Senate Proceeding on Aug 2nd, 2007 :: 1:02:47 to 1:22:47
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0:54:44 to 1:02:47( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: Barack Obama

1:02:33 to 1:02:47( Edit History Discussion )

Barack Obama: so far, that's a fight i've lost lost, but i'll continue to support independent enforcement because i believe it's in our nation's best interests. i also believe that if we're serious about change, we

1:02:47 to 1:03:01( Edit History Discussion )

Dianne Feinstein: need to have a real discussion about public finance ing for congressional elections because even if we can stop lobbyists from buying us lunch or taking us out on junkets, they'll still be able to attend our

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John McCain: fundraisers, and that's access the average american does not vvment in our democracy -- not have. in our democracy, madam president, the price of influence should be nothing more than your voice and

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Speech By: John McCain

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John McCain: your vote. that should be enough for health care reform, that should be enough for a real energy policy, that should be enough to ensure that our government is still the defender of fairness and opportunity

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John McCain: for every american. it's time to shot american people that we have the courage -- to show the american people that we have the courage to change the prevailing culture in the senate, it's time to give

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John McCain: people confidence in their government again. we have the chance to do it with this bill. i proudly support this legislation. i once again thank the chair for her outstanding work in moving this forward,

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John McCain: and i urge all my colleagues to support the legislation as well. thank you, madam president. mr. mccain: madam president? the presiding officer: senator mccain, if i might just say the unanimous consent

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John McCain: on your side is senator coburn on 10 minutes, senator demint 10, senator mccain 10 -- if you wish to change that order -- oh, it is not a sequence, all right. so it is not a sequence. so i recognize

1:04:17 to 1:04:29( Edit History Discussion )

John McCain: the senator from arizona. mr. mccain: madam president, over the years i found smis myself in a lonely fight against earmarks and pork barrel spending. year after year i read lists of projects we're

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John McCain: spending money that embarrassment might change. and i was encourage ed in january when this body passed a lobbying and ethics package that contained real meaningful earmark reform. i thought it would

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John McCain: finally enact effective reforms, unfortunately unfortunately, the victory is short-lived. one of my happier days, i'll admit, was when dr. dr. coburn was elected to the united states senate in

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John McCain: 2004. there's no better advocate of earmark reform, no one more consistent in standing firm to fight the worthy fight against wasteful spending, and i'm proud to call him my friend. i'd like to commend

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John McCain: my friend, senator demint and senator graham, senator cornyn, and others for joining our effort. sadly, i say to my friends that given the very watered-down earmark provisions contained in the measure

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John McCain: brought to us by the majority, our good fight clearly will have to continue. not soanl does this bill -- only does this bill do far too little to rein in wasteful spending, it has completely gutted

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John McCain: the earmark reforms we overwhelming overwhelmingly passed in january january. it provides little more than lip service unless you happen to be the majority leader. under this majority-written bill with

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John McCain: no input from republicans, this -- this bill will, unless you hold one of the top position positions, you will now yield even more power, even more power with your pork barrel pen. there's -- let

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John McCain: me be clear. the ethics and lobbying reform bill has some good provisions which i strongly support, a ban on gifts and travel paid for by lobbyists or groups, although if you want to get a free meal, just

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John McCain: count it a campaign contribution. but anyway, increased disclosure is welcome reform. but the bill before us fixes only the part of the problem and not the whole problem. the heart of the problem

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John McCain: that has spread the corruption is the earmark process. all flows from (no audio). as my friend, dr. coburn has said from time to time, it' the gateway (no audio) to corruption corruption. and i

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John McCain: don't throw around the word "corruption" lightly, mr. president, but there's form former members of congress in jail, there's vechtion investigations going on rht now and you can trace it all back to

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John McCain: the influence of money which has crut corrupted a process which then allows money, our tax dollars, to be given to special interests or even accrue to the benefit of the author of the earmarks. we

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John McCain: come to the floor a lot and talk about a lot of the earmark earmarking. some of them are fun to talk about, but they make you sad. $225,000 for an historic wagon museum in utah, $1 million for a d.n.a. study

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John McCain: of bears in montana montana, $200,000 for the rock 'n' roll hall of fame. you notice that all of these earmarks are geographically designate ed so that there would be no mistake that that money might

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John McCain: go someplace else than where it had been intended by the appropriate or. one of my favorites is the $37 million over four years to the alaska fishery ies marketing board to promote and develop fishery

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John McCain: products and research pertaining to american fishery ies fisheries, so how does thi board spend the money so generously? i have a picture that i won't show. well, they spent $500,000 of your tax dollars

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John McCain: to paint a giant salmon on the side of an alas sca airplane 747 and nicknamed it the salmon 747. so the fact is, the fact is (no audio]. says it even better than i can can -- quote, "our -- quote,

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John McCain: "our favorite switcher yoo oo, the parliamentarian would have determined whether a on anearmarks scplied with disclosure rules. under the current bill mr. reid himself will decide if a bill is in compliance.

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John McCain: when was the last time a majority party leader declared one of his own bills out of order? i've only been here 20 years, mr. president, but i've never seen it and i don't think you'll see it in the future.

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John McCain: so while under this new version of the bill earmarks should be disclosed in theory, the fact remains, and only the committee chair, the majority leader, or his designee can police it. if they say all the earmarks

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John McCain: are identified, we take it as gospel gospel. our only option is to appeal a ruling of the chair that a certification was made, and of course, that's business as usual usual, requires 60 votes. the

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John McCain: new version does retain a requirement that bills in confer conference reports be available 48 hours before a vote, but the searchable database is no longer a requirement when it comes to conference

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John McCain: reports. nference reports, where we have seen inserted some of the most egregious pork barrel projects in this system as it exists today, and of course, con conscreently, the bill was mod -- conveniently,

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John McCain: the bill was modified between its release monday morning and another version monday afternoon. it was a modification to the benefit of the business as usual crowd. it would now require a 60-vote threshold

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Tom Coburn: to appeal a ruling of the chair compared to a mere majority vote under the version release ed a few hours earlier. let's be clear, mr. president, 60 members are not going to over overrule the majority

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Speech By: Tom Coburn

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Tom Coburn: leader, fact. business as usual. business as usual. i'm a bit saddened, too, mr. president, because this is an opportunity. there's enough outrage and anger out there amongst the american people that they're

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Tom Coburn: demanding re reform. they're not demanding that it increase from one year to two-year for disclosure and they're not demanding about meals. they're demanding we fix the earmark process which has led

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Tom Coburn: to corruption. and we have taken a pass. and i regret very much and i predict to you now that the earmarking and pork barrel spend spending will creep back into the process sooner rather than later.

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Tom Coburn: and we will not regain the confidence of the american people. mr. president, i want to thank again my colleagues, senators -- both senators from south carolina, the senator from oklahoma and others

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Tom Coburn: who have fought, sometimes, a lonely fight to try to clean up this mess. mr. president, i yield the balance of my time to the senator from oklahoma and the senator from south carolina. mrs. feinstein:

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Tom Coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from california. ms. sfien stein: we had a leader but he's been delayed so we'd be happy to go to a republican speaker next. the presiding officer:

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Tom Coburn: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: mr. president, i thank senator mccain for highlighting some of the problems with the bill. you know, the real problem is that we, last year, spent spent $434 billion

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Tom Coburn: of our grandkids' money that we couldn't come up with. we didn't collect taxes. we just lowers lowered their standard of living in the future. . and how did we get there? we got there because

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Tom Coburn: we use earmarks to buy votes on appropriations bills so we never look at the appropriation bill. we only look to see if our little thing is in it. not all earmarks are bad. what is bad is the lack

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Tom Coburn: of transparency in our government. i know, mr. president, that you've helped me in terms of the transparency and accountability act, but that's all after the fact. what this bill does is create a lie.

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Tom Coburn: that's what it is. it's not anything less than that that. we're lying to the american people that we're fixing earmarks when we're not. and the reason is the vast majority of people in this body

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Tom Coburn: don't want the their earmarks disclosed because it limits their ability to play the power game with the well-connected who get something ahead of everybody else. the other problem with earmarks is it takes

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Tom Coburn: our eye off of priorities for our country. earmarks cause us not to do what's best for the country as a whole in the long term. it makes a us short-term thinkers and it makes us parochial in our

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interests. and i challenge any member of this body to look at the oath that they took and see if it says anything about your state when you swore to uphold the constitution and serve as a u.s. senator.

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your duty is to the country as a whole, not to the well-heeled special interests that are the benefits, whether they're parochial or not, to your earmark. so there's no question this bill will pass, but

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the question the senators have to ask is was i intellectually honest when everyone everyone of them is out there saying, you know, this -- we'll have to fix this later because we really don't like this,

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but we don't have the courage to vote against it because they know we haven't fixed the problem. but they're afraid of the public outrage and the pressure's been create ed in the essence of create creating

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the impression that we've fixed the problem. now, why do i say we haven't fixed the problem? you go through this. what the senate passed was dick durbin, nancy pelosi's bill on transparency in earmarks

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brought to the senate by the senator from south carolina. the first provision, prohibited senators from trade ing earmarks for votes. in other words, i'll give you an earmark if you'll vote for my bill.

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it's gone. it's not there anymore. prohibited senators and staffs from promote ing earmarks from which they or their families would receive a direct financial benefit, it's gone. we now say it has

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to be just for that person, even though you may be connected. so we've gutted that. one of the greatest problems we have we've gutted. so no longer is there a prohibition that your family member can't

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benefit from an earmark from congress. that's the greatest conflict of interest there is, and yet it goes on every day. the third, allows the senate parliamentarian, not the majority leader, not the chairman

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of the committee, to determine if a bill complies with earmark disclosure and transparency rule wills rules. the american people are never going to hold us accountable until they can see what we're doing.

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we've now said that whoever is the leader, republican or democrat -- this isn't about who's in charge, it's about whether who's in charge will have the courage to go against the whole political power

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of their own party to certify. the first appropriation bill we had so far in the senate, the only one we've passed was certified it was totally compliant, it missed it by by $7 billion. they didn't

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list all the earmarks and they certainly weren't transparent, but they certified that they were. prohibits consideration of bills bills, joint resolution s, conferences if earmarks are not disclosed.

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in other words, if they're not disclosed, you can't bring it to the floor. not anymore. still can bring it to the floor under the rules of this new ethics bill. it requires earmarks attached to

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a conference report to be publicly available on the internet in a searchable format 48 hours before consideration.~ not if it's hard to do. still says it, but guess what? there's an out. and the

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way this place works, we bring conference reports up just like that all the time and coos as soon as they get ready. so every time that's going to get waive ed. so we're not going to know. the american

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people aren't going to know. and we're imping to be vote ing on bills where the earmarks aren't scliews disclose ed. that's what we passed 98-0. now if you want to fight that you got to have 61

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votes to say it doesn't. we've totally put it on the other side. in other words, we've totally made it so that you can in fact not disclose earmarks and the majority will vote with you. we've made

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it hard for transparency rather than easy for transparency. requires a full day's notice prior to attempting to suspend an earmark disclosure rule. not anymore. no notice. so you can suspend it and don't have

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to notice anybody that you're suspending it. finally, it requires all earmark certification from the senators to be poet posted on the internet within 48 hours. not anymore. not if it's inconvenient.

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not if the head -- the chairman of the appropriations committee doesn't think they can get it done. they just waive it. so where are the problems? why is it that the country has between 14% and

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28% confidence in the congress? is it because we continue to use sleight of hand to tell them we're doing something when we're not? and i would put put forward to you, all the other problems -- i

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don't have any problems with the other things in the bill, basically. but those are symptoms of the disease. the disease is right here. it's called earmarks. and if we don't treat the disease rather than

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the symptoms of the disease, we're never going to fix the problem. i'm adamantly opposed to this bill and what it's done to gut earmark disclosure. i've been around here long enough to know what will

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Tom Coburn: happen under the time pressures and the constraints and what we operate is this'll all go away. it may not go away on the first bill or the second bill. it'll go away. and so we find ourselves

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Tom Coburn: with the u.s. senate getting ready to vote on an ethics ethics and disclosure bill and every snare n is saying, well, how do we fix the things we don't like in it? well we'll do it later. so nobody

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Tom Coburn: really loves this bill bill. but we're gt to vote for it not because we're fixing the problem but it looks likes we're fixing the problem. and so the confidence in congress isn't going to go up with this.

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Tom Coburn: it's going to go down. you know, we started this debate two and a half years ago on an amendment on a bridge that 50 people in alaska of which 15 members of this body vote ed with me. but the american

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Tom Coburn: people came to realize that the bridge to nowhere stood for something -- a whole bunch more than the bridge to nowhere. it stood for the lack of character and integrity in this body in terms of making

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Tom Coburn: long- long-term decisions and putting the country first instead of political careers first. we haven't solved anything with this ethics bill in terms of solving that problem and rebuild rebuilding

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Tom Coburn: the confidence. there is a crisis of confidence in this country. there is a rumble in this country that we don't deserve the positions that we hold because we haven't earned it, because we again are

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Tom Coburn: going to use sleight of hand. we're going to lessen the confidence in this country. we talk about bundle ing. it's great, except what's going to happen is we're going to bundle $14,900 every six months

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Tom Coburn: and it's not going to be report reported. and over a six-year career, that's $180,000 that one lobby lobbyist can bundle for that you doesn't have to be reported. so tell me how we've fixed the problem.

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Russell Feingold: and the bungdz ling is a -- and the bundle something a symptom of the earmarks. it is a symptom of how do you skier secure? and where's the connection between earmarks and campaign contributions? it's

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Speech By: Russell Feingold

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Russell Feingold: there every tiesm you time. you just have to look for t we passed a post-trainsparency bill bill, senator obama and i, to where we get a look at it after the fact. but now we don't want to have trains

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Russell Feingold: transparency aver the fact. so we've failed the american people with this bill. we're also failing the senate and ultimately we fail ourselves ourselves. based a ask for the american people to

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Russell Feingold: look the -- i'd ask for the american people to look at the pictures of their children and grand grandchildren and say, do you want them to have the same opportunities, the same benefits, the same

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Russell Feingold: freedoms and the same liberties? this is the thing that's going to take it away, the lack of an honest and open gaze debate about priorities, the continued spending of money we don't have, and most

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Russell Feingold: of it on the basis that we have a gateway drug to spending addiction called earmarks. mr. president, i yield the floor floor. the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin. mr. feingold: thank you, mr.

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Russell Feingold: president. this is a proud day for the united states senate and i certainly want to thank the chair of the committee, the senator from california, for all her guidance and hard work to make sure

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Russell Feingold: this legislation got to this point. and i certainly want to thank the presiding officer, senator obama from illinois, who has been a wonderful partner in this effort. i enjoyed working with him and

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Russell Feingold: he was tough all the way through when it counted. so i thank the presiding officer officer. many months of work on legislation to reform our nation nation's lobbying lobbying disclosure laws and

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Russell Feingold: the rules that govern our conduct as senators are about to come to a close. the result is a bill that by any measure must be considered land landmark legislation. i am pleased to support this bill, and

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Russell Feingold: i urge my colleagues to vote for cloture and support the bill. i'd like to speak for a minute or two about what's in the bill and the forces that actually brought us to this moment. i introduced the