January 18, 2007: Ethics Bill Passes; Gregg Amendment Will Appear on Minimum Wage Bill

[21:10]
There won't be any votes Friday or Monday.  There will be a vote early on Tuesday, says Majority Leader Reid.


[21:07]
Office of Public Integrity amendment falls after receiving only 27 votes.  Senate is now voting on passage of the final bill.  It will pass easily.


[20:00]
Majority Leader Reid announced that the Senate has reached an agreement on the impasse blocking the Ethics Bill.  The Gregg "rescission authority" amendment (see below, 17:41) will now be voted on during debate of the minimum wage bill, which will come before the Senate on Monday.

Several votes on amendments lie before the Senate tonight, including a Feingold amendment on the "revolving door," the Lieberman Office of Public Integrity amendment, and one or two others.


[17:44]
Senator Trent Lott (MS) doesn't like working late.  He compares the senate to "bats" and says they will come out soon.  Hello?  It's a quarter til six!  I know what's gonna happen.  We're gonna come out of our cave and start a whole series of votes.  Well...let's get started.


[17:41]
Some more specifics on the Gregg "rescission authority" amendment (text): President gets to use four rescissions per calendar year.  What happens is that when the President uses one of the four rescissions he sends a "special message" to the Congress, which is essentially a bill that would strike the spending provision.  Both house then have to pass that bill, apparently with just a simple majority, within 10 days of receipt of the "message."  If both houses do not pass the bill in time, then the rescission expires worthless.  The re-consideration of the spending provision in Congress is "expedited" such that debate on the provision is limited and it is impossible to filibuster in the Senate because the motion to limit debate is by law not debatable.


[17:30]
Here is Judd Gregg (NH), whose amendment has called all the stir.  Gregg says his amendment is not a line item veto it is a "enhanced rescission authority" and that it's not anything like the line item veto that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.  The idea is to have the President highlight spending at which Congress needs to take "a second look."  The President picks out certain spending provisions and sends them back to the Congress, specifically back to committee, and then both houses must approve them.  All it gives to the president is the ability to ask Congress to take a second look at something.  This is a way to weed earmarks out of a bill, he says.

Gregg says that his amendment is very similar to a rescission authority that Tom Dashcle put forth several years ago and which guess who sponsored: Robert Byrd.  Gregg offers to modify his amendment to track Daschle's bill identically.


[17:06]
Here is Robert Byrd (WV) who was the main obstacle to an agreement that would have granted Republicans a vote later this year on a stand-alone version of the line item veto bill.  He has returned to the floor to talk about the line item veto and why it is unconstitutional—why he opposes the very idea of it.

The line item veto weakens the power of the purse.  Weaken that and you weaken, for example, our oversight over this bloody nightmare in Iraq.  That's just one example.  Make no mistake.  Hear me now.  This line item veto authority would grant trememndous and dangerous, dangerous new power to the President.  There are new members of this body, perhaps we oughta have some discussions about the line item veto.  The power of the purse is the only way to reign in an overzealous president.  Hear me now, Senators.  You may be watching your boob tubes, your boob tubes.  Hear me now.  Eight years ago the Supreme Court ruled the line item veto unconstitutional.  I said at the time that the S.C. saved the Congress from its own folly.  But here we are.  On the heels of six years of assault on personal liberty.  Six years of rubber stamps and rubber spines, here we are all too ready to jettison, jettison, jettison the power of the purse.

He runs through the unconstitutional claims of authority President Bush has made.  This is essentially the speech Byrd made late last night.  He reads through the oath that Senators take when they are inaugurated.  He whips out his small red Constitution.  Uphold and defend...so help me God...so help me God....

If our Republican colleagues want to stop the first raise in the minimum wage in a decade, that is their right.  If they want to make a king out of the president, that is their right.  But I, this boy from the hills, will not stand with them.  I will bear true faith and allegiance to this Constitution, and to the people of this great nation.  Fie on any effort to weaken the power of the purse.  Mr. President, I yield the floor.


[17:05]
C-SPAN2 suggested that a deal was in the works to attach the line item veto to the soon-to-begin minimum wage bill in exchange for minority cooperation with finishing the Ethics Reform bill.


[16:24]
The Senate has been in a quorum call for about three hours.  A quorum call is usually used as a delay tactic, sort of like the Senate going to sleep.  This is an extended quorum call.

One thing, though, I learned.  The cloture vote on the Senate's Ethics bill will require 65 votes—more than the usual sixty—because the bill would change the Senate rules, thus requiring a "supermajority."


[13:05]
Wanted to mention a somewhat amusing if not awkward exchange that took place about fifteen minutes ago on the floor.  John Cornyn (TX) was speaking about Iraq and voiced his support for the Bush Plan etc. etc.  John Kerry (MA) broke in to ask permission to make a request of the chair (likely he wanted to reserve time to speak).  Cornyn was visibly miffed.  Normally, a senator who is speaking and who is interrupted will yield to whoever it is that is making a request.  But Cornyn would not yield and said he'd prefer to be allowed to finish his comments and then the senator from Massachusetts could make his request.  Cornyn ended up saying he would not object if Kerry wanted to reserve time after the senator from Colorado, who was the last scheduled speaker.  That was the end of it but things were uncomfortable for about thirty seconds.


[12:59]
Debbie Stabenow (MI) responded to recent comments by Charles Grassley (IA) regarding Medicare prescription drug prices.  Stabenow refuted Grassley's statement that government negotiation of drug prices would not help to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare participants.  Stabenow referred to drug prices available through the Veterans Administration health care plan that were sometimes dramatically lower through the VA plan.  She had a chart comparing prices for drugs under Medicare versus prices throught the VA for popular drugs like Nexium, Toprol, and Zocor.  She also refuted several Grassley assertions including a claim that VA health care enrollees had flocked to Medicare en masse because Medicare offered many drugs that the VA plan did not.  It appears that the Senate is gearing up to debate the introduction of government negotiation of drug prices to Medicare, something that currently does not take place under the Medicare law.


[11:44]
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama (IL) delivers a speech voicing his skepticism about the president's plan for continued involvement in Iraq.  This comes on the heels of Sam Brownback's (KS) speech yesterday in which it was clear that he—just back from Iraq—was also skeptical of the president's plan.  Brownback, a Republican, is also a presidential hopeful.

Obama's answer is to offer legislation capping the number of troops we will send to Iraq.  He notes that other senators have offered similar answers, including presidential hopefuls Hilary Clinton (NY) and Christopher Dodd (CT).  Obama's legislation also includes a phased withdrawal component whereby the president would announce to the Iraqi people that he is moving some troops elsewhere in the region.  Obama suggests we should move some troops to Afghanistan.  The Obama plan also offers resources to increase training of Iraqi troops and suggests deploying more special forces troops in Iraq to work side-by-side with Iraqis.


[11:33]
The status of the Ethics Reform bill is captured accurately in the words of Susan Collins (ME), who wants an up-or-down vote on the Office of Public Integrity amendment.  She says she will not vote to cut off debate on the bill (i.e. vote for cloture) until she gets a vote on the Office of Public Integrity Amendment.  The OPI would sit as an independent, third-party body that would oversee and enforce Congressional ethics and lobbying rules.  The amendment has the support of heavy hitters McCain, Lieberman, Collins, Obama, Kerry, and Feingold.  But past that there probably isn't much support for it.

Yesterday's action:

Senators in the minority launched a filibuster yesterday when majority leaders would not allow the Gregg Amendment on line item veto authority for the President to come to a vote.  Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) reportedly reached a deal with the Republicans to have the line item veto proposal come up for a vote in the spring but Robert Byrd (WV) was able to block this deal from taking hold (I guess b/c he chairs the Appropriations cmte.)  Byrd took to the senate floor late last night, waving his small red copy of the constitution and avowing that he would not blackmailed into handing away the most basic right of the Congress, i.e. the power of the purse.

It is not clear what the Senate will be working on today; but it begins early, 9 am.