Cutting Medicare by $700 Million to fund failed Trade Adjustment Assistance and fuck us [View all]

[cali]

Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2015, 10:26 AM - Edit history (1)

with TPA, TPP, TISA and TTIP.

So, looking into Trade Adjustment Assistance, it turns out this program is a failure, but hey, President Obama is just fine and dandy with doing anything to pass this crap. After all, his legacy is very important.

Here's some information about the effectiveness, or rather the lack thereof, of TAA. Btw, a sizable chunk of TAA goes to guess who? Corporations, of course. For what? Not very much as it happens.

Yes, TPA may very well pass. That's certainly been my long held conviction, but anyone who thinks this won't badly damage dems in 2016, is delusional. Progressives, Labor, Environmental Orgs and Public Interest Groups, all traditional allies, won't be letting this go. They've all said so.

Program Effectiveness
TAA for workers

The TAA for workers have demonstrated overall low effectiveness so far which is reflected in the controversy to reauthorize the program before the 112th Congress and the fact that the TAA will be discontinued in 2015.

First, the program is not very effective providing support during the transition because a significant portion of workers does not receive TRA. In FY2011 there were over 196,000 TAA participants and only around 46,000 received TRA.[27] One reason is that the training enrollment deadline of 8/16 weeks seriously limits the ability of workers to enroll in training programs and receive the benefit. Moreover, even for those workers receiving TRA and UI, only a portion of the lost income is replaced.[28] The program provides health insurance coverage but in the past it has not been very effective since participation in TAA was associated with decreased coverage in the period following job loss like a joint report by Mathematica Policy Research and Social Policy Research (SPR) prepared for the DOL evaluating the TAA program under the Trade Act of 2002 shows.[29]

The effectiveness of the program in terms of fostering reemployment is very low too. Data on post-TAA outcomes for program exiters based on DOL estimations shows that the entered employment rate was 66% in 2011.[22] The Mathematica Policy Research and SPR report finds that the TAA is not effective in terms of increasing employability. There is positive effect on the reemployment rate for participants but it is not statistically different from that for non-participants.[29]

The effectiveness of the program in terms of mitigating earning losses in the new job is very low too as several studies report. Reynolds and Palatucci (2008) estimate that “participating in the TAA program causes a wage loss approximately 10 percentage points greater than if the displaced worker had chosen not to participate in the program.”[20] The report by Mathematica Policy Research and SPR states that TAA was estimated to have no effect on earnings and compared to a sample of UI claimants, TAA participants worked about the same number of weeks but had lower earnings.[29]

Moreover, a 2007 GAO report shows that in FY 2006 only 5% or less of TAA participants received wage insurance. The program is ineffective closing the earning gap because in order to be eligible for wage insurance workers must find a job within 26 weeks after being laid off, which proved to be a very short period.[30] Additionally, the program only replaces half of the losses.

Finally, the implementation of this program overlaps extensively with others such as Workforce Investment Act generating extra costs and duplicating administrative efforts.[13] The process to allocate training funds is also problematic. States receive funds at the beginning of the fiscal year but it does not properly reflect the state´s demand for training services. In addition, states do not receive funds for case management and lack flexibility to use the funds for training. Thus, states face challenges in providing services to workers properly.[30]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Adjustment_Assistance