White House Yeilds To Unions Bosses And Holds-Up Job-Creating Trade Agreements

Today in Washington, D.C - June 9, 2011:
The House is on recess. The Senate has resumed consideration of S. 782, the bill reauthorizing the Economic Development Act.  Today they will  will vote on the Snowe-Coburn FREEDOM Act amendment to S. 782. The Snowe-Coburn amendment is designed to remove regulatory burdens on small businesses. 60 votes will be required for its adoption. Yesterday, the Tester-Corker amendment, which would have postponed the implementation of regulations limiting debit card swipe fees, failed by a vote of 54-45, falling short of the 60 votes needed for adoption. Ten Republicans stopped the amendment by voting no, most of them aka RINOs. Sen Mark Pryor of Arkansas (D) also voted no thus failing to join the conservative leaning DINOs who voted for the amendment. Pryor continues to evidence to Arkansans that he is well within the ranks of the liberal establishment.

Speaking on the floor Tuesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “For two and a half years, Democrats in Washington have paid lip service to the idea of job creation — even as they’ve relentlessly pursued an agenda that is radically opposed to it. . . . Democrats don’t want to admit that the government-driven policies of the past two and a half years are part of the problem. And until they do, nothing will change. Unless Democrats change their priorities and their policies, the threats of a downgrade won’t go away. The debt won’t get any smaller. Businesses won’t create the kind of jobs we need to build prosperity.

“We need to change course. And a good place to start is with trade. The President himself has explicitly acknowledged in front of the cameras that free trade agreements will create tens of thousands of jobs for American families who need them.”

“Yet now,” Leader McConnell said, “the President’s advisors say that the White House plans to hold off on this bipartisan job-creating initiative unless it can spend more money on a government benefits program first.”

In an excellent column today, George Will blasts the Obama administration for putting unions ahead of trade agreements that create jobs.

“President Obama is sacrificing economic growth and job creation in order to placate organized labor. And as the crisis of the welfare state deepens, he is trying to enlarge the entitlement system and exacerbate the entitlement mentality.

“On May 4, the administration announced that, at last, it was ready to proceed with congressional ratification of the agreements. On May 16, however, it announced it would not send them until Congress expands an entitlement program favored by unions. . . . The basic TAA [Trade Adjustment Assistance] still exists. But the administration’s stimulus included TAA in its policy of increasing spending almost everywhere in the hope that stimulus-level spending could be made permanent. Which is what Democrats who do organized labor’s bidding are trying to do: Forty-one Democratic senators are supporting Obama’s demand that the stimulus-level TAA spending, which expired in February, be resumed before the trade agreements will be submitted. . . .

“Most Democrats oppose such [trade] agreements but lack the courage to express their controlling conviction, which is: Organized labor, which represents just 6.9 percent of the private-sector workforce, must be appeased, even if doing so injures other American workers or Americans who would be workers if policies such as TAA did not impede economic dynamism.”

Leader McConnell said, “{T]his time it’s gone too far. When the White House is actively depriving others of jobs because some union boss isn’t getting his way, it’s lost touch. . . . I’m calling on the administration once again to send us the three pending trade agreements that the President himself has said would create tens of thousands of American jobs — and to leave Trade Adjustment Assistance out of it. We need to separate these issues, deal with them independently, and move ahead with these trade deals.”

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