In requesting the 21 CSI earmark, Nelson did not disclose his son's employment there. "There's no requirement that he disclose that," a Nelson spokesman told this column. "But frankly, in this case, we didn't disclose it because it's so public." An April 24 letter from Armed Services Committee Chairman Levin, giving all senators instructions on how to request earmarks, makes no mention of the "Reid Amendment" passed by the Senate three months earlier but requires only certification that no senator's spouse will benefit from an earmark. Inclusion of Nelson's son, however, would be required if and when the ethics bill provision passes.
When the Defense authorization bill came up last week, Coburn prepared amendments to eliminate the Nelson earmark and the most notorious earmark now pending in Congress: Rep. John Murtha's proposed $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center in his Pennsylvania district. Reid's game plan to satisfy anti-war activists with an all-night debate averted debate for now on these two earmarks.
Reid, the soft-spoken trial lawyer from Searchlight, Nev., in his tumultuous six and one-half months as majority leader has tended to suppress free expression in the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Deliberative Body. He last week cut off an attempt to respond to him by Sen. Arlen Specter, the veteran moderate Republican, in an abrupt way that I had not witnessed in a half-century of Senate-watching. Neither had Specter. When Specter finally got the Senate floor, he declared: "Nothing is done here until the majority leader decides to exercise his power to keep the Senate in all night on a meaningless, insulting session. . . . Last night's performance made us the laughingstock of the world." It may get worse if plans to eviscerate ethics legislation are pursued.