CAFTA Passes

Dennis Kucinich calls it a deal "for multinational companies who want to make a profit by shutting plants in the United States and moving to places with cheap labor."  GOP House leaders had to keep the vote open until after midnight to try to lure wary Congressmen to support it.  But with one more signature--President Bush's--the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) will become law.

The 217 to 215 vote came just after midnight, in a dramatic finish that highlighted the intensity brought by both sides to the battle. When the usual 15-minute voting period expired at 11:17 p.m., the no votes outnumbered the yes votes by 180 to 175, with dozens of members undeclared. House Republican leaders kept the voting open for another 47 minutes, furiously rounding up holdouts in their own party until they had secured just enough to ensure approval.

The American Prospect's Sam Rosenfeld was not pleased by GOP tactics:

Let’s pause for a moment to recall, for the umpteenth time, the centerpiece of the old Republican minority’s critique of the pre-1994 Democratic majority’s arrogance and abuse of power: Speaker Jim Wright’s 1987 move to hold the voting period open another 15 minutes to round up a straggling Democratic vote on a bill, a then-unprecedented extension of the voting time that a certain congressman Dick Cheney called “the greatest abuse of democracy” he’d ever seen.

In order to secure the votes, the Post reports that the leadership was in full dealing mode.  They offered to restore slashed agriculture subsidies, to send Dick Cheney out on fundraising visits, and other "favors" that "will be tucked into the huge energy and highway bills that Congress is scheduled to pass this week before leaving for the August recess."

But it wasn't just the GOP who secured the deal.  In order for passage, 15 democrats, including Washington's Norm Dicks, voted for the pact.  Twenty-seven Republican voted against it.  The agreement, which passed the Senate last month, now goes to the President, who has lobbied hard for its passage.