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Democratic leaders are poised to meet their goal of passing an ethics bill by August recess without convening a conference, but watchdog groups that long have backed the majority’s calls for strong reform are bracing for a letdown.
While the watchdogs supported Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) decision to sidestep the objections of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and push through a new ethics bill, their apprehension is mounting for one reason: Democrats have not shown them any part of the new bill.
“The fact that there is absolute secrecy surrounding this has not only Public Citizen, but the entire reform community up in arms,” the legislative representative for that group’s Congress Watch division, Craig Holman, said. “We are very worried about what the final language will be.”
The policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, Meredith McGehee, said her group has “no idea” what the Democrats’ ethics rewrite will look like, “but we have concerns.”
“They want to get this done because it’s in their interest politically to get it done,” McGehee said. “I’m wary whenever these types of issues go behind closed doors, because the chances that the public will be well served are often diminished.”
Democrats have tagged GOP members as ethics obstructionists since DeMint began his push to halt the ethics bill until he is sure that its earmark transparency rules would remain intact following conference talks. Now that Reid and House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plan to work around conference, however, the bill appears on track to pass — unless its central provisions are altered in a way that provokes new opposition.
“We’re confident that the final product will be as strong as the Senate-passed bill,” a Senate Democratic leadership aide said, adding that no text is available yet to share with watchdog groups.
Asked whether the tactic of avoiding an ethics conference would alienate Republicans in numbers large enough to bring down a motion to proceed to the bill, one senior GOP aide said, “It will depend on what’s in the bill.”
“If it comes back and there’s nothing [with teeth] in the bill, I think some Democrats would decide to block it,” the aide said.
The watchdogs fear that a rewritten bill could water down two contentious provisions, one that would shed light on campaign contributions bundled by lobbyists and another that would limit lawmakers’ and aides’ ability to move immediately to K Street from the Hill.
“The people rewriting the bill would be taking a pretty big political risk to hand their opponents something to campaign on as they head into August recess,” Gary Kalman, democracy advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said. “Could they do it? Sure.”
The new bill may move jurisdiction over disclosure of bundled contributions to the often-impenetrable system of the Federal Election Commission, which McGehee likened to “taking the pieces of the puzzle and throwing them all around the room.”
The Senate Rules Committee staff director, Howard Gantman, said negotiators have not yet decided on the phrasing of the bundling provision, but underscored Democrats’ intention to pass the strongest possible bill.
“In most areas, the revisions are technical revisions,” Gantman said. “Once you start circulating the bill, what happens is everybody starts tearing it apart. These are significant reforms here.”
The Rules panel currently is discussing implementation of the ethics measure with the Secretary of the Senate, Clerk of the House and other offices that would be involved in the new disclosure regime, Gantman said.
Meanwhile, DeMint counts strong support in the GOP conference for his quest to ensure that strong earmark reform survives the process. Whether that support will translate to a large bloc opposing the new bill is unclear, but several Republicans warned late last week that eschewing conference talks would have consequences for relations in the chamber.
“Comity and courtesies affect substance and process,” Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) warned late last week, advising Democrats “to be careful about trying that procedure.”
“They should have a conference. We should be able to vote on it,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said. “It would be unethical not to.”
Yet the Democratic leadership aide predicted that any organized GOP opposition to the new ethics bill would melt in the face of political realities.
“They want to talk about procedure,” the Democratic aide said. “We want to talk about cleaning up corruption. Of those two messages, I’m betting on ours to resonate more with the American people.”
Even as the ethics rewrite remains contentious, watchdog groups late yesterday were expecting a smaller-scale win, with a House measure limiting campaign and leadership political action committee (PAC) payments to lawmakers’ spouses set to
pass on the suspensions calendar.
The House spousal-payments bill has no direct Senate counterpart, but Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) has authored similar proposals and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) lost a bid in January to keep all immediate family members off campaign and PAC payrolls.
Vitter’s support transcended party lines, with 11 Democrats — none of them committee chairmen — joining McConnell and 29 other Republicans to back a ban on payments to family. |
