FW: Trade Bill trade offs

[Karen Watters Cole]

Retiring US Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) complained that “socialist governments all over the planet” were trying to avoid doing this and now the US is going to, but he voted for it anyway. Ouch. Reality bites. - Karen Trade Bill To Help Laid-Off Workers: Victims of Imports Win Added Benefits   EXCERPTs: The new benefits emerged as part of a grand bargain between free-traders and those who argue that free trade should be coupled with greater efforts to help those it hurts. …Like most worker retraining programs, trade adjustment assistance has a spotty record in moving the unemployed into good jobs. A General Accounting Office study in 2000 cited Labor Department data indicating that three-quarters of those who left local training programs in fiscal 1999 found jobs, but found that only 56 percent of those workers earned 80 percent or more of their previous wages. That is why the bill includes the wage-insurance provision, which compensates laid-off workers for half of their lost wages (with a maximum of $10,000 over two years) if they take a job paying less than they were making before. The program applies only to workers over age 50, who are least likely to gain from retraining. "This pays people when they get a new job, and it's at the new job where they get the best training, not at some artificial training program," said Litan, who proposed the idea 20 years ago. Wage insurance, like the health-insurance tax credit, could easily be made available more broadly, he said. "I originally advocated it just for workers displaced by trade, but as I talked to people, they persuaded me that if it's such a good idea, it ought to be expanded to everybody," Litan said. "There's no good or moral reason to restrict it." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38157-2002Aug2.html