House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said she would vote against key elements of President Barack Obama’s trade agenda, issuing a possibly fatal blow to the White House just moments before voting began on the House floor.
Voting has begun in the House on Trade Adjustment Authority that would provide assistance to workers displaced because of free trade agreements. The House must approve this measure before taking up trade promotion authority.
Earlier Friday, Obama went to Capitol Hill on Friday morning to meet with Democrats to push for support on a vote related to trade authority.
House Democrats, the vast majority of whom are trying to defeat fast-track trade legislation, heard from the President ahead of the final vote on the legislation expected Friday. A procedural vote narrowly passed Thursday evening, another indicator of how tight the final tally is expected to be.
As he left the meeting, Obama, “I don’t think you ever nail anything down around here. It’s always moving.”
Some Democrats said the President’s outreach is coming too late to save the package.
“The President tried to both guilt people and impugn their integrity. I was insulted,” Rep. Peter Defazio, D-Oregon told reporters after the meeting.
“Where has he been? He went to the baseball game and didn’t talk to anyone,” another Democrat told CNN before the meeting, referring to a congressional baseball game on Thursday night that Obama attended.
Democrats will need to provide a handful of votes to offset some Republican opposition and carry the Trade Adjustment Assistance bill — which is critical for passing Trade Promotion Authority legislation — across the finish line.
But the Democratic member, who declined to speak on the record and is an opponent of both bills, said there are 124 “hard nos” (out of 188). If that number holds and Obama doesn’t flip votes the TAA bill won’t pass and TPA won’t even get a vote.
With the toxic politics of trade dividing their party, Pelosi and her leadership team has been largely on the sidelines. The Obama administration, instead, is relying on Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind and a small band of pro-trade House Democrats to pass the President’s top key economic issue.
“If this goes down, Obama will go on to negotiate a worse TPP,” Kind said after the meeting Friday.
House Speaker John Boehner has said for months the President’s trade agenda can’t pass without help from Democrats, so the low-key Wisconsin legislator has been methodically working behind the scenes to boost the meager Democratic vote — hovering around 20 — higher.
“Our rules, no rules or China’s rules — it can’t be made any simpler than that,” Kind says, describing his pitch on why members should vote for the bill. He argues that if Congress won’t give the President this authority to negotiate with a host of trading partners, the United States will be at a competitive disadvantage.
Kind is serving his 10th term representing the 3rd Congressional District, located on the western side of Wisconsin. From his post on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, he’s been involved in other key policy battles that divided Democrats, including health care, which he called “exhausting.”
Although he wasn’t in Congress for the fight over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that passed narrowly in 1993, Kind says the fallout from that deal — with jobs going overseas — set up a tough road for Democrats to publicly support legislation setting up another major trade deal.
“Early on I was just encouraging my colleagues to keep your powder dry. There’s going to be a lot of pressure from a lot of groups out there to pin you down early before you have all the facts and information. Keep your mind open and let the administration make the case and not get too far out ahead of it,” he said.
Democrat versus Democrat
Most congressional Republicans back trade promotion authority — the so-called fast-track bill — which would help negotiations between the U.S. and a dozen countries working to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. The bill guarantees Congress will vote on that deal with limited debate and no amendments. Without the fast-track authority, Obama administration officials say the international negotiations on the broader trade deal will fall apart.
Kind says he’s surprised so few Democrats in the House are willing to support the White House on this issue.
“Every president, from FDR minus Nixon, has had this authority and we should have a very good reason why we would deny our own president, President Obama,” he said.
The challenge intensified in the final stretch before Friday’s vote. A revolt by House Democrats to a bill linked to the fast-track authority — one approving worker retraining programs for those displaced by new trade — threatened to take down the trade bill.
But Kind wasn’t ready to concede, and said he was still hopeful his colleagues would “see the light and give this president the benefit of the doubt.”
Behind the scenes link to the White House and Republican Leaders
In the face of massive and sometimes ugly resistance from members of their own party, labor and environmental groups, Kind and his allies from the pro-business “New Democratic Coalition” have been the bridge to the White House and top House Republicans.
Kind is diplomatic when pressed about Pelosi’s role, which has mostly been on the edges of the debate, repeatedly declining to say whether she will vote for the fast-track bill.
“I think she has created enough space for all of us to make up our own minds,” he said.
As part of outreach efforts to Democrats, Kind and his allies have invited virtually every Cabinet official to come up to Capitol Hill and sell the need for the legislation.
He pushes back at those who knock Obama for not wining and dining lawmakers in an effort to secure their votes.
“There’s all this criticism about him not schmoozing enough with members, not working it, massaging the egos here,” Kind said. “But I give him credit for the intellectual approach he brings to the job. He lays out the case, he lays out the merits and he has enough respect for members for us to figure it out ourselves.”
Kind said he’s been in regular contact with the President, White House chief-of-staff Denis McDonough, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Forman, and other key officials, giving them feedback on which members need information, phone calls and raising red flags on issues.
Before McDonough entered a meeting of all House Democrats on Thursday to appeal for support for the bills, he huddled in the hallway briefly with Kind.
Coaxing out a ‘yes’
In prior legislative fights leaders and White House officials could tuck in special goodies into bills for members in return for their votes on big bills. But after high-profile scandals and a trend toward projecting fiscal responsibility, the days of so-called “earmarks” are over.
Instead, the President has promised those Democratic lawmakers worried about taking a tough vote on trade that he’ll campaign for them — a pledge Kind thinks carries some weight.
“He’s got the megaphone and he can come in and lay out the case,” he said.
Friday’s final trade vote is viewed by Kind as a test case for his party. He said Democrats have reached the limit of how many seats they can win in safe urban districts, and believes the challenge to get back into the majority in the House someday rests on picking up more suburban and rural district in purple states.
That means the party needs to be more willing to hash out policy differences.
“We could become a party that’s equated with powerful special interests and not having the ability to have honest disagreements and some of our core supporters or traditional allies,” he said.