WASHINGTON—A landmark trade bill that tops President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda faces a showdown vote in the House as Democrats mount a last-ditch effort to kill it.
The outcome was uncertain and the drama intense heading into Friday’s votes. In frantic 11th-hour maneuvering, liberals in the House defied their own president and turned against a favored program of their own that retrains workers displaced by trade. Killing the program would kill the companion trade bill, and many Democrats and labor leaders advocated just that.
The move caught the GOP off-guard. House Republicans, already in the awkward position of allying themselves with Obama, found themselves being asked by their leaders to vote for a worker retraining program that most have long opposed as wasteful.
