by hilzoy
Via TPMMuckraker, this article in The Hill:
“House Democrats hurried yesterday to put the finishing touches on ethics reforms that would ban lawmakers and staffers from accepting trips, gifts and meals from lobbyists and prevent the new majority from holding votes open to change the outcome.
Democrats will adopt and then amend the House Rules package tomorrow to ban all travel paid for by lobbyists or organizations that employ lobbyists, require the ethics committee to pre-approve travel paid for by outside groups, enact a total gift ban, and require lawmakers to pay the market cost of flying on a corporate jet, said Democratic staffers and officials with government watchdog groups.
And, because they feel they lost the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit vote because GOP leaders held it open for three hours, during which they flipped opponents into the “yes” column, Democrats will include a provision in the rules to prevent any sort of repetition, said aides to incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Democrats also will eliminate the practices of changing conference reports after members have signed them and excluding elected members from conference committees. (…)
In addition to revising ethics rules, the Democratic majority on Friday will debate and vote on procedural and budgetary reforms — measures to ensure that members have 24 hours to review legislation, earmark reforms and pay-as-you-go requirements — said senior Democratic aides.
Time spent debating changes to the rules package will not count against Pelosi’s 100-hour legislative blitzkrieg, set to begin the week of Jan. 8 and last approximately 10 legislative days, ending when President Bush delivers his State of the Union address on Jan. 23.”
This is all really good. Besides the lobbying reforms, I’m especially happy about PAYGO and the requirement that members have a chance to actually read bills before they vote on them. It’s sad that this has to be an issue, but there we are.
And here’s another piece of good news:
“House Democrats led by Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) are aiming to undo a controversial vestige of the Jack Abramoff era in the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress. Miller plans to include language raising wages in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in a broader bill increasing the U.S. minimum wage. (…)
The current language would increase gradually the islands’ minimum wage from $3.05 an hour to the federal level, which is now $5.15 an hour but would increase to $7.25 if the umbrella U.S. minimum-wage hike passes.
“People are being exploited in the Marianas Islands and they deserve to have a minimum-wage increase,” Miller’s chief of staff, Daniel Weiss, said.”
“Democrats also will eliminate the practices of changing conference reports after members have signed them”
Good Lord. They did that?
Well, this is all a pretty good package.
Two points, however.
I predict the gift and meal and trip ban will backfire one way or the other. As business people like to say when they behave in whatever way they (probably me) behave: it’s business.
The world’s skids are greased with baksheesh. Subtract schmoozing from the world’s equations and and what you have left is people doing the rights things for the right reasons. Unthinka…. I say…. unthinkable!
In our state, a very strict anti-baksheesh citizen initiative was passed making even smiling at a state employee (I exaggerate) a prosecutable offense, for the person on the receiving end of the smile. If there is anything the citizenry can’t abide, it’s their elected representatives acting just like the citizenry.
Re the Marianas: when Tom Delay, Dick Armey, and Grover Norquist move there to take up employment as textile weavers, I’ll judge the minimum wage to have been raised enough.
Unfortunately, their clients are beseeching them now to find cheaper labor, somewhere, anywhere, because the women in the Marianas are going to quit their second jobs as evening masseusses, thus ruining the fun of having cheap labor around.
Delay, Armey, and Norquist, of all people, should know the immutable laws of economics make prostitution pay more than more productive activities.
PAYGO hasn’t made it through yet, and I’m interested to see exactly what form it takes. Also in researching its practice, dramatic understating of projected costs with a lack of restatement when they become evident has been very closely married to PAYGO in the past. Furthermore, since spending the Bush tax cuts won’t ‘increase’ the deficit when they expire (compared to the year before they expire) the ground has been prepared to spend that money (see also Krugman) despite the fact that the tax cuts were allegedly horrific for the deficit.
I fully expect this to be just like the first year of the “contract for America”. Appearance of initial activity in the first two months, slow slide to business as usual in the next three, normal crap by year two.
But I’m willing to be surprised. 🙂
“normal crap by year two”
Given historical trends, the stock market, the measure of all things, should soar. Buy! 😉
I doubt the anti-wining&dining bill will change much, as I think most legislators are more influenced by the promises of campaign contributions that went along with the dinners and free trips, but what the heck, it will at least increase the appearance of propriety and therefore the legitimacy of the government. All the rest of this sounds terrific! I’m especially delighted to see someone taking aim at the disgrace that is the Marianas.
Seb: figuring out the baseline for the PAYGO stuff is actually rather interesting. On the one hand, Democrats get no credit at all for letting the Bush tax cuts expire: that’s not a “change”, even though everyone expected that the Republicans, if elected, would have made them permanent. (And even though I recently saw an article describing a vote to let them expire as a vote to “increase taxes” –if anyone cares, I’ll try to find it, but I think this sort of coverage is pretty common.)
On the other, fixing the AMT will count as an enormous tax cut, even though (again) everyone expected that to be done anyways. (And it’s worth noting that the GOP never enacted this tax cut, which benefits primarily the upper middle and “lower upper” classes — apparently, repealing the estate tax was a higher priority.) So it will have to be offset by some sort of tax increase (to big for spending cuts, I think.)
On the third hand, I have no idea at all what counts as the baseline for spending on Iraq.
Yes, ajay, they did that, and a lot more.
Pelosi and others put out a huge .pdf on the abuses of House process by the R leadership in 2004 or 2005.
During 2005 or early 2006 David Obey, Barney Frank, Davis from NC, and a rep from Maine put together proposals that form the basis for the changes The Hill is reporting. Obey put in a good word for public financing in the presser they did to promote the package.
I have links somewhere for both of those, and will dig them out if anyone’s interested, but my point is that this isn’t something unexpected or recent. Well away from any election campaign, Dems tried to get the R leadership to quit abusing the process, put together and publicized proposals to return to sanity, and, now that they’ve been returned to leadership, are implementing them.
On the third hand, I have no idea at all what counts as the baseline for spending on Iraq.
A feature rather than a bug for the administration. Every dime spent on the war so far has been authorized/appropriated by a “supplemental”, rather than as part of DoD budget legislation. (Please correct this if I’m wrong.)
“normal crap by year two”
I’d be relatively satisfied by that, if “normal” means pre-Gingrich&Co.
The NYT website front-paged this – “sure the Dems are promising reforms, but the states have already enacted better ones”.
Appreciate the pointer, rilkefan. But, critical as I often am of NYT politics pieces (front-pagers often being the worst), this article to me conveys a lot of the real-life complexities of efforts to get money out of campaigns and lobbying. In particular, it highlights the ugly role played by the Supreme Court’s money-is-speech decision in the 1970s.
Why would anyone think that people who are already corrupt care about the rules?
If they really care they should get rid of all the corrupt Dem’s that are at the top of the party. Sadly, many are are still ignoring the fact that alot of the Democrat leadership is corrupt.
I mean even Obsidian Wings is ignoring it. The rules mean little when everyone ignores the problem.
“This article to me conveys a lot of the real-life complexities of efforts to get money out of campaigns and lobbying.”
Fair enough, but I still think it’s a veiled sneer at the Democratic leadership understood as not including Van Hollen. E.g.:
bril: “I mean even Obsidian Wings is ignoring it.”
Funny, you seem to have commenting privileges here. And I seem to recall posts here decrying bad actions by Democrats – perhaps it’s hard to notice because there have been so many bad actions by Republicans to decry (because they’ve been in power, and because so many betrayed their principles).
bril would have more credibility on this point if he did something more than post off-topic comments about how Senator Such-and-Such has a hangnail and ObWi is ignoring it. It’s clearly partisan sniping rather than a desire for better government.
“I mean even Obsidian Wings is ignoring it.”
I am not ignoring it, I just promised to play nice for a while. But I will never forget the bankruptcy bill, or Chuck Schumer’s last-minute amendment (nor that Obama voted “no”).
Right now I am quite unhappy with Pelosi’s generosity, and most of this as tactics, but will withhold judgement as to whether this is principle, good strategy, or Beltway incest.
“I mean even Obsidian Wings is ignoring it.”
I’m happy to be acknowledged as a part of the problem! I didn’t believe we were that important.
Seb: according to bril, every minute we spend not commenting on the malfeasance of Democrats is worthy of its own separate comment.
I mean, this is the same bril who posted a comment about how we were ignoring Democratic corruption to this post.
I for one am dying to know what the mainpagers think about (Democratic) Senator Such-and-Such’s hangnail.
“Why would anyone think that people who have little or nothing useful to contribute care about posting thoughtful comments?
If they really had something to say they would give up all the predictable, contentless partisan sniping they engage in. Sadly, many are are still ignoring the fact that their own comments are both obvious and pointless.
I mean even Obsidian Wings is allowing it. Actually making a coherent argument means little when anyone can post whatever crosses their mind.”
OK, bril, I’ve had my fun at your expense. On a sort of serious note, it doesn’t seem like you’re really thinking about what you write. I bet you could do better.
It might be that the Democratic leadership is corrupt. It’s not enough, however, to just say that, as if it were a self-evident fact. It’s not. You need to demonstrate *why* you think that is so, otherwise nobody is under any obligation to take your point of view seriously.
I could post here and say, “bril drowns cats as a hobby”, or “bril wears underoos”, or “bril picks his nose and eats it”. Nobody would stop me, at least at first. However, if I did so without the incriminating videotapes, my credibility would go south in a hurry. So, I don’t do that. You shouldn’t either.
I bet you could do better. If you have a case, make your case. Please try harder next time.
Thanks –
I never thought these words would come from my keyboard, in this combination, but I feel that I must say: good for Nancy Pelosi.
Slarti: “These are the days of miracle and wonder, and don’t cry, baby, don’t cry, don’t cry.” – Paul Simon, “The Boy in the Bubble”
🙂
The Boy in the Bubble
Hmmm…I think I ought to take offense, but I haven’t had enough coffee yet.
On the bright side: Notre Dame, 5 for 16 in postseason bowl games in the last two decades. Probably they’ll only be ranked in the bottom half of the top 5, preseason, next year. And they’ll probably want to see about getting a bigger woodshed.
Not that kind of bubble and I’d never call you a boy without provocation. 🙂 Here’s the song I was quoting.
I’m familiar with it, Bruce. I can probably sing it from memory, along with the rest of the disc.
Except the bits done by Ladysmith Black Mambazo; I just can’t make my voice do that.
Oh, okay. I try not to make too many assumptions about what other posters do or don’t know.