Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2007 | 7 a.m.
WASHINGTON - Sen. Harry Reid's skills as new majority leader stumbled last week when he tried, and failed, to stop the Senate's anti-pork czars from meddling with his ethics reform bill.
Just days into the new Congress during a debate on earmarks, a leading campaign issue last fall, nine Democratic senators broke with Reid to vote for a Republican amendment to beef-up his proposal to reform earmarks - the special spending provisions that lawmakers tuck into bills, almost always for pet projects in their home districts.
Senators wanted to require their colleagues put their names on virtually all earmarks, which run into the thousands.
Reid wanted to put names only on those earmarks that did not go to a federal agency but instead go to an outside entity. Those kinds of earmarks number in the hundreds, not thousands.
No sooner did Reid lose that important vote 51-46 than he made the unusual move of blocking the popular amendment from becoming part of his package. But the damage was done, and Reid later compromised.
Tom Schatz, president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, said within minutes Thursday afternoon his e-mail "was just going crazy."
"How do we get Sen. Reid to change his mind?" was the topic in his in-box.
"The debate was by Senate measures very heated - and the aftermath was more heated," Schatz said. "I don't know why he picked this one to have a fight over. It was a really bad idea."
As far as first weeks on the job go, Reid's start was rough on two counts:
Looking back Friday at the defeat, Reid said, "Yesterday was a rather difficult day, as some days are," he said. "There was a lot of confusion as to what people were trying to accomplish. I think that perhaps we should have given a little more time for explanations."
Democrats pledged to rein in a perceived culture of corruption in Washington after years of GOP scandals, highlighted by Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham who is serving a prison term for trading earmarks for bribes and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, also now behind bars.
Reid has made no secret of his support for earmarks, telling reporters he has made "hundreds and hundreds" of them during his time in Congress. Reid has always said he supported having senators put their names on their earmarks, which his bill would require.
"I'm proud of all the earmarks I've gotten and wouldn't mind putting my name on them," he told Nevada reporters last week
The amendment to his bill was authored by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, with backing from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. - the anti-pork duo who tried last fall to halt a massive year-end spending bill because of its earmarks.
While DeMint's amendment would have required more than 12,000 earmarks to have names assigned to them, Reid's legislation would cover about 500.
DeMint supported essentially the same disclosure that House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi put in place as part of the Democrats' agenda for the first 100 hours - and that provision won over the likes of Democratic Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and John Kerry of Massachusetts, and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
Reid's office said he blocked the bill out of concern about a loophole in DeMint's provisions that would have allowed senators to continue to fund so-called tax earmarks - giving tax favors to specific businesses - without disclosing their involvement.
Coburn's spokesman, John Hunt, said that in supporting the narrower disclosure, Reid likely was confronted with the reality that the desire for earmarks runs deep and the culture in Congress is "not a Republican problem, but an institutional problem."
Reid and DeMint later agreed to revisions Reid wanted on tax earmarks and he yielded to DeMint's wishes for disclosure of virtually all earmarks.
But the debate is far from over. The Senate faces more amendments this week - including one dubbed the "Reid amendment" that would restrict family members from lobbying senators for earmarks.
Reid made headlines a few years ago after it was reported that one of his sons and another relative lobbied his office. He has since disallowed the practice and now bans his own family members, and those of his staff, from lobbying his office.
David Lublin, a political science professor at American University in Washington, said the trip-up may not be the kind of political drama that hits home with voters, but serves as a reminder of Reid's "paper thin" majority in the Senate and the appetite for reform after the years of scandals.
"It's hardly a 'Miss Pittypat, give me the smelling salts moment,' even if someone wants to make it out to be that way," Lublin said. "I think it's just a reminder of the thinness of the majority, and maybe he needed to be a bit more aggressive than promised."
archive
