Ethics bill is bound for White House

The Senate cleared a sweeping overhaul of ethics and lobbying rules Thursday, overcoming strong objections from a handful of Republicans who said most of their GOP colleagues were buckling to pressure in the wake of corruption scandals on Capitol Hill.

The chamber overwhelmingly approved the bill by an 83-14 vote, giving Democrats a victory on a top priority that they plan to tout back home during the month-long August recess. The bill now heads to the White House, which has concerns with the bill but has not issued a veto threat.

{mosads}“We’re really hitting our stride,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Enactment of the bill would mark the most sweeping ethics reforms since the Watergate era, requiring lawmakers for the first time to disclose fundraising by lobbyists, tightening rules on gift-giving to staff and lawmakers, forcing lobbyists to disclose their contacts, clamping down on members’ junkets and requiring lawmakers to disclose when they seek earmarked funds for projects in their home states.

But a bloc of conservative Republicans said the plan does not go far enough in shining a light on earmarks, the source of recent corruption scandals on the Hill. They slammed their Republican colleagues for backing the earmark disclosure requirements, which they said would allow members to hide their pet projects by exploiting loopholes in the legislation.

“There are many others who would like to be with us [in opposing the bill], but they’re afraid,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a leading critic. “I’m disappointed that Republicans feel so weak that they have to vote for a bill they know is a pretense.”

The critics said they could not muster enough GOP opposition because many Republicans were worried that voting against an ethics reform bill could come back to haunt them in the future.

“I can never try to rationalize somebody else’s decision, but clearly the fact that 22 are up for reelection may have an impact on it,” said Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), one of the 14 Republicans to vote against the bill.

Five Republicans up for reelection in 2008 voted against the measure: Sens. James Inhofe (Okla.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), John Cornyn (Texas) and Larry Craig (Idaho). But those senators’ reelection hopes appear to be on safe grounds. The only presidential candidate to vote against the measure was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime critic of earmarks, who said the American people had been “deceived” by the bill.

Those strong words put Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the Republican leader who is up for reelection in 2008, in a tough position. McConnell gave a speech criticizing several aspects of the bill, including the earmark reforms and what he said was a convoluted ban on gift-giving. Further, he questioned the rationale for forcing presidents to repay the government for using Air Force One for campaign travel at a charter rate. McConnell said that could amount to $400,000 per hour.

McConnell said that means the “end of presidential fundraisers outside Washington for Democrats and Republicans.”
Still, McConnell said the measure was an improvement over the status quo and voted for it, even though his deputy, Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.), voted against it because of the earmark language.

Lawmakers’ use of earmarks has ballooned over the last 16 years. Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group that opposes the bill, reports that Congress in 2005 earmarked nearly 14,000 projects that cost $27.3 billion, a dramatic increase from the 546 earmarked projects in 1991 that cost $3.1 billion.

Earmarked funds have been at the center of some of the most high-profile corruption scandals in Washington, and led to the conviction of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.). They are also at the center of a growing FBI and IRS probe into the longest-serving Republican senator in history, Ted Stevens of Alaska, who voted for the bill Thursday.

The fight over the bill marked a departure from the Senate’s resounding approval of the original version of the ethics and reform bill, which passed 96-2 in January. That bill would have required the Senate parliamentarian to certify whether earmark disclosures are being complied with, whereas the new bill mandates only that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) ensure compliance. Moreover, the bill does not include a provision preventing members from trading earmarks for votes.

Still, Democrats lashed out at the GOP critics, saying they had lost the chance to negotiate after DeMint — who wanted assurances from Reid to maintain strict earmark language in a conference report — single-handedly blocked Democrats from holding formal conference talks.

“To me, this is all sour milk, spilled milk,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Rules Committee.

Reid denounced the criticism as “absurd,” saying the bill would address the cozy relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists that was ubiquitous when Republicans ran Capitol Hill for much of the last 12 years.

“The American people in November of last year said, ‘Let’s change the way we do business in Washington,’ and we did change that,” Reid said.