Congress, White House Should Rally Around Trade Agenda, Washington Post Says
The Republican landslide in the midterm elections paves the way for the administration and Congress to really tackle trade policy, and all sides should come together quickly to make Trade Promotion Authority law, said The Washington Post in a Nov.…
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6 editorial (here). “No policy area is riper for bipartisan action than trade,” the editorial added, while urging Congress to pass the TPA bill introduced nearly a year ago in both chambers of Congress. “There are perennial concerns in Congress that fast-track cedes too much authority to the president. But the legislators who rolled out the bill last January addressed those worries,” said the editorial, which also urged progress on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “This is a crucial measure that leaders of the new Congress can and should take off the shelf, pass and send to Mr. Obama for his signature.” A bipartisan group of House Ways and Means and Senate Finance leaders unveiled the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act of 2014 (here) at the outset of 2014, but that bill has since stalled, in part due to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s, D-Nev., opposition. But both President Barack Obama and the likely next majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., vowed to press forward with trade the day after the elections (see 1411050056). Some critics say, however, that bill will fail to garner broad enough support for passage (see 1411050049).