President Bush squeaked the Central America Free Trade Agreement through Congress this week, but not without some compromises. Shortly after the midnight CAFTA vote, Dennis Hastert directed the House to pass a $286.4 billion highway bill, reportedly in exchange for support for CAFTA. The bill is $2.4 billion more than the President’s 2005 veto limit, which is $28 billion more than last year’s limit, which was in turn was a 17% increase over the previous six-year highway spending level.

We’re all for free trade, but that’s a lot of billions. One last spending party before the August recess, I guess.

This entry was posted posted by Brad on Friday, July 29th, 2005 at 12:23 pm under Congress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.