So now we can add CAFTA to the list of bills—trade promotion authority in 2001 and 2002, the Medicare prescription drug bill in 2003—that the Republican House has passed by one- or two-vote margins. The House leadership once again took to the floor a measure on which they knew they were short of the 218 majority and went about squeezing out the last votes one by one. This time they had to extend the nominally 15-minute roll call to only 69 minutes. On Medicare/prescription drugs they had to drag it out almost three hours.
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CAFTA—or to give it its full name, the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement—was nonetheless an important win for the Republicans and for George W. Bush. On the morning of the vote the president went over to Capitol Hill and spoke to the House Republican Conference. According to the accounts I have heard and read about this closed-door meeting, Bush emphasized that CAFTA was a national security issue.
We have to decide, he apparently said, whether to shore up the new democracies of Central America and the Caribbean or leave them prey to the likes of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Republican members who had already committed to voting against CAFTA twisted uncomfortably in their seats, I am told. When presidents, of whichever party, tell congressmen earnestly and urgently that the national security interests of the United States are at stake, it usually has an impact. Congressmen may make commitments for parochial political reasons. But few of them are cynical or world-weary enough to brush off a presidential plea based on the security interests of the United States.
This was an important victory for the administration, an indication that Republicans are firmly in control on Capitol Hill and that the Republican leadership won't flinch in the face of discouraging numbers. To read most media accounts of this session of Congress, you would think that the administration's program is a shambles. Social Security changes have been deferred, free trade is in trouble, judicial nominations are being held up, etc., etc. Actually the Republicans have been faring pretty well. They have passed the bankruptcy bill and the class-action bill. The House is moving with uncustomary speed on appropriations. The defense authorization bill, with important provisions, is moving forward. Senate Majority Leader Bill First is pressing estate-tax repeal. The House is preparing to pass an energy bill and a transportation bill. Both, obviously, will include provisions promised to secure votes on CAFTA.
As for Social Security, House subcommittee Chairman Jim McCrery says that Ways and Means will pass a Social Security/retirement bill in September and that the House will consider it in the fall. The bill is not likely to address fully the Social Security system's solvency problems, nor will it necessarily include personal retirement accounts in the form Bush has asked for. Nor is it clear that it can move forward in the Senate, where Democrats seem united in opposition and prepared to filibuster.
September is also the deadline for the report of the tax commission headed by former Sens. Connie Mack and John Breaux. No one is sure what they will put forward. But Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas has shown the capacity to steer complex legislation through committee and to success on the floor—sometimes by only one or two votes. His procedure is to put together complex and sometimes unrelated provisions which can add votes to the measure until he comes up with a majority. If you pass a bill by more than one vote, he once said, you have given away too much.
