Posted on 06/25/2006 4:22:45 PM PDT by calcowgirl
WASHINGTON – Oh, for a honeymoon that had lasted two weeks.
Brian Bilbray got no such break. Sworn in to Congress just seven days before, the newly elected lawmaker on Tuesday found himself going head to head with budget-cutting conservatives who questioned his support for congressional “earmarks” and his vote for a congressional pay raise.
The conflict – played out for San Diegans last week on local radio – demonstrated that Bilbray may have to walk a political tightrope as he faces a November election for a full two-year seat.
“I find it interesting that conservatives are already critiquing Bilbray negatively,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a University of Southern California political scientist. “I think what they're doing is sending Bilbray a message: Shape up or ship out.”
Bilbray, 55, recently elected to finish the term of imprisoned former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, was sworn in June 13. The next day, the Carlsbad Republican joined a majority of House members in voting against an attempt to remove earmarks from a large spending bill, including some for the San Diego area.
The long-standing practice of earmarking has been under scrutiny since its abuse led to an eight-year prison term for Cunningham, who admitted taking bribes from defense contractors. Earmarks also played a role in the investigation that led to a guilty plea from lobbyist Jack Abramoff for influence peddling and investigations into other Republican lawmakers.
Earmarks are money for pet projects that congressional members slip into bills, often without public scrutiny or hearings.
The same day as the vote on earmarks, Bilbray joined 248 other House members who rejected an attempt to force a vote on the $3,300 cost-of-living adjustment that will raise congressional pay Jan. 1 to $168,500. Congressional pay raises happen automatically each year, unless House members vote to block the increases.
Andrew Roth, governmental affairs director for the conservative Club for Growth, took aim at those votes on Roger Hedgecock's radio show.
“How many congressmen need to be put into jail, investigated or indicted for this earmarking process?” said Roth, whose seven-year-old organization represents 35,000 members who want Washington to cut federal spending.
Bilbray retorted: “I wouldn't impugn your reputation. You've got items in (the earmarks) I definitely didn't like, but you also had items I did like.”
Roth, in a subsequent interview, said Bilbray's support for the earmarks was objectionable “because during his campaign he said he was against hidden earmarks, then days after he's elected, he voted for a bill with over 1,500 earmarks, most of which were hidden.”
During his campaign for Cunningham's seat against Democrat Francine Busby, Bilbray said he supported earmarks as long as they weren't negotiated behind closed doors. He proposed a ban on such secrecy.
While Roth said that Bilbray abandoned that campaign stand with last week's vote, the congressman said he objected to earmarks that lawmakers tuck into bills during conference negotiations – the process during which lawmakers iron out differences between the House and Senate versions of a spending bill.
A conference report rarely goes through a congressional committee hearing or a public airing. Appropriations bills – such as the one Bilbray voted on last week – get more public scrutiny.
Among the earmarked items in the Transportation-Treasury-Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill that Bilbray voted on were $500,000 for a college athletic facility in Yucaipa and $1.5 million to build a William Faulkner museum in Oxford, Miss.
“I said I was going to fight to change the system,” said Bilbray, noting that voting to remove the earmarks also would have cost San Diego money for key highway projects. “But you still have the responsibility to provide some kind of budget to the president to sign into law. It's a judgment call. It's always a judgment call.”
On May 3, the House passed a Republican ethics reform plan requiring members to put their names on earmarks. A tougher Democratic plan would have banned lobbyists from paying for lawmakers' trips, meals and gifts, but it failed. Bilbray called the GOP plan a “step in the right direction” during his campaign and has said he and his staff won't take gifts from lobbyists.
The 50th Congressional District that Bilbray will represent for the next six months, and for which he will compete again in November's election, is far more conservative than the more urban district he represented from 1995-2001. During his recent campaign, Bilbray sided with conservatives in calling for tighter border controls, and many believe his election victory hinged on that stand.
But Bilbray is far from a conservative's dream, and the right wing of his party seems determined to drum that into voters' minds.
In the past, Bilbray has supported a ban on assault weapons and has said he doesn't believe in overturning the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Last week's confrontation between Bilbray and the Club for Growth raised questions about whether continued conservative attacks on the new congressman might hurt the Republican Party in the fall election by persuading right-wing voters to stay away from the polls.
That dynamic appeared to hurt Bilbray in the April 11 special election, when he competed against other Republicans, but perhaps not so much against Democrat Busby in the June 6 runoff.
While many observers believe Bilbray will do well in November in a rematch against Busby, political observer Jack Pitney said Bilbray's “advantage isn't so enormous that he can take the seat for granted.”
“There's still a chance there could be a big downdraft in November,” said Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. “Bush's popularity plummets, more bad things happen in Iraq, the economy goes south – the possibilities are endless.”
We'll toss him out soon enough.
Another bad moonbat rising.
Earmarks are a horrible budget bill feature. I mean 1,500+ earmarks added to a budget bill three days before the vote is held. With a majority of them basically submitted anonymously. That's just absurd. They most certainly need to be eliminated.
I won't be in November but he should be able to be knocked out in 2 years.
Didn't take him long to belly up to the trough, did it? If the votes occured the day he arrived he could have legitimately abstained since there is no way he could be at all familiar with the details he was voting on. But instead his first vote was for pork and the second for a pay raise. He'll fit right in.
No highway money, no education funds?
Help me figure out the difference between earmarks and getting some of your money back from Washington.
I thought I outlined the problem with earmarks in my post. Does it make sense to you that legislatures should be able to attach their own pork to a budget at the last minute without discussion or review and without any attribution as to who has requested the public funds? If you have no problem with earmarks as currently embodied then I doubt I could convince you otherwise.
Over a dozen years ago a group of congressmen wanted to make it a law that nothing, NOTHING, be added to a bill that wasn't directly related to that bill.
That quest went no where.
I do not know the answer. Other than throw the bums out, all of them, and start over.
I hear the fat lady singing.
"NOTHING, be added to a bill that wasn't directly related to that bill."
That's exactly whqat should happen!
Yes I do object to Congressmen bringing home money for local projects! If they can't be funded locally they aren't worthwhile.
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
In return there is something called Revenue Sharing.
From what I can see.....New York wants everyone else's share of the Revenue Sharing.
But that's another topic.
Townhall.com, Jun 25, 2006
by Paul Jacob
When the felonious Duke — that is, Duke Cunningham, former U.S. Rep from California's 50th District — left office last December, we had every reason to hope for something better, someone at least a little less criminal. We even had hopes for honesty!
And things looked up. A candidate entered the running promising to cut back on pork.
Candidate Brian Bilbray had been to Congress before, and he looked back on that time fondly, claiming to have been on the right side in 1995. "There's still more to do," he clarified in his recent campaign. He went so far as to offer a specific: "not allowing members of congress to put in private so-called earmarks for funding."
So of course he won the special election. That's how he gained the incumbency advantage for the next election, all on an interim position requiring a mere seven months of capitol industry.
While the ship of state creaked just a bit, allowing on one more captain to help decide her course, some of us wondered: how long will it take to corrupt the man? Terms? Years? Months?
More like: one week.
Bilbray was in the House just a handful of days when he voted for the latest appropriation bill, this one with over 1500 earmarks.
Fifteen hundred! Well, maybe the country just couldn't get along without that bill. Maybe we should let it slide. Pork is bad, but not that bad, not bad enough to risk the stability of the state.
But what can we say about Bilbray's voting down each of Representative Jeff Flake's four anti-pork amendments? That's not one no, not a mere two, not even three.
That's four nos. (I feel like Abraham deciding the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Peradventure, do I hear five?)
I guess this is Bilbray's idea of the Reagan Legacy, the sole remnant of his commitment to less government: "Just Say No."
He can't hide, however, what he's saying "no" to: his own promises.
So that's the Bilbray Story. But what's the Rest of the Story?
Before the special election Bilbray seemed to be fighting a bit of an uphill battle. You see, he had been a lobbyist for several years. The opposition made much of this. Jadedly, he admitted, "Everyone is trying to say that everyone in Washington is tainted."
Hmmm. I wonder why. Could it be because everyone in Washington is tainted?
Well, I'm not even that cynical; I know a few good people in Sodom, a few more in Gomorrah.
But Bilbray certainly is tainted. Thus we add another crumbum into the ranks of the congressional crumbumhood.
I have no doubt that he read it, or at least understood exactly what it said. The same goes for his other 4 "No" votes on the anti-earmark legislation. See article above from Townhall.
Maybe in two years. For now, though, he hasn't shown himself to be any worse than his challenger Francine Busby (D-"you don't need papers for voting"), who would probably oppose the anti-pork amendments or other general spending cuts.
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