Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has blasted Republicans for “focusing on ideological matters that have nothing to do with funding the government” and top Democrats have dismissed out-of-hand a series of policy riders in the House-passed spending bill to fund the government through the rest of 2011.
But in his long career in Washington, Reid has supported numerous policy “riders” to spending and other bills, including emergency spending bills, suggesting his stance now is politically convenient posturing rather than principled conviction.
Reid has used policy riders attached to spending bills to protect the mining industry in Nevada.
In 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1997, Reid secured a series of riders from his perch on the appropriations committee to delay environmental regulations on the mining industry.
One of those was attached to an emergency-aid bill for Kosovo, the Times reported.
During that time, Reid’s sons and son-in law represented mining interests as lobbyists, and their firms were paid nearly $1 million.
In September 2000, one of Reid’s riders would have limited the scope of regulations by the Interior Department on the mining industry, CQ reported. The rider was put in report language to the Interior appropriations bill.
Protecting the mining industry isn’t the only way Reid has used “ideological matters that have nothing to do with funding the government” to further his policy goals.
Just in September, USA Today reported that Reid attached the Dream Act, which provided a path to amnesty for young illegal immigrants, to a defense reauthorization bill.
Reid’s attachment of the language is particularly notable since the immigration legislation has nothing to do with defense spending.
When Reid put the Dream Act in the bill, Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, blasted the move as “a political vote, not a real attempt to move it,” language strikingly similar to how Reid is attacking the policy riders in the Republicans’ spending bill, H.R. 1.
Policy “riders” are provisions in spending and other bills that don’t relate to the purported purpose of those bills. Lawmakers from both parties often attach them to “must pass” bills to secure items that might not otherwise make it through the legislative process.
Besides Reid, Democrats have added numerous riders to defense authorization bills over the years, including on ideologically charged issues such as abortion.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, secured an amendment to the 2005 defense authorization bill to permit government funding for abortions in cases of rape or incest.
Former Sen. Gordon Smith, Oregon Democrat, secured funding to prosecute hate crimes in that same legislation.
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy secured an increase in the minimum wage bill in the 2007 defense authorization bill.
For the continuing resolution, Republicans and Democrats have spent months laying the groundwork for this moment: Both parties at seemingly irreconcilable differences and a government shutdown looming.
The arguments from each have created a political blame universe forming the logic of who wins and loses if the talks fail.
But on the procedural issues, like whether riders are appropriate in a spending bill, lawmakers who’ve been in Washington a long time tend to have made arguments on every side.