Issues
Trade:
Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program
The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program was created by Congress in 1962 to provide job training and income assistance to workers who lost jobs due to America’s trade policies. TAA was originally envisioned as a program to assist primarily blue collar manufacturing workers, but the need for this program has expanded greatly with the growth of technology, particularly IT, which opened the doors for many employers to expand their destructive offshoring practices to white collar jobs. However, with the exception of the 2009 expansion to broaden relief to workers in the service and public sectors, the last time that TAA received a major overhaul, including a measurable increase in funding, was when it was reauthorized by Congress nearly twenty years ago.
After several short, but essential extensions of TAA, including its much needed expansion as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009, the current 112th Congress has failed to give the program the long-term reauthorization that hundreds of thousands of displaced American workers desperately need. As it stands now the expansion of TAA was only authorized through February 12th. While the House originally intended another, bipartisan supported short-term renewal of the program in early February, some House lawmakers successfully blocked its extension, citing their wishes that the Obama Administration and Congress act on Colombia, Panama and South Korea trade agreements first. So, on February 8th, the House Republican leadership turned a blind eye to hundreds of thousands of American workers who are depending on TAA job training resources, and broke with many years of bipartisan support for TAA, by pulling back on a previously scheduled vote to extend the 2009 TAA benefits. IFPTE believes that the TAA program should be immediately reauthorized to its 2009 levels.