Senate vote pushes Obama's trade agenda to brink of passage

WASHINGTON — The Senate advanced legislation Tuesday morning to give President Barack Obama fast-track authority to complete a 12-nation Pacific trade pact, reviving a legislative priority that seemed all-but-dead less than two weeks ago.

Lawmakers voted to end debate on the legislation 60 to 37 — exactly the number needed to clear the threshold for advancing the measure, with 13 Democrats joining 47 Republicans. Final passage of fast-track authority, which allows the president to submit final trade agreements to Congress for only an up-or-down vote, will likely come on Wednesday.

It was a significant victory for the Obama administration and other proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a treaty that would establish the world’s largest free-trade zone and affect an estimated 40 percent of global commerce. House Democrats, who have split with the president on his trade agenda, had seemingly tanked the bill on June 12 by voting down a related measure that was packaged together with fast-track authority.

But procedural tactics resurrected the legislation. Congressional Republicans and White House allies jettisoned the fast-track bill from the related bill, which would have ensured retraining and education funds for workers displaced by trade, and ushered the legislation successfully through the House and the Senate.

Congressional Republican leaders have promised that the worker assistance bill will be taken up and passed later this week in both chambers once fast-track is signed into law by the president.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell heralded the bipartisan accomplishment of passing the trade bill, after months of heated debate and wrangling in both chambers.

“This has been a long and rather twisted path to where we are today, but it’s a very, very important accomplishment from the country,” he said.

Meanwhile, progressive opponents of the trade agreement, led by labor unions who mounted an aggressive campaign against fast-track authority and against a president they typically support, lamented the defeat.

Critics of the trade agreement have long said that it would cost U.S. jobs and be a boon to corporate interests at the expense of labor, environmental and consumer protections.

“This is a day of celebration in the corporate suites of this country, because they’ve got a corporate-sponsored trade agreement that will mean more money in some investors’ pockets but more plant closings,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. “We make decisions today that throw people out of work, but we don’t do anything to help those people.”