January 10, 2007: Amendments & Debate on Senate Ethics Bill

Recap:  The Senate voted on three amendments to S1, the Senate's ethics bill.  They were all Vitter amendments, and only one survived.  Agreed to was language strengthening penalties for falsification of information under the Ethics In Government Act.  As for the rest of the bill, earmarks and airplane travel appear to be two of the most contested issues.  DeMint stated that the bulk of earmarks consist of language added to conference reports, which the bill before the Senate (S1) would not address.  He offered an amendment to redefine "earmarks."  Big state senators fought for the continued privilege of paying first class airfares for charter flights, which a Reid amendment would make no longer possible.  The action as it unfolded is detailed below.


[18:07]
The Senate is adjourned.  They'll be back tomorrow morning at 9:30 est for votes on Senate ethics bill amendments.


[17:25]
The Senate will now vote on a motion to table Amendment 6 (see below), a Vitter Amendment.  Yes, this amendment is tabled with 54 ayes.  In other news, Stevens just withdrew his Amendment 16, saying that there is some confusion over the wording.  He's going to take a look at it and possibly resubmit it.


[17:06]
Amendment 5, setting limits on Indian tribe contributions, is breaking down along party lines, with the Dems seeking to kill it.  Yeah, this thing will be tabled, with recent ayes from Collins, Smith, and Coleman, and ayes from all Dems.  Amendment 5 is tabled with 56 affirmative votes.


[16:57]
There is about to be a vote on a motion to table Vitter's Amendment Number 5.  This amendment seeks to modify the application of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to Indian tribes.  As it is right now, there is no limit on how much a single tribe can donate to a candidate, whereas there are limits on how much a single corporation or PAC can donate to a candidate.  Vitter says he is offering this amendment considering that the Abramoff scandal grew out of donations and political money flowing from Indian tribes.  There seems to be plenty of support for tabling this amendment, though.

There is also going to be a vote to table Vitter's Amendment 6.  This amendment would prohibit authorized committees and leadership PACs from employing the spouse or immediate family members of any candidate or Federal office holder connected to the committee.  This thing's about to be tabled, though, because Collins and Feinstein have both just said that it sounds more like a solution looking for a problem and not vice versa.  Feinstein is wondering what evidence Vitter has of nepotism being a problem in the Senate.


[16:40]
Senator Robert Byrd (WV) is on the floor to say that the vote this morning on the Vitter amendment was arbitrarily cut short and he is not happy about it.  He has cast over 17,000 votes and is explaining to the people of West Virginia why he missed the vote.  He was only five minutes away from making it to the chamber to vote.  Sort of interesting.  The Dem leaders seemed to have jumped Byrd's gun, anyway, in moving along this morning's vote.


[~16:30]
Senator Ted Stevens (AK) offered an amendment, number 16, which is an amendment to Amendment 4, a Reid amendment.  Amendment 4 proposes to change the way senators pay for corporate air travel.  As it is now, senators can fly on corporate (private) jets.  In return, they must pay the equivalent of what would be a first-class ticket on a commercial airline.  This represents a substantial savings for senators because the charter rate for the private jet would greatly exceed the first class rate for a similar flight.  Reid's Amendement 4 would require senators to pay the full charter rate for any private airtravel.  The argument goes: Senators will jump at the chance to get a big discount on charter airfare, all the while flying on a corporate jet where they are captive to the lobbying efforts of whoever is footing the full bill for the flight.  Note that whether the senators are paying a first class rate or the full charter rate, the money to pay for that ticket comes out of a senatorial allowance each senator receives on an annual basis (taxpayer money) based on the number of constituents in that senator's home state.

Senators from the big, rural states (Alaska, e.g.) oppose Amendment 4.  Stevens for one says that the only way he can get to some cities and villages in Alaska is by plane (even float plane).  The only planes flying to some of these places are private jets, he says.  He submits that Amendment 4 is prohibitive; that if he has to pay the full charter rate he would blow through his senatorial allowance in the first one or two months of the year.  Thus, his amendment to Amendment 4 says that a senator should be allowed to pay the equivalent first class rate as long as he gets the approval of the ethics committee beforehand.


[16:00]
Senator Norm Coleman (MN) spoke in opposition to a troop surge in Baghdad because he believes such a move ignores the situation on the ground in Iraq.  He has recently been to Iraq.  The problem there is not a military problem.  Personally, he wants to see more committment from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki before putting more U.S. troops at risk.  That from a Republican in advance of President Bush's speech to the nation tonight, in which it is reported he will call for a 21,000-troop injection into the fetid veins of Baghdad to bring order to the lawless Iraqi capital.


[13:48]
Senator Susan Collins (ME) is offering a Senate resolution reaffirming the privacy protections afforded sealed domestic mail.  President Bush signed a postal bill last year but accompanied his signature with a signing statement reportedly interpreting the law as allowing him to open mail in exigent circumstances.  Collins wants to make clear as the author of that bill that nothing in that act or even in Bush's signing statement alters the civil liberties protections covering sealed mail.  She is saying that Bush's signing statement was never intended to signal a change in the law (requiring a warrant before the gov't can search mail) and that media reports to the contrary have been mistaken.  Still, the gov't is and always has been able to search mail without a warrant when there exists a likelihood of significant damage to life or property, e.g. wires protruding from a package.


[12:46]
Senator Chuck Grassley (IA) is back for the third day in a row to talk about the changes that Dems want to make to Medicare Part D (prescrx benefits).  As he did the last two days, he is making the point that the so-called "non-interference clause" found in the current Medicare Part D, as passed in 2003, first appeared in drafts of Medicare bills offered by Dems such as Bill Clinton and fmr. Senator Moynihan.  The non-interference clause prohibits the government from negotiating drug prices in lieu of private negotiation by each plan.

Grassley is responding in particular to the observation that the Veterans Affairs drug program includes government negotiation of drug prices.  Grassley's chart shows that "Far Fewer Drugs [Would Be] Covered if Medicare Mirrored VA."  Though, all this chart seems to say is that fewer drugs are covered under the VA benefit, a statistic seemingly independent of what effect government negotiation of prices might have on the prices of those drugs.  Grassley ends by saying that Medicare prescrx drug prices are lower under the law effective 2003, and if it ain't broke don't fix it.


[12:08]
The Senate is voting in favor of Amendment 7, a Vitter (LA) amendment upping the penalties under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 for those who knowingly and willfully falsify information required of them under the act.  The only no votes come from Trent Lott (MS), Craig Thomas (WY), Richard Lugar (IN) and Judd Gregg (NH).  Scratch that, Gregg just changed his vote to an "aye."  The amendment is agreed to.


[11:07]
Senator Jim DeMint (SC) offered four amendments, bringing the total to fourteen.  Here are three of DeMint's in detail:

• Broadening the definition of earmarks under the bill.  Right now, the Senate bill defines earmarks so as not to include 95% of the earmarks appearing in final legislation.  This is because the Senate definition of earmarks does not cover earmark language added to conference reports, where much of the earmarking activity takes place.  Conference reports are the "final product," the result of Senate and House conferees negotiating one final version of bills that have passed each house, though in different forms.  What happens is that once a bill passes both the House and the Senate, each house appoints conferees, who "conference" on the bill. &DeMint is saying that it's in the conference thatthe bill gets loaded up with pork.  Then, when the conference report goes back to the Senate and the House for final approval, members either vote for or against the entire bill and cannot address the added pork.  This means that earmarks appear in the final bill even though they have never appeared in earlier versions, where they could have been excised via Senate amendments.  So, DeMint is looking like an earmark hawk here and, interestingly, his earmark definition language is exactly the same as that being pushed in the House by Pelosi and company.

• Making it law that the government need not shut down despite the absence of current fiscal year spending bills.  His point was that lawmakers were voting for porked-up spending bills that they otherwise would vote against because they were given the choice of voting for the pork or bringing on a government shutdown.

• Something about out-of-scope language in conference reports requiring 60 votes to sustain a point of order.  I'm foggy on this, so I'll try to clarify later.


[9:37]
Reid is saying that the S.1 "substitute" moves the ball even further than S.1.  McConnell says that the substitute is essentially what passed the Senate last year 90-8, before stalling in the House.


[9:31]
Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) opens the day of debate and amendment offerings by stressing that this Senate ethics bill is not a campaign finance bill and that this is not the time to do rifle-shot legislation on campaign finance.  Senators Dianne Feinstein (CA) and Robert Bennett (UT) are the co-floor managers of the legislation.  Senator Joe Lieberman (CT) will step in for Feinstein as floor manager for the majority.  Minority Leader Mitch McConnell indicates that there might be some votes today and that both sides hope to finish the bill next week.