WASHINGTON - When the plant where he worked in Washington Court House laid off 300 employees in 2009, Tom Payton could've been sunk. The jobs had gone to Mexico.

But Payton relied on two federal programs to offset his lost wages and train for a new career. Now, he's a mental-health and career counselor at Southern State Community College in Washington Court House, his hometown.

"I never want to go through this again," Payton said. "But this is the best bad experience I've ever gone through."

Fifty miles to the north in Dublin, Sharon Doherty relies on exports for nearly 50 percent of her sales of shampoo for show dogs, selling to Russia, Israel, Poland, Taiwan and 30 other countries.

"If we didn't export, we wouldn't have the revenue that we have,'' said Doherty, president of Vellus Products. "We're in places that I never thought or dreamed we would be in."

Payton and Doherty represent two sides of the same coin. One lost his job because of international trade; the other thrives because of it. But as Congress takes up free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, people such as Payton and Doherty are at the heart of the divisive debate: Should an expansion of trade include assistance for those hurt by it?

President Barack Obama wants Congress to approve all three trade pacts, and congressional Republicans are eager to do so. But Obama has insisted that approval of the trade deals be attached to an extension of one of the very programs that helped Payton recover and get back on his feet.

When the Trade Expansion Act passed in 1962, it spawned the Trade Adjustment Assistance programs, which primarily provided help to those who lost jobs because of a shift in production by their firm to any country with a free-trade agreement with the United States.

But in 2009, the program was expanded, covering a new swath of workers, including service-industry employees who'd lost their jobs to outsourced call centers and workers who'd lost their jobs to China and other countries that did not have a free-trade agreement with the U.S. In February, that expansion expired.

Now, passage of the trade bills has been linked to the debate over how best to extend Trade Adjustment Assistance.

On Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee, which includes Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Genoa Township, and the Senate Finance Committee both did "mock markups" of the bills - a move that will precede up-or-down votes on what Obama sends them.

The House committee did not attach the worker financial help to the trade agreements; the Senate panel attached financial assistance to laid-off workers to the South Korea pact. But the chairman of that committee, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said that he remained open to discuss other options for extending help to workers.

Tiberi said that he supports financial help for workers, but he fears that "you could kill the trade agreements" if the pacts are linked to worker assistance. He also said House Republicans want the U.S. Department of Labor to complete its study on whether there are "reported abuses in this program."

The 2009 expansion's impact on Ohio workers was dramatic: According to Policy Matters Ohio, a nonpartisan research center in Ohio, in calendar 2009 the Department of Labor issued 145 certifications of eligibility for assistance to Ohio companies, covering 20,677 workers in 58 of Ohio's 88 counties. Payton was one of them. In the three years before that, an average of 10,705 Ohio workers received the assistance annually.

Now, with expiration of the assistance, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said the impact is measurable. "People are already losing benefits," he said.

He said those most affected include people who lost jobs to countries with whom the United States does not have a trade agreement, such as China, and those who worked in service jobs that were sent overseas. He has introduced a bill with Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., that would renew the program at expanded levels for five years.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said letting the 2009 expansion expire for good would be "a tragedy," adding, "It would hurt the recovery, and it would be a travesty for families who have lost jobs and are now floundering to find something."

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