March 4, 2009

Senate votes to preserve

earmarks in spending bill

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats on Wednesday preserved pet projects sought by a lobbying firm under federal investigation and tried to nail down support for big domestic spending increases in hopes of passing a wrap-up budget bill by week’s end. Democrats defeated, by a 52-43 vote, an amendment to strip 13 projects that the PMA Group has pressed for. The firm, now disbanded, is accused of illegally using straw donors to funnel campaign cash to lawmakers.

At the same time, Democrats sought a few GOP votes for the $410 billion bill after two Democrats came out against it over the cost and two more threatened to withhold support over changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Democrats and their allies control 58 seats in the Senate, but 60 votes will be needed to close debate and free the measure so President Barack Obama can sign it. Democrats probably will need votes from perhaps five or six Republicans if the measure is to pass Thursday night or Friday.

Democratic leaders were cautiously optimistic Wednesday night they could do just that. Passage would allow lawmakers in both parties to get the thousands of pet projects they crave and award above-inflation budget increases for education, nutrition programs, transportation and foreign aid.

The spending bill wraps together the budgets for 12 Cabinet departments and other agencies. The measure was written mostly over the course of last year, before projected deficits quadrupled and Obama’s economic recovery bill left many of the same spending accounts swimming in cash.

The White House promises Obama will sign the bill despite unhappiness over the 8,000 or so homestate pet projects.

Democrats Evan Bayh of Indiana and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin said they will vote against the bill; both urged Obama to veto it.

“There’s just a disconnect between what people are having to go through in their daily lives — tightening their belts, economizing where they can — and what they see the government is doing,” Bayh said in an interview. “I just think it’s tone deaf and, substantively, we do need to get the deficit under control.”

Democratic leaders appeared to be holding onto other Democrats, and some GOP leaders acknowledged that the bill is going to pick up GOP votes that would prove critical.

“I just don’t know whether we have enough votes to stop it,” said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., the No. 3 GOP leader.

The measure contains budget increases, on average, of 8 percent for the domestic agencies it covers, far more than they received under the Bush administration.

Democratic Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Bill Nelson of Florida are considering whether to oppose the legislation because it would ease rules on travel to Cuba and make it easier for Cuba to pay for imported food and medicine.

The House passed the bill last week, and Senate Democratic leaders want to follow suit by Friday. That’s when a temporary law that keeps the government in business, mostly at 2008 levels, runs out. The bill needs to be enacted by midnight on Friday — or a stopgap bill must be passed in its place — to avoid a shutdown of most domestic agencies.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., worked into overdrive to keep the bill free of floor amendments that would force the measure into negotiations with the House, delay enactment or possibly kill the measure outright.

That meant a difficult vote on an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to kill 13 “earmarks” requested by lawmakers for projects sought by the PMA Group. The Justice Department is investigating whether the company reimbursed some employees for campaign contributions to members of Congress who requested such projects.

PMA is a classic example of the “pay to play” style that has brought discredit to the earmarking process. The firm charged big fees to help companies and universities negotiate the earmark process and awarded lawmakers who sponsored pet projects such as Reps. John Murtha, D-Pa., and Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., many thousands of dollars in campaign cash.

“The Senate decided to defend business as usual at the earmark favor factory,” Coburn said after the vote.

Reid said lawmakers, not lobbyists, are responsible for every earmark in the sprawling measure and that they are willing to be held accountable under recent rules requiring greater transparency in the earmarking process.

The only Republicans so far to announce support for the bill are Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the Appropriations Committee’s top Republican; Richard Shelby of Alabama; and Olympia Snowe of Maine. Several other Republicans have said they may support it, including Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

The Cuban provision cited by Menendez and Nelson would restore travel rules permitting people to visit relatives in Cuba once every 12 months. President George W. Bush imposed rules in 2004 that limited travel to just two weeks every three years and confined visits to immediate family members.

The bill also would lift restrictions on financing imports of U.S. food and medicine into Cuba and effectively reverse Bush administration rules requiring “cash-in-advance” payment.

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On the Net:

Information on the bill, H.R. 1105, can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/

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March 6, 2009

Congress passes stopgap bill

to avoid shutdown

AP – How long will Americans stay patient on economy?

WASHINGTON – Congress has approved a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running into next week.

The legislation is needed because a previous bill expires at midnight and the Senate is still debating a huge spending bill funding domestic agencies for the already-started budget year.

The 2009 budget began last October, but election-year fights delayed $410 billion worth of budget work. After a hitch on Thursday night that forced Congress to step in with short-term funds, the Senate appears on track to send the rest of the budget to President Barack Obama next week.

Republicans unsuccessfully tried to freeze the budget at current levels for the rest of the fiscal year. They said the budget spends too much amid huge deficits and belt-tightening across the country.

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March 6, 2009

Picks for 2 high Treasury jobs

withdraw

By John Poirier and David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two top contenders for senior posts at the U.S. Treasury have withdrawn, people familiar with the moves said on Thursday, dealing a blow to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s efforts to build his staff to fight the financial crisis.

Former Securities and Exchange Commissioner Annette Nazareth withdrew from consideration to become deputy Treasury secretary for personal reasons to remain in her private securities law practice, one of the sources said.

Caroline Atkinson, Geithner’s choice for international affairs undersecretary, also has withdrawn. Atkinson, a senior official at the International Monetary Fund, has decided to remain at the institution, a person familiar with the decision said.

Both Nazareth and Atkinson had been vetted for the jobs but were not formally nominated for U.S. Senate confirmation.

The withdrawals come as Geithner is trying to boost market confidence in the Obama administration’s ability to battle the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

He is working with a close circle of advisers and civil servants to craft new bailouts and flesh out details of an effort to purchase troubled assets from banks as financial stocks are back under attack.

Nazareth and Atkinson could not immediately be reached for comment. Treasury spokesman Isaac Baker declined to comment on specific nominations, but said the department was still ahead of recent previous administrations in filling jobs, with over 50 political appointees at work.

“In just weeks since taking office and inheriting the worst economic crisis in generations, we have taken an unprecedented level of action to strengthen our economy — from passing a recovery bill to crafting a framework for financial stability to implementing a plan to keep millions of Americans in their homes,” Baker said in a statement. “Any rumors of vetting problems or delays in the process are simply not true.”

Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday that the Treasury was “making some progress” on nominations.

“We hope to come before the committee soon with a full slate of very strong people. We’re doing this carefully, as you would expect, to try to make sure we have the best talent in the country,” he said .

TOUGHER VETTING

The Obama administration’s vetting process for nominations has tightened considerably since a number of candidates for key cabinet jobs were forced to withdraw over tax and other issues.

Geithner himself faced tough questioning over his own underpayment of self-employment taxes earlier this decade before winning Senate confirmation in late January.

One of the sources said the vetting process, while lengthy, was not a major consideration in Nazareth’s decision.

“She was honored to be considered for the position. She enjoys what she is doing now in terms of working with her clients,” a second source said. “She concluded that it was the right decision for her and her family to remain in private practice.”

After a decade at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nazareth joined the law firm of Davis, Polk and Wardwell in September 2008. She has worked for a number of Wall Street investment banks, including Lehman Brothers.

The Wall Street Journal cited concerns in Congress about Nazareth’s previous role at the SEC in which she had responsibility for investment bank oversight.

Before becoming a commissioner in 2005, she helped create a new division charged with voluntary oversight of what were then the major Wall Street investment banks. But this was at a time when some of these institutions were piling up massive portfolios of risky assets that eventually brought them to their knees.

The division was shut down in 2008 after Lehman collapsed, Merrill Lynch was sold and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were transformed into bank holding companies supervised by the Federal Reserve.

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(Additional reporting by Tim Ahmann and Lesley Wroughton; Writing by David Lawder; Editing by Gary Hill)

Cedar Creek Voice

POLITICS … AS USUAL