January 9, 2007: Amendments Trickle In on Senate Ethics Bill

[19:03]
Ok, now Dickie D is on the floor to debate Chuckie G on the medicare Prescrx D program.  Durbin asks something about vets and appears to catch Grassley off-guard.  Durbin and his Dems want Medicare, as an agency, to be able to offer its own program, which apparently is not available under current law.  This is what the VA has, says Durbin.



[18:28]
Grassley is back.  Whitehouse is sitting pro tem.  Grassley says hello for the first time to Whitehouse (RI).  Grassley shouts out to Wyden, they are working together on this, this isn't partisan.  This wouldn't have gotten done had it not been done in a bipartisan way.  He is going through the same speech he went through this morning.  The non-gov't negotiation idea is the idea of prior Dems, not Repubs.


[18:20]
Senator Ron Wyden (OR) is talking about holds, and why they are important to lobbyists.  He and Grassley have called for an end to anonymous holds.  Wyden put a hold on the telecom effort to disintegrate net-neutrality last year, he is now making clear.


[15:37]
Earlier, Senator Judd Gregg (NH) spoke about the Democrat version of pay-go, inaugurated with this Congress.  Gregg says the Dem pay-go will bring tax increases.  Senator Kent Conrad (ND) is on right now to say that Gregg is wrong.  You either have to pay for it OR you get a super-majority vote (60%).  Gregg is saying pay-go is a Trojan horse for tax increases.  Conrad says no.  The debt is growing faster than the deficit, he said.  We are borrowing way more than any other country, MORE THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED.  $50b from Canada, Mexico $40b.  And who is the rich country?  Hah.  Conrad is saying, OK, our pay-go ain't that good but it's better than what you all had the last six years, when our surplus became a massive deficit.  Still, pay-go means that you have to pay for it unless you get sixty votes.  It's a roadblock, I guess.  Maybe that's the best you can do.


[15:35]
There will be no votes tonight.  Senate Majority Whip Richard "Dick" Durbin just said that there will be no new votes tonight.  Senator Feinstein thanked him for bringing that news.  But they really want to get this bill going and Durbin admonished his fellow senators for not bringing amendments sooner.  There haven't been many amendments today.  A couple.  Reid, Vitter.


[17:00]
Senate remains in a quorum call.


[16:46]
A message from the President arrives in the Senate.  It came in a thick manila envelope...


[15:38]
According to Senator Barack Obama (IL), the Reid substitute amendment would close "the corporate jet loophole."  So, it is not fair to say that the substitute is a softer bill.  It is probably fair to say that the two competing bills, S.1 and the Reid "substitute" each have areas where they are hard or soft.


[13:08]
Senate is on lunch break.


[11:44]
Senator Trent Lott (MS), the minority whip, supports S.1.  Still, he cautions the Senate against "feckless positioning" to make themselves look good.  He says he's from one of the poorest states in the nation and he's not going to give up the right to attain federal funding when needs be.  He has earmarked for needy towns in MS where houses are "snake-infested" and annually flooded.  He's not gonna give up what he considers a constitutional right.  Sounds to me like Lott thinks a lot of the provisions in this bill are unnecessary, and that common sense has not quite sunk in.  He can't be had for the price of one meal, he says.  And it's hard to get around in some of the larger states.  It's 346 miles from the hurricane-ravaged MS coast to "that great center of learning" in Oxford, the University of Mississippi.


[11:40]
Jon "Jack" Tester now makes his first appearance in the U.S. Senate.  He sounds a little nervous, understandably.  He has ten minutes, which he tells Madam Senator Feinstein will be more than adequate.


[11:26]
Senator Robert Bennett (UT) is now speaking.  He is the ranking member on the Rules and Adminstration Committee.  He does not believe that S1 is an over-reaction, nor does he believe that the "substitute" to S1 (yes, there is a substitute, offered by McConnell and Reid, and supported by Bennett) is an overreaction, but he acknowledges some sentiment out there that S1 et al. is an overreaction.  He tells of a friend who said, "You know, your group (the Senate) is the only group I know where if someone breaks the rules, you change the rules."  Bennett notes that the rule-breakers (Cunningham and Abramoff) are in jail, implying that maybe the existing rules are working.

[11:07]
Now it is time to open debate on the ethics bill.  Now until 2:15.  Senator Dianne Feinstein, Rules and Administration Chair, is laying out a speaking order.  Sounds like Jon Tester (MT) is going to get his first floor time.  And Senator Trent Lott (MS) will have some floor time "if he cares to come down."

Provisions under this bill as it now stands:
• Banning gifts and meals from lobbyists;
• Requiring full disclosure of travel on non-commercial airplanes;
• Extending existing lobbying ban on former members from one to two years, supposedly closing the "rotating door";
• Stripping floor privileges of former senators who are now lobbyists;
• Sponsors of earmarks must be identified;
• Conference reports and sponsors of earmarks in those reports must be posted on the internet 48 hours before final votes (unless Senate votes urgency);
• Out-of-scope language added to conference reports must withstand a 60-vote point-of-order in the Senate (this DOES NOT include earmarks, just out-of-scope provisions)
• K Street projects would violate Senate rules;
• No more anonymous Holds;


Likely amendments:
• Requiring proper valuation of sporting event tickets given as gifts, no more "cut-rate" tickets
• No more negotiation for employment as lobbyist whence retiring from senate while sitting as a senator
• No more additions to conference reports in the dead of night after the reports have been signed by the members (this HAS actually happened)
• No more gifts from organizations that employ or retain lobbyists
• No more travel from organizations that employ or retain lobbyists (minority opposes these last two)


[11:00]
Senator Frank Lautenberg (NJ) is on the floor to discuss Iraq.  He was slurring his words a bit...


[10:58]
Senator Byron Dorgan (ND) has come to the floor to talk about Iraq, and says he will be listening to the President tomorrow night.  But he sounds skeptical.  He believe Iraq is embroiled in a civil war.  Dorgan also says, in response to Senator Grassley, that it's preposterous that the law prohibits the government from negotiating lower drug prices for its seniors, and notes that U.S. citizens pay more for drugs than the citizens of any other country.  Dorgan also says that we need to ramp up incentives for investing in and producing alternative fuels.


[10:41]
Senator Bill Nelson (FL) is wearing a blue and orange tie and is here today to recognize the signal accomplishments of the Fighting Gators.  This afternoon he will introduce a resolution recognizing the victory.  He has entered a wager with freshman senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio such that the losing team's senator would do public pushups equivalent to the total score of the game (55).  It is a great day for the state of Florida, he says.

[10:25-10:40]
Senator Charles "Chuck" Grassley (IA) is back this morning to continue talking about the medicare bill.   Debate is imminent concerning Medicare Part D, as it has landed on the Democratic agenda.  The Democrats want to address/rework language in the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Part D) known as the "non-interfernce clause" wherein the government itself does not negotiate the price of drugs with drugmakers but leaves that up to private negotiators working on behalf of the various private plans available under Medicare.  Grassley does not believe that this prohibition on government negotiation is a problem.  He quotes President Clinton as supporting negotiation between individual, private plans and drugmakers rather than between the government and drugmakers.  He is trying to make the point that this prohibition on government negotiation is the brainchild not of Republicans but rather Dems such as President Clinton and fmr. NY senator D.P. Moynihan.


[10:24]
Entering a period of morning business until 11 am, with the minority controlling the first half and the majority the second half.

Today, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) kicked off the Senate with an elegy of Alben Barkley, former senator of Kentucky and a powerful Democrat leader during the late thirties and forties.  I'm trying to find out what the significance is of McConnell's speech today, other than a look back at history.  Barkley was Kentucky's last senate leader and vice-president under Truman.  Barkley once resigned as senate leader after butting heads with FDR (FDR vetoed a bill) but won a public relations victory over FDR and was voted back in to the majority leadership the next day.  McConnell says that men like Barkley have much to teach us, in putting principle over power.