I found this in a Washington Post article titled, “House vote on trade bill could spark action on pending free trade agreements.”
President Barack Obama supports the free trade deals, but both the White House and congressional Democrats say they must be linked to renewal of expired provisions of a program that provides training and financial aid to workers displaced by foreign competition.
Obama has put off formally submitting the free trade bills to Congress until he receives assurances he will get votes on the worker aid program. He is expected to address the issue during his jobs policy address to Congress on Thursday.
Like I said, I didn’t listen to the speech, so I don’t know if this was addressed. But really. Paying to retrain people whose jobs have been sent overseas while setting up trade laws so that more jobs can be sent overseas? I am confused.
What’s confusing? What doesn’t make sense about training people for jobs that don’t actually exist, or about sending the jobs they already have someplace else?
He didn’t mention the trade deals in the speech at all. That would be ridiculous–unveiling a jobs bill and demanding the offshoring of US jobs in the same speech?
Though he is saying we need to save Medicare and Social Security for future generations by making sure younger people never get it.