The Hill News

Some Republicans in Congress may go along with re-authorizing the expansion of the so-called “Trade Adjustment Assistance” program, or TAA for short, next week, even though it amounts to another wasteful spending program that will further plunge our country into debt. TAA, a little-known program from the 1960s that is still alive today, offers workers who can claim that their jobs have been lost “to trade” additional benefits on top of already generous 99-week-long unemployment benefits.

A quick history lesson: President Obama, despite his history of opposing free-trade agreements as a Senator, has stated that he now favors passage of long-stalled free trade pacts with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. Yet Congress can’t pass the measures until Obama submits them to Congress, and they are still languishing on his desk. That’s because the President has held the pro-growth agreements hostage unless Congress takes up TAA, and it’s likely he wonâ€! ™t submit them unless TAA is assured of passage.

To be clear, the Obama administration doesn’t just want to extend current TAA funding. They want to extend an expanded version of TAA that was passed into law as part of the President’s failed stimulus bill and that expired back in February reverting to its traditional levels which are in place currently. Today, TAA gives workers up to two years of support for job training, job search and relocation allowances, a refundable “health care tax credit” and a two-year wage insurance program that partly replaces workers’ earnings if they take a lower-paying job. Sound like a sweet deal? Remember that all you need to do to qualify for this bonanza - again, on top of your unemployment benefits - is prove that you have lost your job “to trade.”  

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