There are a ton of bad ideas out there in the world of economic policy--mostly, those are dumb ideas having to do with the complete comfort with class warfare, from "trickle down" to "CEOs are job creators" to so-called "Free trade." It is one of the great astonishing things that, despite the fact that all this shit fails, it just keeps coming back, back, back and no amount of Chipolte burrito-chugging will change this short of a revolution (see: Fight for $15).
Which brings me to the apparent sell-out apparently being cut by Sen. Ron Wyden who apparently has cut a deal on "fast track"...and the fig-leaf for this is a failed, failed program that really just masks the hurt workers feel.
So, taking anything Politico writes with a grain of salt, the deal may be done:
Senior lawmakers appeared to be close to reaching an agreement Wednesday night over a bipartisan trade promotion authority bill that has already ignited a fierce fight between President Barack Obama and liberal Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Two Republicans — Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan — have been in negotiations for months to strike a deal with Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has faced intense pressure from labor and progressive groups to walk away from the talks.
And:
“Consensus has been reached to move forward with a Finance Committee hearing on congressional trade priorities,” Julia Lawless, a spokeswoman for Hatch’s office, said. “Discussions regarding bipartisan, bicameral legislation to renew trade promotion authority continue.”
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told POLITICO he expected the Finance Committee to vote next Tuesday on the “fast track” bill, which would allow Obama to submit trade agreements to Congress for straight up-or-down votes without any amendments.
“I think they’re that close,” he said Wednesday afternoon, holding his finger and thumb barely apart.
What I think is extremely important in this fight is to understand how Democrats are cutting a deal for something that is really phony. Here is the point:
Meanwhile, Trade Adjustment Assistance appears a key final snag in the negotiation. Many Republicans question the value of the program, but it often moves in conjunction with trade agreements to bolster Democratic support for the deals.
Talks over the issue appear to be mainly between Wyden and Ryan, who is said to be pushing for a lower level of funding than union groups feel is needed to run an adequate program.
And from Sen. Debbie Stabenow:
“The bottom line for us is there will be no TPA if there’s not a strong TAA,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters Wednesday evening.
This is really dumb. Understand first what "Trade Adjustment Assistance" is. There is the official view from
the Department of Labor:
The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program is a federal program that provides a path for employment growth and opportunity through aid to US workers who have lost their jobs as a result of foreign trade. The TAA program seeks to provide these trade-affected workers with opportunities to obtain the skills, resources, and support they need to become reemployed.
My answer: it's bullshit. It doesn't work. It never has. It's a cruel lie to people. It's something politicians, including well-meaning Democrats who don't want to change the economic system, can say, "see, we did a little, you can get retrained and, presto, you'll be just fine."
Retraining is phony in an economy that is creating underpaying jobs, with skimpy benefits at best. Using words like "growth" and "opportunity" are kind of akin to saying "free trade"...misleading about what the realities are.
Retraining usually doesn't work for the above reason AND not enough money is put towards the actual programs AND, more important, companies don't care about giving people comparable jobs.
Retraining was part of the sales job to sell NAFTA that was used by Bill Clinton and Robert Reich (Reich, of course, was pimping the now entirely discredited idea that all would be fine because everyone would become--LOL--a "symbolic analyst"). And that failed, as well.
That any meaningful retraining can be done as part of wholesale economic transition, without real money and without a complete rethinking of wages and jobs, was also discredited in the wake of the defense industry transition, the post Cold War era unwinding which cost a couple of million highly-skilled, high-wage people their jobs. As Laura Powers and Ann Markusen wrote in 1999 in "A Just Transition? Lessons From Defense Worker Adjustment in the 1990s" most of the displaced workers ended up at lower-paying jobs, and:
"a sizable minority has experienced a drop in earnings of 50% or more."
Of course, one view of this is: tough luck. Economies change. Creative destruction. There are costs to bear.
Another view, if we had a different, more humane and moral view of the economy, is that workers should not pay the price for economic decisions made because of the desire of some politicians to let corporations make more money, or simply corporations doing what they do. These things don't happen like natural phenomena like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
In the United Kingdom, for example, as part of the thinking around shutting down the coal industry, a coalition has been built calling for One Million Climate Jobs with an underlying principle that any coal industry worker hired to one of these jobs would be guaranteed at least the same wage s/he earns in the coal industry.
It's entirely doable, whether we are talking about trade-related hits on jobs or climate change-related transitions--we find plenty of money to bail out banks and fight immoral wars. And, lest we forget, money earned flows back into the economy so ensuring people keep the same wages, if you don't like the morality of it, is a very smart thing to do economically.
So, when you hear Wyden et al sing the praises of the deal he and others have apparently cut because, they say, isn't it wonderful that some workers will be retrained, it's bullshit.