Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama's free trade push
was blocked in the Senate on Tuesday as Democrats rebelled, throwing
one of his biggest priorities in his remaining years in the White House
into doubt.
Roughly 14 pro-trade
Democrats emerged from a Tuesday afternoon meeting with other Senate
Democrats saying they wouldn't vote to take up the trade bill -- which
then failed on a 52-45 vote.
The
Democrats complained that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was
refusing to add a package of pro-worker provisions to the bill that many
in the GOP see as unrelated and too costly.
"What we just saw here is pretty shocking," McConnell said on the Senate floor after the vote.
"What we've just witnessed here is the
Democratic Senate shut down the opportunity to debate the top economic
priority of the Democratic President of the United States," he said.
Other
Republicans lashed out, too, saying they were furious to see Democrats
stand in the way of a rare agreement with the White House.
"We
had this pretty well agreed to until, all of a sudden, we had this mess
on our hands," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, the
Utah Republican who sponsored the measure.
His
Democratic co-sponsor, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, was among the
pro-trade Democrats who voted against the bill, saying it needs
enforcement provisions included in a broader trade package.
Opposition to the measure, which would
allow for quick approval of the 12-country free-trade agreement known as
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has been building among progressive
Democrats for some time. But there was still hope at the White House
that aggressive lobbying from Obama would be enough to cobble together
votes needed to at least allow the Senate to debate the bill.
The
tricky politics of trade have created unusual partnerships heading into
the vote. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a liberal darling, and Sen. Rand Paul,
a conservative running for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, both
oppose the measure.
"While Sen. Paul
has always been a strong advocate of free trade, he is hesitant to give
blanket authority on a trade agreement that has yet to be seen," a Paul
aide said.
Warren and her fellow
progressives have long been an outspoken opponent of the bill for the
same reason -- that it largely removes Congress' ability to weigh in on
the deal until after it's been negotiated, a process that critics say
has been done in secret and in close cooperation with lobbyists and
special interests.
Warren reiterated those complaints in an interview with NPR Tuesday morning.
"The way I see this, that's a tilted process, and a tilted process yields a tilted result," she said.
More
broadly, progressives are wary of a new free-trade deal because they
believe it would draw jobs overseas and hurt American workers. During a
speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday, Warren gave voice to those
concerns, warning that "this country is in real trouble."
"We
cannot continue to run this country for the top 10%. We can't keep
pushing through trade deals that benefit multi-national companies at the
expense of workers," she said.
"Government
cannot continue to be the captive of the rich and the powerful. Working
people cannot be forced to give up more and more as they get squeezed
harder and harder."
