Citizen Cartwright

House earmark frenzy

A day after House Democrats said they'd ban some earmarks, Republicans said they would ban all of them, leaving lobbyists scrambling and complaining that worthy projects would be thrown out with the bathwater.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce becoming a political force

It's putting together a big grass-roots political operation — part of a trend where the traditional political parties are losing ground to well-funded and increasingly assertive outside groups, the Los Angeles Times says.

Friends of the U.S. Chamber has generated more than a million letters and e-mails to members of Congress, 700,000 of them opposing Democrats' health care plan — up from 40,000 congressional contacts in 2008.

The Supreme Court's recent decision on corporate campaign spending has made many executives more comfortable about using corporate funds for political purposes, the Times says.

Bipartisanship: Vital but never easy

We're hearing so much lately about hyperpartisanship causing policy paralysis.

But, The Associated Press says, partisanship is nothing new. "We've had partisanship ever since we've had federal government," AP quotes Senate historian Donald Ritchie as saying. "Bipartisanship is really the exception to the rule."

In fact, president number one, George Washington, said in his farewell address in 1796 that party politics "agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms" and "kindles the animosity of one part against another (and) foments occasionally riot and insurrection."

The golden age of bipartisanship, to the extent it existed, AP says, was from the 1940s through the 1960s, when politicians united during World War II and the Cold War and neither party had a clear-cut ideology.

Nonetheless, the rarity of comity these days bodes ill for addressing huge problems like the budget deficit, which could eat away at Americans' standard of living if it's not addressed.

Interest payments on U.S. debt held by investors could reach $916 billion a year by the end of the decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Lindsey Graham's reach across the aisle

The South Carolina Republican senator says he'll help President Obama close the Guantanamo prison if Obama accepts his proposal to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators in a military tribunal rather than a civilian court.

And he and retiring Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., have written to both parties' Senate leaders calling for monthly bipartisan lunches to "facilitate a constructive dialogue between the political parties."

Of course, Graham already has been taking heat back home for working with the other side on climate change.

How much policy does money buy?

Lawmakers say their votes aren't bought.

But people who write campaign donation checks do so expecting a return on their investments — and their experience makes that outcome a good bet, The Washington Post says.

And the fact that the practice appears to be legal is beside the point, because both donors and voters view it as corrupt, according to some independent campaign finance experts.

"This constant claim by members that there is no link is specious, because we can see the link," says Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

Democrats' own 'culture of corruption?'

Amid the growing list of Democratic ethics scandals, news stories from the so-called liberal media and even from generally acknowledged unbiased sources like The Associated Press are beginning to sound like GOP opinion pieces.

"The party that pledged to 'drain the swamp' if given control of Congress finds itself sinking in the muck nine months from Election Day," AP says.

The ethics cases are opening the party to the same criticism House Democrats used to wrest the chamber from Republican control, The New York Times says.

And, in fact, House Republican Leader John Boehner, Ohio, said on Thursday: “Speaker Pelosi famously promised the most open, honest and ethical Congress in history. Yet here we go again."

Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters on Thursday, "I think we've come a long way since I became speaker with the outside ethics groups and now we have a functioning ethics committee, bipartisan and independent of the speaker."

Resurgence of House earmarks on the way?

A new interpretation of ethics rules is threatening to make it easier for House members to earmark funding for big campaign contributors and could lead to more abuse than before, according to legal analysts and some lawmakers.

The House ethics committee said last week when it cleared seven House members of earmark allegations that the appearance of a financial reward for donors isn't an ethical breach in itself.

Republicans' coming 'blitz' against the health care bill

The National Republican Congressional Committee launched on Wednesday an effort to pressure vulnerable House Democrats into voting against the bill.

The tactics include a media campaign using Republican doctors in the House and town hall meetings by Republican House candidates, Fox News reports.

Democratic leaders as 'evil empire'

The Republican National Committee plans to raise campaign funds capitalizing on “fear” of President Obama and a pledge to "save the country from trending toward socialism," Politico says.

It obtained a confidential RNC fundraising presentation depicting an "evil empire,” with Obama as the Joker from Batman, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as Cruella DeVille and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., as Scooby Doo.

Watchdog groups slam House ethics practices

The House ethics committee's recent exoneration of a dozen lawmakers shows that Democratic leaders who pledged ethics reforms "never meant it," says Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The independent Office of Congressional Ethics — established in 2007 as part of the ethics overhaul — sends complaints to the ethics panel for action. But the committee "is blatantly closing cases when the OCE has raised the red flag," says Mary Boyle of Common Cause.

The groups say the independent office should have the power to subpoena lawmakers and even bypass the ethics committee.

David Skaggs, chairman of the office's board, says it's "too soon to render a final judgment" on the way the new process is working.