Following up on Adam's blog, below is a closer look at and comment on the revolving door and earmarks provisions of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.

Word is that the House will vote on the bill tomorrow; the Senate is expected to do so on Thursday.

The bill's "revolving door" provisions are as follows:

• Senators can't lobby Congress for two years -- current law provides a one-year -- after they leave office
• senior Senate staff and Senate officers can't lobby the entire Senate for one year, not just their former employing office, as under current law
• no change: the current one-year cooling-off period for House members
• prohibits senior House staff from lobbying their former office or Committee for one year after they leave House employment

The bill's main earmark process reforms -- all new -- are:

• all earmarked spending items and tax expenditures in bills, resolutions, conference reports and managers' statements must be identified and posted on the internet at least 48 hours before a vote
• Senators must certify that they and their immediate family will not financially benefit from any earmarks they've requested
• new earmarks in a conference report -- i.e., not approved by either House -- are now subject to a 60-vote point of order
• committees, to the extent technically feasible, must disclose in unclassified language the funding level and the name of sponsors earmarks in bills, joint resolutions and conference reports (emph. added)

CAVEAT: This last provision, reads as follows:

RULE XLIV, 4.(c) To the extent technically feasible, information made available on publicly accessible congressional websites under paragraphs 3 and 4 shall be provided in a searchable format.

How could providing such information in a searchable format ever not be technically feasible? In a sortable format, maybe, but searchable? That seems like an awfully and arbitrarily low standard, sticking out in this provision only like a sor(table)e thumb.

Today, the Democratic leadership in Congress released their long-awaited compromise lobbying and ethics bill - The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (text of the legislation). The bill is 107 pages long, but already there has been some criticism of changes to the bill, particularly the earmark disclosure sections (see Mark Tapscott's reaction and the Porkbusters blog for a sampling). Two Senators, Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) - whose amendment to the bill earlier this year on earmark disclosure greatly strengthen the bill - have also posted disappointing reactions.

At first glance it does appear the final version of the bill is not as strong (i.e. transparent) as the original and it is unclear why those changes were adopted at this point in the debate. DeMint has announced he will offer an amendment during final consideration of the bill to "restore real earmark reform." It's yet to be seen whether that amendment will be adopted of if this version is the best the House and Senate will be able to do this year.

The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson had an interesting op-ed last week on procurement. Key excerpt:

Part of the problem is that the federal government has no central database to assess the record of prospective contractors. When DHS checks out its contract bidders, Elaine Duke, the department's chief procurement officer, told the committee, there's no file containing reports on contractors from the various departments' inspectors general or Congress's Government Accountability Office. If the companies have been indicted or involved in civil action over their performance, contract officers such as Duke are, like the rest of us, reliant on Google to discover what's out there.

Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who represents Manhattan's East Side, has introduced legislation to create a central database that would enable officials at one department to know when a contractor has screwed up at another. Maloney's bill, if enacted, would be only a small step toward bringing accountability to our newly privatized government, but it would at least keep procurement officers from flying blind and might just make our Department of Homeland Security more secure.

Rep. Maloney's bill was covered in this Watcher article. And the Project On Government Oversight has assembled its own database of law-breaking contractors here.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that "Federal investigators are examining whether Rep. [Don] Young [R-AK] or Sen. [Ted] Stevens [R-AK] accepted bribes, illegal gratuities or unreported gifts from VECO Corp., Alaska's largest oil-field engineering firm."

The investigation is part of a continuing criminal probe of alleged political favors for the company. The issue under investigation is whether Young or Stevens accepted bribes or unreported gifts from VECO. Young is the former chairman of the House Transportation Committee and now its ranking Republican. Stevens, former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is the longest-serving Senate Republican.

VECO has been awarded a series of federal contracts since 2000, including contracts to provide logistics support for arctic research. Young received $157,000 in campaign contributions from VECO employees and the company's political action committee between 1996 and 2001. Congressional records show that Stevens several times added extra funding for arctic research above what the agency sought.

The chart below, prepared by the Center for Responsive Politics, shows VECO ranking number one and two in corporation campaign contributions to Rep. Young and Sen. Stevens respectively since 1989:

Source: Wall Street Journal
(click to enlarge)

Bob Novak writes in today's Washington Post that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), is "plotting to strip anti-earmark transparency from the final version of ethics legislation passed by the Senate and House." While Novak does not identify -- and it is impossible to guess -- what earmark provision he has in mind, he nevertheless chastizes Reid, warning that frayed Senate relations "may get worse if plans to eviscerate ethics legislation are pursued."

Apparently, Mr. Novak didn't get the memo. His fellow GOP Senators are so annoyed with DeMint's months-long antics delaying a conference on the ethics and lobbying bill that, as Congressional Quarterly put it in a headline ($) last week: McConnell May Be Ready to Help Pull the Plug on DeMint:

... now McConnell is hinting that he might look the other way if Democrats try to get around DeMint's objection to a conference by having both chambers pass identical bills. That would eliminate the need for a conference on the lobbying measure.

"From a leadership point of view, my preference would be to go to conference," McConnell said, but added, "Either way, I think we ought to wrap the bill up."

Ironically, it appears that Sen. DeMint is doing his part to improve frayed relations among Senate leaders. And that may result in passage of the ethics and lobbying bill that DeMint has kept in the deep freeze lo these many months.

The Congressional Democratic leadership, no doubt exasperated over GOP holds blocking the lobbying and ethics bill from going to conference -- months after overwhelming passage by both houses -- now apparently plans to circumvent the bill's conference process entirely.

Said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV): "I've done everything but get on my knees and beg for [a conference]."

Presumably, the House would vote on a substitute to the Senate version, S. 1, under a closed rule limiting or barring amendments, and the Senate would receive a "message" from the House, Reid would fill the amendment tree, file for cloture and, if that succeeds, proceed to a vote. Reid has said he wants to send the bill to the president before the August recess begins in two weeks.

To be determined -- or made public -- is the content of the bill. Of particular interest would be the outcome of the revolving door provision. Current law and the House version provide for a cooling-off period barring former members and staffers from lobbying Congress for one year; the Senate version calls for a two-year period. There is some speculation that a House-Senate 'compromise' would provide for different cooling-off periods regarding lobbying the two houses.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is apparently single-handedly holding up the Senate's lobbying and ethics reform bill with a hold keeping it from going to conference over a pet provision that he wants guaranteed will be included in the conference committee's final version.

Such guarantees are hard to come by, and sometimes harder to make stick. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) did the next best thing yesterday, offering to put DeMint on the conference committee. But DeMint scoffed at that: "The majority leader is trying to be clever, but I wasn't born yesterday... Everybody knows Democrats are going to control the conference, 4 to 3, and they will vote 4 to 3 to kill [it]." Majority rule can be a bear.

Spurned by DeMint, Reid warned GOP members today to work with Democrats to complete work on the bill "in a timely fashion," before the August recess starts. "Otherwise it will be finished in an untimely fashion . . . because we're going to finish this stuff before we have our August recess."

The principal DeMint believes he is defending stands a snowball's chance in August if he keeps the Senate from going on its summer vacation this year. Per The Hill: "You have to always be careful around here not to overplay your hand," [Sen. Trent] Lott warned.

Last week, the Washington Post and OMB Watch urged the Senate leadership to break the impasse. See:

• Get it Done: "Enough is enough. It's time to get this bill done. Neither the House nor the Senate measure is perfect, but either would effect significant improvements over the unacceptable status quo."
• OMB Watch Joins the Call to Move Lobby Reform Legislation Forward: "We strongly urge Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) to join with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in offering and supporting the cloture motions needed to get the lobbying and ethics reform bill to conference."

A story in The Hill today alleges that, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), "senators have not claimed responsibility for at least $7.5 billion worth of projects approved by the Appropriations Committee."

Per The Hill, the Committee claims that TCS "misinterpreted a host of appropriations requirements as earmarks... $6.5 billion requested by the Pentagon for the base realignment and closure program was considered 'undisclosed earmarks'."

This discrepancy refects definitional difficulties where spending is requested by the executive branch may be for a program -- not an earmark -- or for a project with a single beneficiary -- a classic earmark. Ironically, legislative language surrounding executive branch-requested earmarks may make it impossible to verify whether the executive branch is accomplishing its goal of reducing earmarks by 50 percent in FY2008.

BNA has published a trendline comparison ($) of the number and the dollar amount of actual FY05 and proposed FY08 legislative earmarks and implies that, thus far in this year's process, numbers for both are heading down.

"Of the five bills for which data had been posted July 13, earmark totals were mostly down in comparison with the 2005 figures," BNA says.

We looked at BNA's findings and did some math, as follows:

• Financial Services -- reduction in earmarks: 65 fewer; $150 million reduction in spending
• Interior and Environment -- reductions: 1000 earmarks and $600 million
• Labor-HHS-Education -- reductions: 2000 earmarks and $600 million
• Homeland Security -- increases: 14 earmarks and $200 million
• Military Construction -- 70 fewer earmarks but $3.5 BILLION more in spending

So, guess which part of "earmark totals were mostly down" doesn't count?

This week, OMB announced a new feature to what it terms its "earmarks database" -- data showing estimates of the number and cost of earmarks in the individual FY 2008 Appropriations bills as they move through the legislative process.

We road-tested this database here at OMB Watch and give it one thumbs-up.

The Thumb: Unbidden by Congress, OMB has taken it upon itself to produce and publish the first current-year accounting of earmarks ever -- a significant improvement in a hitherto almost wholly shrouded aspect of government spending. It is now possible to follow earmarks as bills move through the legislative process after: 1) House and Senate Committee action, 2) House and Senate floor action, and 3) Conference Committee action -- drilling down to the program level.

The Palm: The "database" has no advanced search functions -- you can't search and retrieve bills, sort for trends, or drill down jurisdictionally further than state-level. "Database" is a misnomer here -- it's more like a set of files with very limited sub-search ability. The earmarks identified are only "legislative" -- executive branch earmarks are not identified. And tax expenditure earmarks are omitted entirely.

The Senate Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, a part of the Senate Appropriations Committee, passed its version of the FY 2008 Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill (HR 2829) by a party-line vote of 5 to 4.

If you're still with me, this bill would do a couple important things. First, it limits funding for the IRS private debt collection program, but not so much that it would violate congressional procedures. A similar version of this limitation was struck from the House's bill on procedural grounds (See this Watcher article for more) . The Senate would not eliminate the program, presumably, but it could contain it so that it probably won't do much more damage.

Second, it funds IRS operations at $11.1 billion, which is significantly higher level than last year, but lower than the $11.6 billion that the IRS Oversight Board recommended. Full funding of the IRS could reduce the tax gap, which would free up more revenue for program expansions and make the tax code more fair and progressive.

And third, it would defund the part of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) that's in the executive branch. As you may recall, Vice President Cheney has been saying he's not really in the executive branch, and therefore isn't subject to an executive order that establishes some oversight over the OVP when it classifies information. This measure may make the OVP's operations more transparent to the public, and help Congress hold the Vice President accountable if he or anyone else in his office, besides Scooter Libby, has done anything wrong.

Of course, this is only the subcommittee- the bill has a ways to go. But it's off to a pretty good start.