The Swine Line

So says Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)!  And she’s right.  Why, then, doesn’t she want the Senate to uncover the truth about who that person might be?

Not surprisingly, the subject is congressional earmarking and the corruptive habits earmarking engenders in Washington’s political class.  

The 2008 technical corrections bill to the 2005 Transportation Authorization bill is currently bogged down in the Senate because one senator, at least, is insisting that the Senate get to the bottom of how a previous technical corrections bill was inappropriately manipulated to insert a brand new $10 million earmark to construct an exit to Coconut Road in Florida. 

This is the earmark which was inserted after the bill had already been passed by both chambers, was supported by Alaska Rep. Don Young (R).  It would have benefitted a developer in Ft. Myers, Florida who had previously held a fundraiser for Don Young down there.  The good news is that the earmark itself has been stripped from the bill.  But Sen. Coburn (R-Okla.), among others, is sponsoring an amendment to this year’s technical corrections bill that would launch an investigation into who was responsible for that surreptitious legislative sleight-of-hand. 

Sen. Boxer supposedly agrees that something smells fishy here, but she wants to shift the burden of the invetsgation to the Justice Department!  Like the attorneys over there have nothing better to do than to babysit the shenanigans of a bunch of grasping, self-dealing politicians.  The reason she favors this approach is so that the Senate can get on with the pressing business of passing the new technical corrections bill, which is……crammed with new earmarks and additional money for previous earmarks!!

Sen. Coburn and his allies should hold this bill hostage for as long as it takes to get to the murky bottom of the Coconut Road cesspool.  Here is an excerpt from this morning’s Roll Call ($) article by reporter John Stanton:

The Senate bogged down Wednesday over competing efforts to investigate how a $10 million earmark for a road in Florida was slipped into a highway bill that had passed both chambers.

A tough-talking Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said people “ought to go to jail” for the maneuver — and said her approach would result in that. She pushed her amendment that would call on the Justice Department to investigate the matter.  

In a spirited debate, she squared off against Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who said the Senate should police itself and called for a bipartisan, bicameral committee to find out what happened.  

The Boxer-Coburn debate has been the focus of the highway technical corrections bill, which would remove the $10 million earmark. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), the former chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is believed to have played a role in inserting the earmark for the Coconut Road project near Fort Myers, Fla. The road would benefit a developer in Florida who raised money for the lawmaker.

Coburn’s amendment has drawn bipartisan support, including from Florida Sens. Bill Nelson (D) and Mel Martinez (R) and presidential hopefuls Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). 

Earlier in the day, Boxer, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, broke off indirect talks with Coburn, contending that his approach would result in a “political circus” that would undermine any of the investigation’s findings and inject politics into a potentially criminal manner. 

“I think it’s very possible people ought to go to jail here. A Senator and a House Member can’t send people to jail. I think this is a much better way to go — it keeps politics out of this. If there was a crime, then the person ought to go to jail, the people ought to go jail,” Boxer said.  

“They’ll call hearings and the press will come. I can just see this thing. I want to avoid a circus. I want to put somebody in jail if there was a crime. What I want is justice done. I don’t want political theater,” she added.  

Coburn argued that Congress should police itself. “I believe in the people in this body. I believe that we all don’t like this happening. The best way to do this is to have an investigation. My worry is if we modify this amendment, or we don’t pass this amendment, is this political? Can we not control the rules of our own body?” he asked. 

The oratorical outburst from two of the Senate’s polar opposites — Coburn is one of its most conservative lawmakers, while Boxer is one of the most liberal — followed nearly 24 hours of talks between Coburn and Environment and Public Works ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who acted as a go-between for Coburn and the Democrats.  

Boxer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) oppose Coburn’s amendment, as well as an earlier proposal Coburn and Inhofe floated to have the Government Accountability Office conduct the investigation. Boxer, who also heads the Ethics Committee, said the Senate should not be in the position of investigating a House Member, which she said would violate the Constitution.