Senate leaders announce TAA deal.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced yesterday that they had reached an agreement to advance legislation reauthorizing the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program when the Senate returns in September. The deal, which would also provide for consideration of pending free trade agreements (FTAs) with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama, represents a potentially important breakthrough on legislation that has proven politically contentious in recent months.

TAA, which provides job training and other benefits for workers who have lost their jobs as a result of foreign competition, is currently authorized through February 2012. Congress significantly expanded the program as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009—including extending eligibility to service sector workers and nearly tripling the amount of funding available for training services—but these expanded provisions were allowed to lapse earlier this year, and the program is now operating according to the more limited provisions of the pre-ARRA program. The White House and some congressional Democrats have been seeking to renew the 2009 amendments in exchange for moving the FTAs, which are strongly supported by most congressional Republicans.

There were some glimmers of progress in late June, when Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT) announced he had reached an agreement in principle with House Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) to move a scaled-back version of TAA as part of the broader trade package. However, the parties were unable to agree on timing and structure of the measures, as Democrats sought assurances that TAA would be passed in both chambers along with the FTAs. Baucus proposed including the TAA language as part of the South Korea agreement – FTAs cannot be amended by Congress once submitted by the President, so this move would have greatly increased the chances of passage – but Finance Committee Republicans objected to this effort, and offered an unsuccessful amendment to strip TAA out of the bill during a “mock” markup of the FTAs on July 7th. The Ways and Means Committee conducted its own FTA mock markup the same day, but did not include TAA.

Under the new agreement announced by Reid and McConnell, it appears that the Senate will take up TAA as a standalone measure, with the White House submitting the FTAs following passage of that bill. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released a separate statement committing to hold a vote on TAA in addition to the FTAs, though he did not commit to passage of the TAA measure in that chamber.

National Skills Coalition supports a robust reauthorization of TAA at the 2009 eligibility and funding levels, to help ensure that workers impacted by foreign trade are able to access the training and related services necessary to transition to jobs and careers in new industries. We will continue to monitor developments relating to this important program, and provide updates as new information becomes available.