According to a new report released this week, campaign contributions from corporate political action committees (PACs) to the small group of Congressional Representatives credited with helping to secure the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), have garnered a total of $2.8 million in corporate campaign contributions. CAFTA, which passed Congress with a narrow 217 to 215 vote in July of 2005, passed due to various side deals and arm-twisting by Republicans and corporate supporters and the emergence of a so-called “CAFTA 30” that despite the improbability of their supporting CAFTA, voted for the trade agreement. According to both the new report by Public Citizen and a previously held corporate-sponsored dinner in which the 15 Democrats who voted for CAFTA were honored, pro-CAFTA representatives are beginning to reap corporate benefits for their votes. Among the benefits cited in the Public Citizen report:

• Pro-CAFTA, industry political action committees (PACs) donated nearly $2.8 million to the “CAFTA 30” from January to September 2005 – or nearly what each CAFTA country is slated to receive in labor trade capacity-building money.
• Three representatives – Bean, Robin Hayes (R-N.C.) and Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) – received unusually high increases in pro-CAFTA industry PAC contributions in the two months following the CAFTA vote.
• Two first-term representatives – Bean and Fitzpatrick – received more money from pro-CAFTA, industry PACs in 2005 than they did during their first election race. Bean, who received virtually no pro-CAFTA industry PAC money in her entire first election campaign, has seen contributions from these sources grow by nearly 550 percent in just the first nine months of 2005.
• Following the CAFTA vote, Bean received an increase in campaign contributions from out-of-state individuals – one commonly cited measure of interest group influence. Bean, Gerlach and Fitzpatrick, among others, saw unusually high increases in individual donations after the CAFTA vote from the Washington, D.C., area – home to many of the country’s top lobbyists for the drug industry and other pro-CAFTA interest groups.
• Many of the CAFTA 30 were among the top recipients of contributions from the PAC headed by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay over several election cycles, including Reps. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.) and Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who each received $20,000; Gerlach, who received $30,000; and Hayes, who received money in every election cycle since 1998, totaling nearly $50,000.

Despite passage in the United States, CAFTA has still not been implemented due to ongoing opposition in Central America where Costa Rica has still not ratified the agreement.