Thread: Cafta Vote Challenges Florida Republicans, California Democr

http://www.bloomberg.com

Cafta Vote Challenges Florida Republicans, California Democrats

July 27 (Bloomberg) -- Republican lawmakers from Florida and Democrats from the western U.S. are caught in the middle of a face-off between their political donors and their party leadership over the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

House Republicans from Florida are under pressure to reject Cafta because of concerns about a surge in competing sugar imports. At the same time, lawmakers from there were called to the White House yesterday to hear from President George W. Bush on why they should support the agreement.

A similar tug of war is taking place for Democrats in California, home to companies such as Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Oracle Corp. that are pushing for the measure, while labor unions and environmentalists -- and most of the 202 Democrats in Congress -- are trying to knock it down.

``I'm pretty much on the fence,'' said Representative Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, before meeting with Bush yesterday. ``I've supported sugar many times.'' he said, ``At the same time there are some geopolitical reasons'' to vote for Cafta.

Among the undecided House Democrats are California's Anna Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren, Jim Costa and Susan Davis, as well as Utah's Jim Matheson. Also on the fence are Florida Republicans Michael Bilirakis, Mark Foley, Stearns, Tom Feeney and Ginny Brown-Waite, according to the lawmakers or their spokesmen or spokeswomen.

Bush is going to Capitol Hill this morning for a closed-door meeting with House Republicans to discuss the importance of approving Cafta, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt said. Blunt, a Missouri Republican, said House leaders are considering bringing Cafta to a vote in the House as early as today -- the final step in what has been a year-long legislative process.

`We'll Pass the Bill'

``I'm confident we'll pass the bill,'' Blunt said after a strategy meeting with other Republican leaders yesterday.

``Trade votes have been very political, but Cafta is a new high-water mark,'' said Greg Mastel, chief international trade adviser at the law firm Miller & Chevalier in Washington and a former aide to the Senate Finance Committee.

Cafta is intended to end tariffs on more than $33 billion in goods traded between the U.S. and Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Bush has turned the debate into a referendum on national security in the U.S. and political stability in Central America.

Stearns said the ``geopolitical'' concerns raised by the Bush administration -- that a vote for Cafta would help shore up Central American democracies -- are weighing on him and other Republicans.

``The national security argument is very compelling,'' Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told a business rally yesterday. ``They are at risk of going back to where they were in the 1980s without this agreement.''

National Security Link

Linking Cafta to national security has helped at least one Florida Republican make up his mind: Representative Mario Diaz- Balart came out in support yesterday.

Lofgren and Eshoo, who represent the Silicon Valley region of northern California -- home to Intel, Oracle and Hewlett- Packard Co. -- describe themselves as supporters of free trade. They aren't saying which way they're leaning on Cafta.

Cafta, which narrowly passed in the Senate last month, has languished in the House for more than a year because of opposition from labor unions, textile producers and sugar makers. The accord also has become a lightning rod for criticism of Bush's overall trade policy as the trade deficit has soared to record levels.

``Cafta has become a proxy for a host of other trade concerns,'' said Scott McCandless, manager for Washington national tax services at Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

Florida

The Florida Republicans are in the toughest bind. Each of those five undecided lawmakers had a perfect or near-perfect rating by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during the last congressional term. The Chamber is leading the lobbying efforts on behalf of this bill, and its president, Thomas Donohue, has pledged to give Cafta double weight next time around.

``Florida lives and dies based on trade, in large part with Central America,'' said William Morley, the former top lobbyist for the Chamber who is now lobbying the Florida delegation on behalf of Cafta at the MWW Group in Washington. ``Turning their backs on that just does not make sense.''

Shipping companies, express delivery companies such as Memphis-based FedEx Corp. and citrus growers are lobbying members to support the deal.

But those five lawmakers also represent a state that is the country's largest sugar producer, and the American Sugar Alliance has rejected an administration compromise package negotiated with the Senate that aimed to limit the impact of increased sugar imports.

No Further Concessions

Gutierrez, who has met with 160 lawmakers to lobby for Cafta, said there would be no further concessions to Florida sugar growers. ``We don't think it's fair to hold up a deal for one industry that we don't think has a problem,'' he said.

In the first six months of the year, the sugar industry gave at least $709,404 to 262 members of Congress, more than any of the 34 agricultural groups tracked by PoliticalMoneyLine, a Washington-based company that tracks money in politics.

The Democrats representing technology companies in California and Utah are also being squeezed as House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi lobbies against Cafta, while companies such as Santa Clara, California-based Intel support it. More than 60 percent of the high-tech industry's revenue comes from outside the U.S., and those companies say Cafta is important both for the markets it would open and as a precedent for future trade pacts.

It's ``important for the U.S. to continue to have an aggressive trade agenda,'' said Melika Carroll, Intel's trade lobbyist in Washington. ``Our growth worldwide ensures our competitiveness.''

Diverse Foes

Intel and other technology companies are up against diverse foes. The Citizens Trade Campaign in Washington is running radio advertisements in Matheson's Utah district, saying Cafta could undermine the state's ban on gambling. Labor unions and environmentalists in Silicon Valley also have been bombarding the offices of Eshoo and Davis in California.

And Matheson this week was targeted by AFL-CIO leaders who complained in a letter to Pelosi that they raised $300,000 for him and other Democrats in tight re-election races, but he has not committed to vote against Cafta.

Because of the conflicting pressure, ``Silicon Valley Democrats have been put in an awkward place, but probably not as awkward as a Republican in a sugar district,'' Mastel said.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net
Michael Forsythe in Washington at mforsythe@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 27, 2005 00:03 EDT

Oh, wow, so now that CAFTA doesn't stand or hold its weight on trade matters, the President is going to give them some big "national security secret" behind closed doors....like what? China is going to take over Central America?

Right...that's about as real as the WMD argument in Iraq.

This President with his "geopolitical" crap is a bold-faced maniacal purely evil errand boy for Satanic Driven Globalism which will be Hell on Earth.