Friday, March 31. 2006
Earlier this week Rick Santorum said the ethics reform bill that passed the Senate was "a much tougher bill than I think anyone could have anticipated when we started this process." The Philadelphia Inquirer's Editorial Board seems to disagree:
It's official: The Senate believes it can fool all of the people all of the time.
Senators on Wednesday approved, 90-8, an ethics bill that should fool nobody. It's a watered-down, toothless attempt to address the recent lobbying scandals that resulted in one ex-congressman being hauled off to prison for taking bribes, and a Justice Department probe into the influence peddling of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Wednesday, March 29. 2006
Rick Santorum, the self-proclaimed Republican point man on ethics reform, voted yesterday to kill a proposed independent ethics office. Apparently he doesn't want outsiders policing Senators.
Mr. Santorum said that when outside groups have filed ethics complaints against him with the Senate ethics panel, "they're looked at seriously, we have to respond to them, and in some cases we've had to hire counsel to deal with them."
But Mr. Santorum said he opposed the independent office because "to hire somebody who is a hired gun from the outside -- whose job it is to sort of 'get' senators -- I just think is corruption of the process."
It's too bad the Republicans chose Rick for their point man. While Rick was preparing to vote against the independent office, Sen. John McCain proved that he understood why it would be an important addition to an ethics reform package.
"We need to restore the confidence of the American ... people in the way we do business," said Mr. McCain, as he advocated for the independent office before the vote yesterday. "Our approval ratings are down around 25 percent, 26 percent, and there are people who continue to be deeply disturbed about the way ... we do business.... Shouldn't we do what we can to help fix either a real or imagined problem?"
Why Doesn't Rick get that?
Tuesday, March 28. 2006
Rick Santorum was on Imus in the Morning today and he discussed his charity with Don. Santorum said that other than helping to raise money and hand out checks for the charity, which he created and serves as honorary chairman of the board for, he doesn't have a large role in it. He claims he doesn't decide who gets money from the charity and he doesn't really know many of the charity's donors. At the end of the interview Imus suggested that Rick should find out more information about the charity. Do you believe that the founder and chairman of what Rick characterizes as a "small, little non-profit" wouldn't know its donors? And what exactly has happened to Rick's belief in personal responsibility? Why is he comfortable being the public face of Operation Good Neighbor on its web site and for the purposes of handing out money, but unwilling to take responsibility for or even acknowledge the charity's questionable practices? Here's background info on Santorum's charity problems. Here's the video: Click image to play video
Continue reading "Santorum Passes the Buck"
Thursday, March 16. 2006
The Washington Times has the transcript of a recent interview with Rick Santorum up on their Website. In it Rick answers questions about the Republicans policy agenda for the coming year. Here are some highlights:
Q. What cultural issues will the conference bring up in the coming months?
A. One of the most important amendments is marriage. That will be brought up sometime certainly before the August break, and hopefully a lot sooner than that. There will be issues relating to life, child-custody protection. The stem-cell issue is eventually something we're going to have to vote on. There will be a lot of issues relating to stem cells that the pro-life community would like to vote on. The flag amendment is something that we're certainly going to vote on.
Q. Why this summer?
A. With marriage, we've always been waiting for a trigger or a linchpin or something that happens within the courts that might give us a little bit more momentum. We did get a federal court ruling that a state constitutional amendment was unconstitutional under federal constitutional law. To me, that was a pretty good trigger, but we don't have an appeals court ruling. So, we're sort of holding off to see whether there's going to be any kind of decision. We wanted to give some time. It doesn't look like that's going to happen, so I think we're just going to move forward and vote the amendment.
Q. What role do the elections this year play in this decision?
A. Certainly, we want to have these votes on record before the election.
...
Q. What are three areas of the federal government where you would cut?
A. They have to be in the areas that threaten the long-term fiscal health of the country. Medicare and Medicaid would be areas where we have to find savings. We have to control the growth of spending there. I've voted for changes in those programs, and a lot more than what passed. I think I have a record of being willing to put my money where my mouth is. The third area is to try to keep the rate of growth in spending at the federal level at or below the rate of inflation on discretionary accounts. The entitlements are the key. And we have to do something about Social Security. But that's not as much an issue of deficits as it is avoiding future tax increases.
Amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage and flag burning, restricting stem cell research and cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That certainly is an ambitious agenda those Republicans have.
Monday, March 13. 2006
As the Washington Post told us last Thursday, Rick Santorum has resumed his meetings with lobbyists just weeks after saying he would put an end to them. The question now is, what was discussed at the latest meeting? It seems there are conflicting reports as to the subject of the meetings. The interesting part is that the differing reports come from Rick and his spokesperson. Here's how the Bucks County Courier Times puts it:
Friday, Santorum said the meetings were not about the Republican agenda or job openings, but simply about his re-election campaign, such as fundraising and “get out the vote” efforts.
“That's all we talked about,” Santorum said.
However, Virginia Davis, press secretary for Santorum's campaign, was quoted in a Philadelphia Inquirer article
Friday that legislative issues were, in fact, discussed in those meetings with lobbyists.
So, which one of them is has the story straight?
Saturday, March 11. 2006
WTAE-TV reports that Rick Santorum's charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is looking for a new treasurer now that Barbara Bonfiglio has left the lobbying firm she worked for. And Gerald Shuster, a political analyst from the University of Pittsburgh, tells WTAE that if Santorum's charity has nothing to hide, then they should open their books in response to the station's request for information about whose travel they were paying for. Below is an excerpt of the transcript. Here is the full transcript and video.
Team 4 has asked the senator's office and the charity itself for records that would show who was doing all that traveling for the charity and where they went.
The request continues to be denied.
"If there is no question as to the legitimacy and legality of their operation, then everything ought to be on the table for the media and anyone else to look at," said Gerald Shuster of the University of Pittsburgh.Shuster, a political analyst, said because Santorum has proclaimed himself to be the GOP's point man on lobbyist reform, he should open the books at Operation Good Neighbor.
"He himself ought to make a statement and come to the forefront and talk to you in person or with any of the media and say here's our books, they're open, they're on the table. You guys can peruse the books and examine them for whatever you think there is there. There's nothing to hide. Here they are," Shuster said.
Team 4 asked Operation Good Neighbor if Barbara Bonfiglio will be replaced as treasurer with another employee of a Washington lobbying firm.
A spokeswoman did not answer that question directly, but said in a written statement that Operation Good Neighbor is currently working to fill the position of treasurer.
Friday, March 10. 2006
Will Bunch reports that Barbara Bonfiglio, the treasurer of Rick Santorum's campaign committee, PAC and charity, seems to have disappeared. Also, here's the video of the WTAE-TV story that we told you about on Wednesday, in which Rick denies that lobbyists run his charity while also denying that he runs his charity.
Thursday, March 2. 2006
President Bush will be in Pennsylvania later this month to fund raise for Rick Santorum. Since Bush's approval rating just hit an all-time low of 34%, we have a feeling that Rick won't want to let the press take any pictures like the one below during the President's visit. Feel free to provide your own captions for this one...
Wednesday, March 1. 2006
Will Bunch at Attytood has posted his piece that will run in tomorrow's Philadelphia Daily News. It seems that the largest known donor to Santorum's charity, the Operation Good Neighbor Foundation, may have had a motive for giving that wasn't entirely charitable. Here's Will's description of the situation:
The largest known giver to a controversial charity founded by U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum made its $25,000 donation as the senator was working to win as much as $8.5 million in federal aid for the donor’s project in the Philadelphia suburbs
In case you missed it last week, Will also uncovered some other, uh, problems pertaining to Rick's charity.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Rick is no longer leading the Senate's ethics reform efforts. Here's what Rick had to say about his new "backstage role":
"What I was asked by the leader to do was to start a process to see if we could get a bipartisan bill," Mr. Santorum said yesterday after the Senate Rule Committee voted 17-0 to approve new restrictions on members. "I understand the game here; I understand that they [Democrats] don't want Santorum's name on anything that's going to pass. So I'm not worried about getting my name on a bill that's going to pass; I'm worried about making sure we do the right thing from an ethics point of view."
That's interesting, because in January the story was that Bill Frist had put Santorum in charge with coming up with a new proposal for lobbying reform. At that time, there was no talk of Rick starting a process. We have a feeling that, considering ethical questions that have come to light recently, Rick's new role may be the result of other people being worried about Rick's capability to "do the right thing from an ethics point of view."
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