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Bush and Pelosi Step Up Clash Over Trade Pact
By Carl Hulse
The New York Times
Tuesday 15 April 2008
Washington - President Bush and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, intensified
an increasingly personal fight over a stalled trade deal with Colombia on Monday,
trading accusations over who was best protecting the interests of American workers.
Mr. Bush, still angry about Ms. Pelosi's surprise decision to rescind
a requirement that the House take up the trade deal within 60 days, called the
action a snub to a strategic ally in South America. And Treasury Secretary Henry
M. Paulson Jr. canceled a meeting with the speaker on other economic initiatives
that had been scheduled for Monday.
"This free trade agreement is in our national interests, yet that bill
is dead unless the speaker schedules a definite vote," the president said.
"And it's not in our country's interest that we stiff an ally
like Colombia and that we don't encourage our goods and services to be
sold overseas."
Ms. Pelosi fired back, hurriedly scheduling a rare Monday meeting with reporters
to suggest that the president was putting his trade agenda ahead of Americans'
economic troubles while pursuing stale economic policy.
"For seven long years, the president's failed economic plan has
stiffed the American people," Ms. Pelosi told reporters.
Ms. Pelosi said she was willing to bring the trade pact to the House floor
for a vote "under the proper circumstance," but there appeared to
be little movement toward finding a resolution.
"First, we need to address the worsening economy in our country,"
she said.
Democrats see the trade deal as a potential bargaining chip with the administration
in a push for more economic aid like an extension of unemployment benefits,
assistance for workers displaced by trade agreements and perhaps an expansion
of a children's health insurance program.
Ms. Pelosi, who worked closely with Mr. Paulson in developing the economic
stimulus legislation that led to the soon-to-be-mailed tax rebate checks, talked
with the Treasury secretary at the end of a White House session last week. But
the speaker's office was notified over the weekend that Mr. Paulson would
not be available for the meeting on the economy scheduled for Monday.
The strain over the trade pact bubbled to the surface last week after the president
told the speaker he was submitting the agreement against her advice as well
as that of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. Though she advised
him again to hold back on the agreement, the president said he was moving ahead.
"The speaker and her team had been dragging their heels on scheduling
a vote," Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said Monday. "And
while the president did not want to have to send up the bill, and he did so
reluctantly, it was only because if we look at the calendar and count backwards,
we were running out of legislative days."
In response, Ms. Pelosi won party-line approval on Thursday of her request
to eliminate the 60-day deadline for consideration of the pact, infuriating
the White House and leaving the proposal's fate uncertain.
Democratic strategists said they believed the White House had made a tactical
error in pushing ahead with the agreement over Ms. Pelosi's objections.
That left Democratic supporters of the trade deal choosing between a lame-duck
president and their party leader.
The White House on Monday pointed to lowering violence in Colombia, trying
to undermine Democratic complaints that labor leaders there had been singled
out for attack. Other Republicans pointed to widespread calls by newspaper editorials
and the business community for approval of the agreement. Its backers say it
would clearly benefit the United States because it would remove duties on American
goods going to Colombia, whose products already enter the United States duty
free.
But Democrats say they will not entertain another trade pact without some movement
by the administration toward more aid for American workers.
"We ask the president to, once again, bring his people to the table so
we can move forward," Ms. Pelosi said.
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