Congressional Republican leaders have been trying to cram items on a right-wing wish-list into annual year-end budgetary sausage-making.
If one rider loosening restrictions on campaign donations is an indication, some of these eleventh hour insertions have come as a surprise, even to some on the right.
“That’s a provision I’m going to have to look at in more detail,” Senate Appropriations Committee member John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said of the proposed rules Wednesday morning on C-SPAN. “Some of these negotiations came right down to the wire.”
Hoeven explained that he only took part in certain negotiations over the omnibus bill, and that after committees discuss the legislation, Congressional leaders typically “add some things.” Although the edits were made, the senator claimed, “to try and make sure it passes,” the alterations appear to be having the opposite effect. Hoeven conceded that he didn’t even know what the campaign finance rider entailed
“There are some provisions in there that myself and others will have to look at in more detail,” Hoeven said.
The Washington Post reported that the changes were tacked onto page 1,599 of the 1,603-page bill, and that they would gut rules laid out in the watershed 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. Under the amended language, donors would be able to increase contributions to three party committees by an aggregate factor of almost ten.
While the funds would be restricted to paying for conventions, recounts, and building costs, non-profit watchdogs decried the proposal. The public interest group Common Cause said that in a two-year election cycle, the bill would allow lawmakers to ask a single donor for $259,000 above the current $32,400 ceiling.
“Does anyone believe that the people providing such donations will neither expect nor receive something in return? Of course not,” the group said in a statement.
Public Citizen said that the change would allow a couple to donate more than $3.1 million to a party during a Congressional election cycle. Lisa Gilbert, director of the group’s Congress Watch, called the possible change “a move back toward the days of corrupting soft-money contribution.”
“This embarrassing deal sacrifices the interests of everyday Americans who want clean elections while elevating the concerns of politicians who want to raise more money,” she said.
Public Citizen also denounced a separate rider that would undermine financial regulation–one that appears even more likely to stall passage of the critical legislation. Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for the non-profit, said it would undo Dodd-Frank restrictions on trading derivatives with consumers savings backed by the public sector via the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
“Wall Street and its Capitol Hill captives cravenly hold the entire government hostage so they can continue socially irresponsible speculation,” he said.
The vice chair of the FDIC called the possible restoration of the subsidies “illogical.”
Public Citizen also said amended language to a terrorism insurance legislation would loosen rules governing speculative borrowing known as “margin requirements.”
“After committing massive fraud, after helping crash the world economy and after surviving only with a taxpayer bailout, Big Banks now want a return trip to Las Vegas,” Naylor added.
In a Wednesday afternoon floor speech, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) denounced the deregulation on derivatives swaps. She said the bill had been negotiated “behind closed doors” and that it was set in language “literally written by Citigroup lobbyists.” She encouraged the House to oppose the government funding measure “until this risky giveaway is removed from the legislation.”
Warren did, however, say that Senate leaders stopped House Republicans from inserting into the bill “some of their more aggressive fantasies about dismantling even more pieces of financial reform.”
Senate agriculture committee chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) echoed some of Warren’s concerns at a committee hearing Thursday morning. Stabenow said the omnibus bill fails to “protect the integrity of financial reform,” and that the money allocated to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is attached to conditions that amount to “handcuffs on the agency.”
By Wednesday afternoon, congressional Democratic Party leaders agreed with some of these protests. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called for the campaign contribution relaxation and the derivatives deregulation to be stricken from the spending bill.
Other big business-backed proposals that have been attached to the budget bill include measures on the Environmental Protection Agency and retirement benefits. One rider would strip the EPA of $60 million in a move that would see agency staff reduced to its smallest size in a quarter-century, according to Democracy Now. Another could allow businesses to reduce pensions to current retirees. The provisions, if passed, could change four decades of law and affect 10 million workers, according to the Washington Post.
More should be known about the crucial details of the budget bill by the end of the weekend. Sen. Hoeven said he expected the House to vote on the sweeping legislation on Thursday, and that the senate would vote on it either Friday or Saturday.
