House defies Bush veto threat, expands program to help workers who lose jobs to imports

By Press Associates, Inc.
WASHINGTON --Defying yet another veto threat by anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush, the Democratic-run House mustered a bipartisan 264-157 vote on Oct. 31 to extend and expand Trade Adjustment Assistance, the program that helps workers who lose their jobs to subsidized foreign imports.

But that was not the only piece of trade news that day. In something of a setback for workers, the House Ways and Means Committee, which votes on legislation implementing trade pacts--but which cannot change their texts to include workers’ rights--approved Bush’s so-called “free trade” pact with Peru, 39-0.

The TAA program was first created in 1962 to help push trade pacts through Congress. But it now applies only to industrial workers who directly lose their jobs to subsidized foreign imports--and even then, only after the Labor Department agrees. As a result, TAA helps far fewer workers than it should.

The new version (HR 3920) doubles trade adjustment assistance’s authorized budget. It also extends TAA to service sector and public sector workers who lose their jobs to trade or offshoring. Those provisions cheered AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney--and led Bush’s Office of Management and Budget to hit the ceiling.

“The Trade and Globalization Assistance Act provides a critical safety net for the millions of workers who lose their jobs every year due to off-shoring and increased imports. Our nation has lost 3 million family-supporting manufacturing jobs on Bush’s watch alone. Flawed trade policy continues to send manufacturing and service sector jobs overseas. Working men and women need assistance of TAA more than ever,” Sweeney said.

“A veto would show trade-displaced workers and communities just where Bush’s priorities lie--with the giant corporate multi-nationals,” he added.

Bush’s OMB had a different take. “The administration strongly opposes H.R. 3920 in its current form because it fails to include essential reforms” to make the program “more flexible.” Instead, Bush’s agency charged Congress “converts TAA from a trade-related program to a universal income-support and training program. Accordingly, if this bill were presented to the president in its current form, the president’s senior advisors would recommend he veto the bill (their emphasis).”

OMB also called the extension of TAA to public sector and private service workers “inappropriate and unworkable.” And the Bush regime denounced a provision saying that state-named “merit workers”--not outsourced workers overseas--must run retraining programs for workers who lose their jobs.