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    House panel to take up 3 trade agreements

    WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are bucking demands from the Obama White House to include renewal of a U.S. job training assistance program in long-pending legislation providing free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.

    The standoff could jeopardize passage of the trade pacts, which are to be brought before the House committee that oversees trade agreements this week.

    The panel has scheduled a Thursday meeting to debate and vote on the drafts of legislation to implement the three new deals signed during the George W. Bush administration but stalled in past congresses controlled by Democrats.

    The Obama administration now supports the agreements, after negotiated changes in the accords including greater access for U.S. autos in South Korea and commitments by the Colombian government to end the suppression of worker rights. But it has also demanded that the trade package be linked to renewal of expired sections of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program which provides financial and retraining aid to displaced workers.

    Republicans have supported TAA in the past, but have balked both at the cost of the program, about $1 billion a year, and the linkage with the trade agreements. Last Thursday the Finance Committee in the Democratic-led Senate was to have met to consider the trade deals and TAA together, but the hearing was canceled after Republicans on the committee boycotted.

    Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, a Democrat, in a statement Tuesday, said: "right now, our competitors are gaining ground in these vital markets and jobless Americans in need of opportunities are left waiting while these trade agreements languish." He added, "we need to come together to move these three trade agreements and Trade Adjustment Assistance forward as soon as possible because American workers and small businesses simply cannot afford to wait any longer."

    Republican allies in the business committee, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have urged Congress to move quickly on the three trade agreements, saying they could boost U.S. exports by $13 billion and create tens of thousands of jobs. The Chamber said it supported TAA and said it appreciated bipartisan efforts to reach a reasonable compromise on TAA legislation.

    Legislative aides said the House could still consider a TAA bill separately, but they were waiting for guidance from the Republican leadership.

    The ranking Democrat on the committee, Sander Levin, and the top Democrat on the trade subcommittee, Jim McDermott, said there were "two fundamental problems" with the Republican approach — the omission of TAA and the failure to incorporate into the Colombia agreement an "action plan" by which the Bogota government commits to improving labor rights in the country.

     

    15 comments

    • RF_GURU  •  10 mths ago
      liberal logic - sign trade agreements that ship jobs off overseas , then spend taxpayer money to RETRAIN the people that lost their job BECAUSE of those agreements to get a new job that later on down the road will b e outsourced again !
    • Bobby  •  10 mths ago
      Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival ... and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.

      -- Universal health care. The health care bill had very little to do with health care. It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn't care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?

      -- Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama's biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kickback hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama "spread the wealth around."

      -- Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who's asking for a 51st state? Who's asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama's plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.

      -- Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.

      -- Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions -- including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues. It went to AIG so that Goldman Sachs could be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions). A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues). All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that are bankrupting America . The country goes broke, future generations face a bleak future, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful. The ends justify the means.

      -- Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama). Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government. Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition.
    • RF_GURU  •  10 mths ago
      hi my name is bill , im a congressmen, i fully support those trade agreements they are a great opportunity for the united states ( and me because i own a company that cant wait to produce over there ) , of course a few workers will lose their jobs but no biggie folks just a few hundrets of thousands more , i really dont care and neither does any of my fellow colleaugues here in DC , we are amazingly bi partisan if it comes to this - after all we all own stock of the same companies that will profit from those deals !
      but of course we have to pretend to the public that we care, after all we want to get re-elected so we just throw out a few Billions to retrain those workers - to what you ask ? heck i dont care. as long as they dont get trained to be a member of congress after all thats MY job !
    • RF_GURU  •  10 mths ago
      how about tear up all those trade deals, get our jobs back and use this money to reduce our debt ?
    • RF_GURU  •  10 mths ago
      So what you can read from this is that our congressmen KNOW quite well that those pacts will COST american jobs , doesnt make sense to me !
    • dominator  •  10 mths ago
      Up above the photo of Jennifer Aniston. she still a babe.
    • Confused  •  10 mths ago
      Still waiting, oh well America; I see you are getting smarter, guess I will take and send my business overseas to.
    • George C  •  10 mths ago
      Obama when running last time said he would repeal NAFTA -- BUT-- NOooooooooooo = This time no vote for you -- i am Union and i Vote.
    • RF_GURU  •  10 mths ago
      once there was a boy who graduated from high-school and went to work at a local steel mill , along came a trade agreement that made foreign steel cheaper so he lost his job, so he retrained to become a Machinist, he worked for a company making parts for a defense contractor , but the cold war ended and so he lost his job again, so he learned CNC skills and found a job at a manufacturing plant making engine parts for GM but clinton signed another agreement and his job went to china , so he decided that the time may be good to go back to college, he received a grant from the government to do so , he went and became a electronics technician and found a job in a cellphone factory but after 2 years the plant was relocated to china , so he went back to college and became a engineer , he went to work for a large company designing electronic equipment - until the company relocated large parts of R+D to china as well , so our hero tried to find another job - finally he re located to detroit and found a job working at a bank , but the bank failed and closed down, still not discouraged he went to work for GM until the economic downturn hit them and he got laid off yet again, so he retrained to become a oil worker on a offshore rig, but the BP Spill put a moratorium on deepwater drilling and he was out of a job again !
    • Snope  •  10 mths ago
      This administration is an EPIC failure. 2012 will be the end of an ERROR.
    • my 2 cents  •  10 mths ago
      We are supposed to be cutting spending and improving the economy. Stand strong Republicans! The treaties are good for the economy and the increased spending on TAA is bad.
    • Wishingbird  •  10 mths ago
      WAIT....Oh yeah the "FAIR" trade agreements that took more jobs? I remeber a promise to revamp these agreements so we could bring jobs home...
    • dominator  •  10 mths ago
      What part o "NO" Nobama understand?
    • Confused  •  10 mths ago
      You fell for Obama's I will make a change, you fell for the Union's we will save your jobs and make you, rich vote for me and I will see you all get one million dollars each, just send me ten dollars each and I will make America great. I except paypal only.
    • my two sense  •  10 mths ago
      guess people don;t realize this training comes from americans who have the job but have to train the people they bring here to work and one that is done they lose their job to the foreigner sounds like something we really need doesn't it?
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