VOTE ALERT: Tell Congress to Reject CAFTA

The vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is expected in the next day - and Corporate America is saying they've bought the votes to pass it. That is classic trash-talking - and it's not true. Everyone expects this to be a very close vote, which means now is the time for Americans to make their voices heard. Call or e-mail your Member of Congress today and tell them to vote against CAFTA.

I have written a lot about this corporate-written atrocity. The CAFTA vote in the House of Representatives will show us whether the Democratic Party is serious about standing up for America's middle class, and thus winning elections, or whether it is going to continue to have its convictions bought and sold to the highest corporate bidder. Ohio Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) and a group of courageous progressives have fought this deal tooth and nail, but it is going to require every last Democratic vote to prevent this sell-out trade pact from passing.

Here are the basic reasons why CAFTA should be voted down:

CAFTA WILL DESTROY AMERICAN JOBS: Everytime a corporate-written trade deal is rolled out, bought-off politicians in Congress start telling America that it will create jobs. And everytime that trade deal passes, America has lost millions of jobs. It's not hard to understand why: when you open the border and allow Big Business to exploit third-world workers who have almost no wage or workplace standards, American jobs are shipped over to those third-world countries. That kind of trade deal – with no labor, human rights or workplace standards - actually creates an incentive for companies to troll the world for the most repressive regimes. And the idea that America will make up those jobs by selling products to the newly-opened third-world market is an insulting lie: are we really expected to believe that people who make $1 a day in Central America are suddenly going to be consumers of job-creating high-tech products from the United States?

CAFTA IS NOT FREE TRADE: For those free trade ideologues in Congress who don't care that CAFTA will destroy U.S. jobs, remember – as NY Times economics columnist Daniel Gross notes, CAFTA isn't actually free trade. There are hundreds of pages of rules and regulations in CAFTA that protect corporate interests. When Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) tried to extend those same regulations to protect workers, he was rejected.

CAFTA DOES NOT INCLUDE STRONG LABOR PROTECTIONS: The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is pushing CAFTA, claiming that it includes very strong labor and environmental standards. That is a deliberate lie. CAFTA includes almost no standards that protect workers from exploitation. Worse, when Democrats tried to add those standards to the pact, they were voted down. The Bush administration knows it is vulnerable on a debate about worker protections – it is why they tried to bury a Labor Department report highlighting the effects of CAFTA having little labor/workplace protections. And remember, the lack of labor protections not only exposes Central American workers to exploitation - it hurts American workers, because it forces American workers into an unwinnable competition with Central American workers who CAFTA allows to be exploited.

CAFTA WILL NOT HELP CENTRAL AMERICA: Because CAFTA has little to no labor, environmental or human rights standards, it will not help raise ordinary citizens' quality of life in Central America. It will, on the contrary, allow further exploitation of these citizens by Big Business. Additionally, corporate-written provisions in CAFTA will actually make things worse for people in Central America. As just one example, the pharmaceutical industry has made sure it can raise drug prices in Central America. This is why there has been such opposition to CAFTA in Central America – ordinary people there know this deal is a disaster for them.

CAFTA'S LAST-MINUTE PROMISES WILL NOT COME THROUGH: If your Member of Congress is still trying to negotiate a last-minute CAFTA deal with the Bush administration, they should know that those deals almost never come through. What always happens before a trade vote is the White House offers Members of Congress special gifts – gifts that never actually materialize once the trade deal is signed.

CAFTA UNDERMINES AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY: Tough-talking conservatives enjoy railing on institutions like the United Nations because they supposedly usurp American sovereignty. Those same conservatives, then, should be opposed to CAFTA, because the pact includes specific provisions that actually allow other countries and unaccoutable foreign corporations to supercede American law.

I could go on, but I won't - this covers the basic lies about CAFTA, lies that are so obvious and pervasive that they shouldn't really surprise anyone. No matter what the rhetoric you hear about this trade deal in the coming day, remember: everyone in Washington, D.C. knows that CAFTA is about more profits for corporate executives, and nothing else. They will try to dress it up as good for workers, and a job creator here in America, but it is all a lie. And it's time Congress finally rejects those lies and starts going to bat for ordinary citizens.

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