Kautzman’s AP GO PO Blog

McCain Abstained

By Paul Kane Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year’s spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, Clinton supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total placed him in the bottom quarter of senators who seek earmarks, the study showed. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the likely GOP presidential nominee, was one of five senators to reject earmarks entirely, part of his long-standing view that such measures prompt needless spending. As a campaign issue, earmarks highlight significant differences in the spending philosophies of the top three candidates. Clinton has repeatedly supported earmarks as a way to bring home money for projects, while Obama adheres to a policy of using them only to support public entities. McCain is using his blanket opposition to earmarked spending as a regular line of attack against Clinton, even running an Internet ad mocking her $1 million request for a museum devoted to the Woodstock music festival. Obama has been criticized for using a 2006 earmark to secure money for the University of Chicago hospital where his wife worked until last year. The new report, by Taxpayers for Common Sense, is the first to show all the earmarks each lawmaker added to spending bills for an entire fiscal year. It notes the explosive growth of the practice, which amounted to more than $18 billion in fiscal 2008. Stung by criticism of earmarks, President Bush and an increasing number of lawmakers have started to campaign against their use. In his State of the Union address last month, Bush vowed to veto any spending bills for 2009 that do not cut back on earmarks, and 22 House members have sworn off seeking them. While most are Republicans, Democratic Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), a key committee chairman and close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), joined yesterday. “Congressional spending through earmarks is out of control,” he said Lawmakers previously were allowed to include multimillion-dollar items in spending bills without publicly identifying themselves as sponsors. House and Senate Democrats passed measures last year that require open sponsorship of earmarks. Though they still make up a tiny fraction of the federal budget, earmarks remain a multibillion-dollar business on Capitol Hill. Congress added 12,881 earmarks, worth $18.3 billion, to spending bills that Bush signed into law, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. That is a 23 percent drop from the record level of earmarked money for fiscal 2005. Democrats used their new majority to secure 57 percent of total earmarked money in fiscal 2008. Members of both parties even supported a $4.5 billion pot of earmarks. “An increasing number of individual members recognize that a moratorium is needed until significant reforms are made to the earmark process,” Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a longtime earmark opponent, said yesterday. The new report showed that Clinton co-sponsored a $1.6 million earmark to fund technology development by a defense contractor and steered $3 million to the Rochester Institute of Technology for a fuel-cell-technology program. Another $1.6 million earmark she supported went to Weidlinger Associates, a New York engineering consulting firm working on shock testing for naval vessels. Obama, meanwhile, helped steer $3.4 million to the Rock Island Arsenal for a military fire and police building, and was the sole sponsor of a measure seeking $750,000 for an education initiative at Benedictine University in Illinois. McCain, who has helped lead efforts to strip some earmarks from Senate bills, has not focused on the money headed to his home state. Other Arizona lawmakers secured more than $214 million in pet projects in fiscal 2008 spending bills. The candidates “do illustrate the broad spectrum of attitudes toward earmarks in Congress,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. Clinton stands behind her earmarked projects as a sign of her work for constituents. “Senator Clinton is very proud to have helped New York-based projects that train nurses, improve our hospitals, help those suffering from 9/11-related health ailments, bolster our national and homeland security, and provide our brave men and women in uniform with the resources they need to achieve their mission, while keeping them safe,” said Philippe Reines, Clinton’s spokesman. Clinton’s $342 million total consists almost entirely of projects she supported with other New York lawmakers. On her own, she secured one $98,000 earmark. Her total is unusually large for someone who does not serve on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where earmarks are doled out, usually on a members-first basis. Of the 10 largest recipients, Clinton is the only senator not on the committee, the report found. Obama’s criticism of Washington’s insider culture is a linchpin of his campaign; he supports earmarks only for public entities such as schools and hospitals. He secured $3.3 million in earmarks through his own sponsorship, and collected $88 million in concert with other Illinois lawmakers. Since last year, he has publicly released the letters he submits to the Appropriations Committee seeking support for the spending items, but has not released those submitted to the committee in 2005 and 2006. On the campaign trail, Obama has specifically mentioned his ability to work across the aisle “on opening up and creating more transparency in government,” so that all government spending is “posted on a searchable database.” Bill Burton, his campaign spokesman, said Obama’s level of disclosure exceeds Clinton’s. “We began running for president in 2007 and, unlike our opponent, we thought it was appropriate to release our earmarks,” he said. McCain has used his opposition to earmarks to rally conservatives reluctant to support his presidential campaign, regularly criticizing Clinton for such spending. He attacked her Woodstock museum request, saying at an October GOP debate that he was “tied up” and unable to attend the 1969 music festival — a sly reference to his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “That kind of thing is going to stop when I’m president of the United States of America,” McCain said earlier this month of Clinton’s earmarks. Her item was rejected in a Senate vote last fall, among the few earmarks that were turned down in a House or Senate vote. Staff writer Matthew Mosk contributed to this report.

February 14, 2008

By Allisa Rubin 

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliamentary leaders on Wednesday pushed through three far-reaching measures that had been delayed for weeks by bitter political maneuvering that became so acrimonious that some lawmakers threatened to try to dissolve the legislative body.

More than any previous legislation, the new initiatives have the potential to spur reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites and set the country on the road to a more representative government, starting with new provincial elections.

The voting itself was a significant step forward for the Parliament, where even basic quorums have been rare. In a classic legislative compromise, the three measures, each of which was a burning issue for at least one faction, were packaged together for a single vote to encourage agreement across sectarian lines.

“Today we have a wedding party for the Iraqi Parliament,” said Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker, who is a Sunni. “We have proved that Iraqis are one bloc and Parliament is able to find solutions that represent all Iraqis.”

But the parliamentary success was clouded because many of the most contentious details were simply postponed, raising the possibility that the accord could again break into rancorous factional disputes in future debates on the same issues.

The three measures are the 2008 budget; a law outlining the scope of provincial powers, a crucial aspect of Iraq’s self-definition as a federal state; and an amnesty that would apply to thousands of the detainees held in Iraqi jails.

An amnesty law was one of the so-called benchmark measures that the Bush administration had built the 2007 troop increase around, hoping to create better security to allow such legislative breakthroughs.

The vast majority of the 26,000 prisoners being held in Iraqi jails are Sunni Arabs, some of whom have been held without charges for months.

That made the law a driving issue for Sunni lawmakers and the Sunni co-vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi.

The budget measure was closely guarded by the Kurds, who wanted to maintain the Kurdistan regional government’s current allocation of 17 percent of the country’s revenues after subtracting the costs of ministries that serve the entire country, like Foreign Affairs and Defense. That is a larger portion than most lawmakers felt was fair, and the point will be renegotiated next year, when the whole battle could well be re-enacted.

Similarly, the provincial powers law, which includes a provision requiring that provincial elections be held by Oct. 1, will be difficult to carry out unless Parliament approves a new election law and fills a number of vacant election commission seats at the provincial level. Those details have been contentious in the past.

But on the abstract level, a law to increase provincial powers has been supported by members from all three major factions, Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, all of whom have fought for less central governmental authority, albeit in different ways.

The three measures were put to a vote as a single package and passed Wednesday afternoon. There were 206 legislators of the 275-member body at the session, according to Parliament’s press office.

Each article of each measure was voted on individually, with some lawmakers walking out when items they had opposed came up. But almost everyone returned in time for the final package vote.

The jubilation at the conclusion of the session and the atmosphere of amity contrasted sharply with the stinging accusations and walkouts that have characterized many of the negotiations in recent weeks.

Khalid al-Attiya, the deputy speaker and an independent Shiite, beamed as he told reporters right after the vote that the laws had passed “unanimously.”

“It is a big achievement,” he said, and promised that approval of the budget and spending associated with it would translate into as many as 700,000 new jobs for Iraqis.

Parliament members estimated that the overall budget for the fiscal year would reach 60 trillion Iraqi dinars, roughly $50 billion, of which more than two-thirds would go toward salaries and labor expenses.

Even factions that did not agree with some of the measures said they did not want to vote against the package as a whole.

“The Iraqiya list did not want to create a political crisis in a time when the country has suffered a lot, “ said Aliya Nesayef, a member of the Iraqiya Party, which agreed with the amnesty law but was uncomfortable with some provisions of the budget and the provincial powers law.

The decision to vote on the three measures together broke the logjam that had held up the legislation for months, despite pressure from the Bush administration and some senior Iraqi officials. Every group was able to boast that it had won, to some degree. After the legislation is approved by the Presidency Council, in this case a pro forma step since all of the political blocs agreed to their passage, it will be published. The particulars of the laws remained unclear in part because many changes were made in the last frantic days.

The most serious controversy on Wednesday was over the inclusion of a date for holding provincial elections, which President Bush has pushed for in the short term. Such elections would mean that two political parties, one Shiite and one Sunni, would stand to lose control of one or more provincial councils, so those groups have tried to defer the vote. But the majority of Parliament supported setting a date, and Mr. Mashhadani, the speaker, forced the inclusion of a deadline, Oct. 1, at the last minute.

The top American officials in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus, issued a statement after the passage, congratulating Parliament and describing the provincial powers law, in particular, as a “landmark law” in which “Iraqi legislators have reached an historic compromise.”

But they sought to cover themselves in the event that poison pills were buried in the details of the legislation. That was the case in January, with the passage of a law that was promoted as a way to bring more Sunni Arabs into government jobs but that later appeared to have provisions that would actually force out at least as many as it brought in.

“There is also still more to learn about how this legislation will be implemented,” said the statement on Wednesday by Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus.

One example is growing concern over the commission that has been set up to organize provincial elections. There are allegations that the political parties have divided up the seats on the commission by party, but that not all parties ended up with a place at the table, raising questions about whether a vote will be viewed as fair or will merely deepen divisions.

And, still left out of the political bargain are the newly formed Awakening Councils, which are predominantly Sunni and in many cases represent powerful tribes. They have taken the lead in fighting extremist Sunni groups, and now their leaders are clamoring for a place at the table. They are outraged that the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is Sunni but has limited grass-roots support, dominates the provincial council in Anbar Province.

“In Anbar Province we want the provincial council disbanded and another one formed, we want elections to be held in March or April and we want the Iraqi Islamic Party to leave the province in 30 days,” said Sheik Ali Hatem, one of the leaders of the Anbar Awakening, who survived a suicide bomb attack this week.

On the amnesty law, much will hinge on the formation of a “competent committee” which will be charged with reviewing cases that had languished without review or charges. But detainees accused of any one of a long list of crimes would be excluded from the amnesty.

How the committee chooses to interpret the word “accused” — whether in the formal sense of charges being filed or the informal sense of people suspected of connection to such crimes — could alter considerably how many people remain in jail. Human rights experts said that at least on its face, the law appeared to have been written to free a large number of people.

Several legislators emphasized after the voting on Wednesday that achieving true sectarian reconciliation was far more complex than simply passing a law.

“Reconciliation will hang on more than a law, it needs political will,” said Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni legislator. “I believe there is no political will to achieve reconciliation. The law of amnesty is good, but not enough.”

Abeer Mohammed contributed reporting.

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama emerged from Tuesday’s primaries leading Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by more than 100 delegates, a small but significant advantage that Democrats said would be difficult for Mrs. Clinton to make up in the remaining contests in the presidential nomination battle.

Neither candidate is expected to win the 2,025 pledged delegates needed to claim the nomination by the time the voting ends in June. But Mr. Obama’s campaign began making a case in earnest on Wednesday that if he maintained his edge in delegates won in primaries and caucuses, he would have the strongest claim to the backing of the 796 elected Democrats and party leaders known as superdelegates who are free to vote as they choose and who now stand to determine the outcome.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides said she could still pull out a victory with victories in the biggest primaries still to come, including Ohio and Texas next month. But Mr. Obama’s clear lead in delegates allocated by the votes in nominating contests is one of a number of challenges facing her after a string of defeats in which Mr. Obama not only ran up big popular vote margins but also made inroads among the types of voters she had most been counting on, including women and lower-income people.

Should the cracks in her support among those groups show up in Ohio and Texas as well, it could undermine her hopes that those states will halt Mr. Obama’s momentum and allow her to claim dominance in many of the biggest primary battlegrounds.

With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.

Mrs. Clinton won more votes than Mr. Obama in both states, though both candidates technically abided by pledges not to campaign actively there.

Mr. Obama’s aides reiterated their opposition to allowing Mrs. Clinton to claim a proportional share of the delegates from the voting in those states. The prospect of a fight over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations has already exposed deep divisions within the party.

Julian Bond, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called for the delegates to be seated, saying failure to do so would amount to disenfranchising minority voters in those states. But on Wednesday, such a move was denounced by the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, who said many people in those states did not go the polls because they assumed their votes would not count.

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers acknowledged that it would be difficult for her to catch up in the race for pledged delegates even if she succeeded in winning Ohio and Texas in three weeks and Pennsylvania in April. They said the Democratic Party’s rules, which award delegates relatively evenly among the candidates based on the proportion of the vote they receive, would require her to win by huge margins in those states to match Mr. Obama in delegates won through voting.

The delegate math set up a new front in the battle for the party’s presidential nomination, one based on competing views of how the party leaders and elected officials whose vote will determine the outcome should make their decisions.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides said the delegates should make their decision based on who they thought would be the stronger candidate and president. Mr. Obama argues that they should follow the will of the Democratic Party as expressed in the primary and caucuses — meaning the candidate with the most delegates from the voting.

Mr. Obama’s aides said they hoped to end the voting season with a delegate lead of more than 100, which they would seek to portray as a decisive affirmation by Democratic primary voters of Mr. Obama’s candidacy. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they were looking to bring the margin down significantly below 100 in hope of arguing that the result was too close for delegates to consider in deciding how to vote.

Much for Mrs. Clinton depends on shoring up her support in the portions of the electorate — including women, low- and middle-income voters and Hispanics — that have provided her with victories in key states.

“Hillary does better with blue-collar voters, working-class voters, union members,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat who has not endorsed anyone in the race. “Barack does better among African-Americans and younger voters and upper-income voters. If that holds, Ohio tilts toward Hillary.”

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign showed signs of being buffeted by conflicting forces as it sought to grapple with a dwindling number of options. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers, after some discussion about whether to focus exclusively on Ohio and Texas for the next three weeks, finally decided to send her for three days this week to Wisconsin, which votes next Tuesday.

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said that they did not think she could win there but that they had concluded at this point they could not afford to leave any delegates on the table or allow Mr. Obama to run up another big margin of victory in the popular vote.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides said they would also argue to superdelegates that they should give less deference to a lead from Mr. Obama because much of that had been built up in states where there were caucuses, which tend to attract far fewer voters than primaries, where Mrs. Clinton has tended to do better than she has done in caucuses.

“I think for superdelegates, the quality of where the win comes from should matter in terms of making a judgment about who might be the best general election candidate,” said Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s senior campaign adviser.

The final Democratic primary contests are in early June; Montana and South Dakota vote June 3, and Puerto Rico four days later. It would then be almost three months until the Democratic convention, a period in which, if enough superdelegates have not expressed a firm preference to decide the outcome, the party could face a period of intense horse trading or worse.

Meanwhile, the likely Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, would have a long period to rally his fractious party to his side and hone his attacks on the Democrats.

A delegate count by The New York Times, including projections from caucuses where delegates have not yet been chosen, showed Mr. Obama with a 113-delegate lead over Mrs. Clinton: 1,095 to 982.

Delegate counts by other news organizations and by the campaigns showed somewhat different results, reflecting the difficulty of trying to make exact delegate counts at this point in the process. The figures do not include superdelegates.

Mr. Obama’s campaign said that he had a lead of 1,139 to 1,003; by the count of the Clinton campaign organization, Mr. Obama was doing even better: 1,141 to 1,004 for Mrs. Clinton.

There are 1,082 delegates left to be selected.

By any measure, Mr. Obama is in a much stronger position on Wednesday than he was just a few days ago and in a significantly stronger position than Mrs. Clinton thought he would be at this point. That is because Mr. Obama not only won a series of states, but also won them by large margins — over 20 percentage points — so that he began picking up extra delegates and opening a lead on Mrs. Clinton.

And that is the problem for Mrs. Clinton going forward. If these were winner-take-all states, Mrs. Clinton could pick up 389 delegates in Texas and Ohio on March 4. Now she would have to beat Mr. Obama by more than 20 percentage points in order to pick up a majority of delegates in both states.

“We don’t think our lead will drop below 100 delegates,” David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, said in an interview. “The math is the math.”

Mr. Plouffe said by his count, Mr. Obama had won 14 states by a margin of over 20 percentage points or more; Mrs. Clinton has won two states by that margin.

Mr. Penn said the Clinton campaign believed that it could mitigate the losses she suffered by winning in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. In addition to whatever demographic advantage she might have in Ohio, Mrs. Clinton enjoys the support of the governor, Ted Strickland.

“They are working very hard on her behalf,” said Chris Redfern, the party chairman, who is neutral in the race. “It’s not one of those ‘we show up the last week and do a press conference’ things.”

In Texas, Mr. Penn said Mrs. Clinton would be helped by the Latino vote — which he said could ultimately be as much as 40 percent of the electorate.

But Mrs. Clinton faces another problem there in the form of that state’s unusual delegation allocation rules. Delegates are allocated to state senatorial districts based on Democratic voter turn-out in the last election. Bruce Buchanan, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin, noted that in the last election, turnout was low in predominantly Hispanic districts and unusually high in urban African-American districts.

That means more delegates will be available in districts that, based on the results so far, could be expected to go heavily for Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton, Dr. Buchanan said, “has got her work cut out for her.”