I watched a bit of the Senate debate on the Ethics Bill yesterday. Sens. McConnell and Gregg were arguing for an amendment on a line-item veto. They wanted a vote on it. Reid didn’t want a vote on a line-item veto because it wasn’t germane to an ethics bill. McConnell and Gregg insisted it was germane because it had to do with earmarks. Reid said no, it wasn’t germane so they could go stuff it. Reid said there would be a vote at 12:38am and no Gregg amendment. So, I went to sleep thinking there would be a vote on the ethics bill. I woke up and couldn’t find a record of the vote. Now I know why.
“It’s as obvious as the sun coming up somewhere in this world that they tried to kill this bill,” a furious Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last night in an interview. “And all 21 Republican senators up for reelection are going to have to explain how they brought down the most significant reform ever to come before this Congress. They brought this baby down.”
Oh, snap!! What happened? The vote to cut off debate (cloture) only gathered 51 votes, not the needed sixty. The Republicans held firm. Reid and Durbin tried to negotiate out a later vote on Gregg’s bill, but apparently that effort was derailed by the objections of Robert Byrd. Byrd thinks the line-item veto is unconstitutional. And it has been ruled unconstitutional. Gregg’s bill, however, takes a little bit of a different approach. The old attempts at a line-item veto allowed the President to strike out individual spending items (subject, of course, to override). The Gregg bill would allow the President to make up a package or list of objectionable spending items and send them back to Congress for an up or down vote. If Congress votes with the President, then all that spending is stricken from the budget.
I’m not sure if that approach would pass constitutional muster. It might. Byrd doesn’t think so. I doubt many appropriators think so.
The larger question is why didn’t Reid back down and allow a vote on Gregg’s amendment? Would it have passed and poisoned the ethics bill? And what power does Byrd have to dictate whether Gregg’s bill gets a vote? I don’t know the answers to those questions.