via CSPAN, CAFTA just passed the house, 217-215, with 15 democrats voting in favor, after a vote that started at 11pm eastern that was held open for an extra 50 minutes while Cheney apparently twisted arms on the house floor — it was a few votes short when the vote was supposed to end. This was predicted in an editorial a few days ago by OH Rep. Sherrod Brown. Passage of this bill is good news for DeLay, Big Pharm, and Walmart. Probably not so much for the rest of us. Here’s just one reason CAFTA is a bad bill for the environment: it will enable corporations to sue governments over future lost profits if local environmental laws inhibit their activities. More here and here.

From Think Progress, DeLay apparently slipped an extra 1.5 billion into the energy bill for
“ultra-deepwater drilling” — the money is to be administered by a private consortium of oil and gas companies (including Halliburton), mostly located in DeLay’s home district,
and appears to be available for a wide array of spending at the discretion of these companies. Henry Waxman writes a letter [PDF here], compaining that the subtitle was added to the bill after the legislation was closed to further amendment.

Beyond the absurdity of the House Majority Leader adding huge giveaways to his campaign supporters after a bill is closed, let me just point out that this giveaway is slightly more than the total US spending on energy efficiency and renewable energy, which was cut by about 4% for 2006.

The one bright spot of the bill, the renewable energy standard, which would have required electric companies to use 10% renewables by 2020, was stripped from the final version. Oh, and the bill includes weakened export controls on highly enriched uranium! That must be just so that all those evil dictators looking to build nuclear weapons don’t have to waste time going through Niger!

But, I am in favor of the extra month of summer they’ve added.

UPDATE: The Public Campaign Action Fund has prepared a handy letter to your Representative.