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Our view: As Democrats take over Congress, they should keep promises of bipartisanship
Folks living in North County's 50th Congressional District should pay attention Thursday when Democrats take over the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. Leading their agenda for the "first 100 hours" is ethics reform, something of more than passing interest to a district whose former congressman is serving an eight-year prison sentence for taking bribes.
How the Democrats act in passing those reforms, though, should tell us how committed they are to the promises of an open, honest and bipartisan Congress under their rule.
First, the good news. On day one of their reign, Democrats plan to enact rules barring congressmen from accepting gifts and trips from lobbyists and forcing them to put their names on "earmarks" in spending bills.
"Earmarking" is the odious practice of inserting pet projects into spending bills anonymously and without much review. Though long accepted as political "pork" and a tradition for both parties, earmarking caught the public's eye following the Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Jack Abramoff scandals of the last two years. Transparency would give curious citizens the ability to find out what projects a congressman might be steering toward contributors, influential lobbyists or in Cunningham's case, the men behind the bribes.
The new chairmen of the respective Appropriations Committees in each house -- Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Rep. David Obey, D-Wis. -- vow to issue a moratorium on all earmarks until next October. That would strip them from the nine overdue appropriations bills that outgoing Republicans left for the Democrats; the grandstanding 109th Congress got around to passing only two spending bills. Byrd and Obey also said they would continue to block earmarks if no reforms are passed.
So far, so good. If the Democrats can make the murky world of federal spending more transparent, they will have gone some way toward justifying their resurgence in Washington. Since Newt Gingrich's Republicans took the House in 1994, the number of earmarks increased from 4,146 in 1994 to 15,818 in 2005 -- jumping from an annual price tag of $20.4 billion to $40.8 billion. By any definition, this can't count as "conservative."
The bad news is that Democrats say they plan to force Republican members to watch from the sidelines during the first 100 hours so they can push through their agenda with little debate. Passing ethics reform in the first 100 hours is nice, but good is better than fast in this case.
Besides, with Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson's freezer full of cash as just the latest reminder, Democrats are no paragons of virtue. Sen. Byrd is known as the "king of pork" for his earmarking ability to deliver federal dollars to West Virginia.
Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma have been strong champions of earmarking and ethics reforms. And our own Brian Bilbray introduced legislation this fall to make earmarks transparent.
These folks should be listened to, not shunned. Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats promised to work openly and in a bipartisan manner with Republicans. Benching GOP members during the first 100 hours is a bad way to launch the 110th Congress.
It could lead to more partisan bickering, and many good ideas could get lost in the scrum -- such as Bilbray's proposal to put the federal government on a two-year budget cycle to separate the process from the avarice of election years.
And what does it say about the new majority if it passes important legislation without much debate -- similar to the way earmarks have been slipped onto spending bills?
Ethics and earmark reform in Congress belong at the top of the Democrats' agenda. But they undermine the rest of their mandate if they shut out responsible Republicans to score partisan points.
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