Breaking: "Trade pact proponents claim new momentum" For Thursday Vote--Dems Distrustful--Politico

But Democrats are still weighing whether they can trust Republicans to pass aid for laid-off workers.

By Jake Sherman, Manu Raju and Lauren French

Updated 6/17/15 8:07 PM EDT

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/democrats-trade-deal-strategy-republicans-119107.html#ixzz3dMxijGU5

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the calculation quickly: If Congress didn’t act swiftly to send President Barack Obama a fast-track trade bill, it might never get done.

With that in mind, the Democratic president and the two Republican leaders embarked on their most intense bipartisan negotiating spree in recent memory, speaking on private conference calls, scheduling meetings with supportive Democrats and plotting a process to advance Obama’s top agenda item over the finish line. The back channeling, combined with some complex procedural machinations, might allow the House and Senate to clear both Trade Promotion Authority and Trade Adjustment Assistance before the Fourth of July recess.

“Some of them are anguishing,” Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said of fellow Democrats who have backed trade deals in the past. “But at the end of the day, I think they will come around.”

The process is likely to begin in the House on Thursday, when the chamber plans to vote to give Obama fast-track trade authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest trade agreement in history. If it passes, McConnell would then take up the measure next week, hoping to win the support of at least a dozen Senate Democrats to send it to the president’s desk. The Senate would then amend a separate trade bill with TAA, a program to aid workers who lose their jobs due to trade deals, sending the measure to the White House for final approval.

The convoluted process is needed to surmount opposition from House Democrats, who last week blocked a program they support — TAA — in order to stop the larger trade package from getting to Obama’s desk. The Senate had passed a bill last month that included both the worker aid and negotiating authority, but further changes in the House have forced senators to take up the proposal again, prompting a whole new round of negotiating and posturing ahead of decisive votes in the coming days.

The entire process hinges on support from Senate and House Democrats who support free trade but insist that the government also provide aid and job training to help workers hurt by foreign trade. House Democrats, led by veteran Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind, were eager to get the trade deal done, and were looking for assurances from their Senate counterparts. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, wanted a pledge from McConnell that he would clear TAA before they commit to voting for the fast-track bill.

In a joint statement Wednesday, McConnell and Boehner began to provide some of those assurances.

“We are committed to ensuring both TPA and TAA get votes in the House and Senate and are sent to the President for signature,” the leaders said. “And it is our intent to have a conference on the customs bill and complete that in a timely manner so that the President can sign it into law.”

At the White House on Wednesday, pro-trade Democrats and Obama discussed the possibility of sticking together as a bloc so they can get TPA, TAA, a customs enforcement and perhaps an extension of the Export-Import Bank charter, which lapses at the end of the month.

“I and all the other members there are looking for a guarantee … for a deal to be good it’s got to have enforcement, TAA, I think it’s got to have Ex-Im reauthorization,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “A lot of [the meeting] was to talk about that very question of: What is a sufficient assurance?”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/democrats-trade-deal-strategy-republicans-119107.html#ixzz3dMyFGOro