Given the damaging role corruption played against the GOP in the 2006 elections, one might think that Republicans would be anxious to get on the right side of ethics reform. One would be wrong. Yesterday, the Senate GOP voted en masse against ending debate on the Senate ethics bill. The GOP's first filibuster stops ethics reform. Nice work - the Washington Post explains:
Senate Republicans scuttled broad legislation last night to curtail lobbyists' influence and tighten congressional ethics rules, refusing to let the bill pass without a vote on an unrelated measure that would give President Bush virtual line-item-veto power.Ethics reform is the first piece of legislation being considered this year for obvious reasons. Corruption matters to voters. It doesn't matter to the Senate Republicans. They've already shown their true colors.
The bill could be brought back up later this year. Indeed, Democrats will try one last time today to break the impasse. But its unexpected collapse last night infuriated Democrats and the government watchdog groups that had been pushing it since the lobbying scandals that rocked the last Congress. Proponents charged that Republicans had used the spending-control measure as a ruse to thwart ethics rules they dared not defeat in a straight vote.
"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."
