After campaigning for months on a promise to tighten ethics rules, Senate Democratic leaders tried unsuccessfully on Thursday to block a measure that would shine a light on the shadowy practice of earmarking federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects.
Last week House Democrats passed an unexpectedly broad change to their chamber's rules that would disclose the size, purpose and sponsor of any earmark.
But on Thursday, when Republican Senator Jim DeMint introduced a similar proposal in the Senate, Democratic leaders moved quickly to squash it, calling the House bill poorly thought out.
Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said he was happy to see the House "moving things along very quickly."
However, of the Senate measure, he said: "Frankly, I don't think they spent the time on this that we have."
The Democratic leaders' effort to block the DeMint proposal was defeated by a vote of 51-46, surprising almost everyone in the Senate.
The outcome reflected the keen desire of many lawmakers to appear to be on the side of openness and reform after an election that turned in part on congressional corruption scandals.
The reputation of earmarks -- pet projects that individual lawmakers tuck into complicated bills behind the scenes -- was tarnished because they figured in several of the scandals.
But they are cherished by lawmakers of both parties as a tool of political power used to reward supporters and gain favor with constituents.
On Thursday night, Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, said, "We are continuing to negotiate with Republicans on how to deal with earmark reform."
Reid started the week by introducing a bipartisan ethics and lobbying proposal negotiated with the Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell.
It contained a comparatively weak measure on earmarks that would require disclosure of the individual lawmakers sponsoring only a small fraction of them.
The bill excluded all earmarks dispensed through the federal government, including defense contracts and civil engineering projects, which are two of the largest recipients of earmarks.
It also excluded all earmarks written in the explanatory reports that accompany spending bills, rather than in the bills themselves.
Reid offered his own amendment that would ban gifts or trips from lobbyists to congressmen and the discounted use of corporate jets, but he left the weak earmark provision intact.
DeMint's amendment to the ethics bill would have eliminated the loopholes and would apparently apply to all earmarks, just as the new House rules will do.
After the move to block it failed, Reid and Senator Richard Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat, argued vigorously against the measure, saying it could have unintended effects.
"Earmark disclosure will be a major change in the way the Senate works," Reid said.
"We should adopt the Reid-McConnell version rather than the Senate version in the DeMint amendment. If we need to revisit the issue later, we can do that," he said.
DeMint argued that if the original bill was not strengthened, "the public's going to know from day one that the idea of being open and transparent is just a scam."
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the