Jobless Aid Sweetener Seeks Trade Bill Votes

With President Bush trolling for votes and lobbyists blitzing Capitol Hill, House Republicans on Wednesday offered billions of dollars in additional unemployment assistance in a late bid to win Democratic support for a bill to expand presidential trade negotiating power.

But many pro-trade Democrats--and others facing their first test on the issue--weren’t taking the bait on the eve of a crucial House vote today. While Republican leaders expressed optimism that they would eke out a victory, the outcome remains uncertain.

The unemployment proposal, dangled before Democrats in an attempt to put the trade bill over the top, at the least rejuvenated the negotiations on separate legislation to stimulate the economy. It was the House Republicans’ first substantive concession on the stimulus bill since the two parties agreed to negotiate differences over tax cuts and spending as Congress tries to wrap up work for the year.

“If anyone didn’t believe that we were ready to respond to those in need, this is clear evidence,” said Rep. William M. “Mac” Thomas (R-Bakersfield), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who crafted the worker aid package.

The Thomas proposal would extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks, suspend federal taxes on benefits and take other steps to offset health-care costs for the unemployed. The Republicans said they would direct at least $20 billion in the stimulus bill for those priorities, an increase of $8 billion from provisions in a GOP bill passed earlier this year.

In addition, Thomas proposed authorizing additional aid--about $1 billion over two years--for workers in specific industries, such as textiles, who lose their jobs due to foreign competition and about $2 billion for workers directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks. Those proposals were conceived as part of a separate trade assistance bill.

The proposals, none of which is connected to the trade negotiation bill, failed to move at least one swing Democrat. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington said the House needs to act on a full worker-relief package before voting on a major trade bill. Calling the proposals a mere “piece of paper,” Smith said he planned to vote against the trade bill.

Leading Democrats dismissed the Republican proposals as a stunt to try to win votes for what they describe as a flawed, partisan bill that cedes congressional power over trade regulation to the Bush administration.

“It’s cosmetics,” said Rep. Sander M. Levin of Michigan, a top Democrat on trade issues.

The trade bill scheduled to go before the House today would give Bush the power to negotiate trade agreements and present them to Congress for up-or-down votes, with no amendments allowed. Presidents had this power, known as “fast track,” from 1974 to 1994, but not since. Efforts to renew it failed in the House in 1997 and 1998. (The Senate is considered more favorable to the legislation.)

Bush has made “trade promotion authority,” as advocates now call it, a leading piece of his legislative agenda. On Wednesday, he worked the telephone and called fence-sitters to the White House.

Business lobbyists insisted the trade bill was needed to enable Bush to reach trade pacts with Chile and other Western Hemisphere nations and to help him participate effectively in a new round of global trade talks.

“You need to have one person responsible for the negotiations,” said Steve Van Andel, chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a conference call with reporters. “The administration needs to be responsible. If you try to do that with all of Congress, it becomes next to impossible to come to agreement.”

Labor and environmental groups were mobilizing just as fervently to defeat the trade bill, charging that the measure fails to protect worker rights and environmental concerns in developing nations.