Plant-Closing Provision to Remain in Trade Bill
Congressional Democrats, ignoring a veto threat from President Reagan, bowed yesterday to organized labor and said they will include a controversial plant-closing notification measure in a landmark trade bill.</br></br>The decision by House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) and Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) to stand by the plant-closing measure is likely to doom the trade legislation even as the nation's trade deficit worsens. Capitol Hill head counters doubt that the Democrats can muster the two-thirds majority in both houses needed to override a veto, especially since major business organizations have said they will support the president in a veto involving plant closing notification.</br></br>But a bruising political battle between the White House and congressional Democrats could also doom Reagan's own top priority in the legislation, a free trade agreement with Canada that needs congressional ratification.</br></br>Wright and Byrd acted just hours after they had held an inconclusive meeting with Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III and White House chief of staff Howard H. Baker Jr., during which it was expected that the congressional leaders would offer to drop the plant-closing measure in return for assurances that the president would sign the trade bill. But both sides said no offers were made. Furthermore, administration sources said neither James nor Howard Baker was prepared to give the assurances the congressional Democrats would have needed to seal a deal.</br></br>In explaining their decision to stand firm on the plant-closing measure, the congressional leaders said they acted after gauging reaction to yesterday's "trade figures and the resulting plunge in the stock market." But the two leaders are also facing intense pressure from organized labor, whose representatives said they would not support trade legislation that did not contain the plant-closing notification measure.