TPA No Done Deal In Senate

by JASmius

This is a strategy?  If there aren't the votes to pass TAA, presumably there aren't the votes to decouple it from TPA.  And the hundred-plus Democrats who rebelled last week are going to be persuaded to to vote for said decoupling, putting fast track on the, well, fast track to passage, based on their trust in the two leaders of the enemy party to bring up the same TAA that most, if not all, Republicans oppose and will probably defeat?  In short, House leftwingnuts are going to give up all their leverage for three magic beans?  And if it were to somehow pass, both would have to go back to the Senate, where the linkage was made in the first place. [emphasis added]

-Me, two days ago


Evidently, a vote to decouple TPA from TAA was not required, as Speaker Boehner did so unilaterally and TPA passed solo by a margin of 218-208.  Now it goes back to the Senate, where the only thing that won it a filibuster-proof majority was linking it to TAA.  Without that linkage, Mitch McConnell will have to offer minority Democrats, already feeling the flames of Nutroot rage, something in the way of additional or alternative concessions to ram through TPA with at least sixty votes.

Instead, Mitchie the Kid has decided to play chicken again, at which he's been SO successful:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is daring Senate Democrats to vote against fast-track trade legislation they supported less than a month ago.

The GOP leader has scheduled a procedural vote on fast-track for Tuesday, and is signaling he’s through offering concessions.

The Kentucky Republican believes he’ll get the eleven Democrat votes he needs to move forward because pro-trade Senate Democrats have already gone out on a limb to support fast-track — despite the cries of organized labor and other groups on the left.

McConnell also reasons that the Senate Democrats, having already voted once for fast-track, won’t want to thrust the dagger into President Obama’s prized legislative goal.

“Democrats already voted for TPA. This is what everybody already voted for,” said one Senate Republican leadership aide, referring to trade promotion authority, another name for fast-track.

Yes, but the first time those "pro-trade Senate Democrats" had TAA attached to it as a sweetener.  Now they've lost that and are not being offered anything else in its place, even as a consolation prize.  They're being expected to vote for TPA again - thus pissing off their base even more than they did the first time - without anything at all to show for it.

Leaving aside the grotesque incongruity of the GOP Senate Majority Leader making loyalty-based appeals to their own president to bulldoze Senate Dems into committing political sepukku, McConnell is making an awfully big assumption on that loyalty factor, given that Barack Obama is (theoretically) a lame-duck in his last biennium, the time in a two-term presidency when co-partisan legislators of that president, who hope to be in D.C. long after he's pedaled off into the sunset, are decoupling themselves from him and his interests, especially on an issue that requires them to stick their heads in the proverbial lion's mouth.

Assuming the same forty-seven Republicans vote "aye" on TPA, McConnell is going to need at least thirteen Democrats, not eleven  - more if he loses more of his own caucus -and now they're being expected to give their votes away for nothing,  Who does the elderly Campbell's Soup kid think they are?  Republicans?

Democrats in the Senate have the leverage their House counterparts did not.  If at least three of the fifteen Donk yes votes flip, TPA will not win cloture, and it will go down.  And that is a very likely and distinct possibility.

So take heart, my Tea Party friends, for Mitchie The Kid's legendary effectiveness and competence are now working in your favor.  If that doesn't bolster your confidence, nothing will.