Under an expanded version of the Trade Assistance Act states could get more money to help the unemployed with health benefits and retraining. It passed on a mainly party line vote. Fourth District Republican Jim Jordan says he voted against it because it will raise taxes.
"Always sympathetic to those typically manufacturing jobs that may have been lost because of free market principles and trade around the world. But this bill had a tax increase in it - an unemployment surtax in it," he said.The Act still has to be passed in the Senate, where it also faces a partisan divide.
The state lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2005. Ohio's Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown says it's a small measure to help those hurt by trade policy.
"We've not done enough for those workers that are displaced. I mean, I don't agree with the trade policy, but if we have this trade policy then we've got to help those workers that have lost their jobs," he said.
Even if the bill does pass the Senate, the President has threatened a veto.