The Hill News

Largely eclipsed in the debt-limit rancor, an acrimonious debate has sprung up over the Obama administration's intention to include an extension of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) -- a half-century old program that provides training and other assistance to workers who lose their jobs due to foreign competition -- in the legislation implementing the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement (FTA). Using grossly outdated information, critics have questioned the value of TAA, and, using a highly selective reading of history, the appropriateness of attaching its reauthorization to the FTA.

Wild charges aside, TAA is simply not an out-of-control spending program. Based on a compromise crafted by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), TAA is projected to cost only $1 billion next year -- three one-hundredths of a percent of total projected government spending. At that level, TAA's cost is tiny in both absolute and relat! ive terms. Reforms over the last few decades have reduced the cost of TAA from peak of $4.6 billion in 1980 and the cost per participant has declined by 45 percent since 1993 (adjusted for inflation).

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