One of the biggest flaws of the Rangel bill is its expansion of the nanny state. The current program offers trade-displaced workers job training and unemployment benefits for two full two years. The Rangel bill would let some workers stay out of the workforce for up to three years, collecting taxpayer-funded unemployment benefits all the while. (Older workers could qualify for cash handouts if they take a lower-paying job.)

It's unclear how displaced workers will benefit from taking a three-year hiatus from real-life work experience, but that's exactly the approach favored by many “progressives.” An alternative, advocated by Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), takes an "earn and learn" approach that allows workers to hold a full-time or part-time job and receive training simultaneously, using the same logic as nighttime higher-education classes for full-time workers. McCrery’s bill also attempts to streamline operations at the U.S. Department of Labor so that it is reoriented to provide workers with the services they desire instead of the services favored by Washington bureaucrats.

No one in Congress argues that the government should “abandon” American workers. But given the relatively minimal number of jobs displaced by international trade each year -- loosely estimated at only 3 percent of all jobs lost in any given year -- Rangel's extravagant plan to expand the job-training program to service workers makes little sense. The administration estimates this expansion would instantly increase eligibility for the program by at least 30 percent.

American workers in all segments of the economy face far greater challenges than free trade. To name just two, there’s the need to keep up with new technologies and to identify and respond to changes in consumer behavior. Those challenges are hard.

But politicians vastly prefer easy targets to hard challenges, and the unions have made free trade an easy -- albeit inappropriate -- target.