to try and drive home the point that he’s still popular, nudging members to support the trade deal because it’s got his name on it.

For all the back and forth on Thursday, it’s not clear whether the White House was making any progress in winning the trade fight.

Through the day, Obama made phone calls to reluctant Democrats from the White House, while McDonough, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Labor Secretary Tom Perez went face-to-face with trade opponents including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a testy closed meeting on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) asked McDonough whether the president could use his leverage with Republicans — who “desperately want” the legislation to pass — to push for changes that would make the bill more palatable for Democrats.

“McDonough just blew that off,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) “So I got up and said, ‘You’re telling us we’ve got to facilitate your deal on this TAA — which is not a very good package — and the president can’t do anything. And I said, ‘That’s bullshit.’ And it is. It’s bullshit.”

While Obama’s push for a large-scale trade deal with the Pacific Rim cleared an important hurdle by a razor-thin margin on Thursday afternoon, the outcome of a Friday vote on TAA, a worker assistance program central to the larger trade debate, will likely still be a nail-biter.

The politics around the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, one of Obama’s core legacy agenda items, have been immensely complicated.

The Senate late last month voted to give Obama “fast-track” authority to negotiate new trade deals, but only after a series of dramatic votes and a dramatic war of words between the president and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the torch bearer for progressives gravely concerned the trade deal being negotiated by 12 countries would harm U.S. workers.

The House has proven tougher. A key sticking point has been TAA, or Trade Adjustment Assistance, a program to help workers who lose their jobs due to free trade. The program is necessary to keep the bare minimum number of Democrats — roughly two dozen — on board to support the larger Trade Promotion Authority bill.

But House Democrats are revolting against the current funding, which has already been approved by the Senate.

According to a copy of the White House talking points, the president and his aides are accusing House Democrats of raising a last-minute funding objection in an effort to scuttle the entire package.

The White House argument, also outlined by spokesman Josh Earnest on Thursday, is that by objecting to the funding, Democrats who vote against renewing the assistance will only succeed in killing that program, which has long been part of the pro-labor agenda. About 125 House Democrats voted in favor of it in 2012, according to the document.

“In 2011, House Democrats, including 125 current members, voted unanimously for — and labor unions supported — a two-year TAA bill that didn’t include public sector workers, and there were no significant concerns raised,” according to a copy of the White House talking points obtained by POLITICO.

“Those members of Congress who vote against this Trade Adjustment Assistance are adding their name to the death certificate for Trade Adjustment Assistance,” Earnest said.

The talking points describe objections to the so-called Medicare offset as an unreasonable, last-ditch tactic: “Senate Democrats unanimously voted for this version of TAA bill when the Senate Finance Committee voted out the bill in April,” the document said. “The bill included the Medicare offset.”

“Not acting on the legislation will likely lead to the termination of a program that has provided a lifeline for over 2 million American workers since its inception 40 years ago,” Perez wrote in a letter to members on Thursday.

Obama spent Thursday afternoon calling members of Congress to try to reassure members and rally votes himself.

Earnest said he didn’t believe the TAA funding formula could “be legitimately described as cutting Medicare.” Administration aides who’ve fanned out over Capitol Hill in an effort to save fast-track are talking to House Democrats to “make sure that they actually understand the way that this role works and how their vote can be described,” he said.

The issue, Earnest and others have said, is that there’s no hope for getting Republicans to approve a renewal of TAA without tying it to a larger trade vote like this one. By bringing down fast track and the Trans Pacific Partnership over TAA, progressives and labor will only result in killing all of them — which isn’t a good thing for American workers.

Administration aides offered differing assessments of how dire the situation is for Obama’s trade package. Some are nervous those arguments won’t break through.

“This is a new level of political cynicism from hard-core trade opponents,” said one administration official. “It’s scary that they’d be willing to take TAA down – potentially for good – just to kill [fast-track legislation].”

John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

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