What Blunt Used To Think About Tacking On Bits of Legislation (Hint: He Did It Shamelessly)

Following up on last week's discussion about (some) House Republicans' outrage with the addition of already-passed hate crimes legislation to the defense authorization bill, Clark at Show Me Progress reminds us that Roy Blunt had no problem tacking on additional measures when he, Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert were in charge.

In 2006, for example, Blunt and the elite GOP leadership "engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits," adding language to a DOD appropriations bill at the last minute, "without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee." From Show Me Progress:

Right before Christmas in 2005, the Republican leadership, which controlled both chambers of Congress and included Roy Blunt, decided that the defense authorization bill was missing something. Sure, it had already passed the House and the Senate AND negotiated through the conference committee that ironed any differences between the two versions, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, and then House Majority Whip Roy Blunt came to the conclusion that the vaccine liability bill which had not previously been able to make it through Congress should somehow be quietly put into the defense authorization bill.

The Gannett News Service reported at the time that the last-minute addition was confirmed by "a top Republican staff member."  As reported in February 2006:

Keith Kennedy, who works for Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., as staff director for the Senate Appropriations Committee, said at a seminar for reporters last month that the language was inserted by Frist and Hastert, R-Ill., after the conference committee ended its work.

"There should be no dispute. That was an absolute travesty," Kennedy said at a videotaped Washington, D.C., forum sponsored by the Center on Congress at Indiana University.

"It was added after the conference had concluded. It was added at the specific direction of the speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate. The conferees did not vote on it. It's a true travesty of the process."

After the conference committee broke up, a meeting was called in Hastert's office, Kennedy said. Also at the meeting, according to a congressional staffer, were Frist, Stevens and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

"They (committee staff members) were given the language and then it was put in the document," Kennedy said.

About 10 or 10:30 p.m., Democratic staff members were handed the language and told it was now in the bill, Obey said.

He took to the House floor in a rage. He called Frist and Hastert "a couple of musclemen in Congress who think they have a right to tell everybody else that they have to do their bidding."

Did Roy Blunt take to the floor to decry the abuse of the system?  Heck no. 

In contrast, the hate crimes language that Roy Blunt found so offensive was added the DOD bill with a 63-28 vote in the Senate months ago, and there were no secretive last-minute maneuvers.  (The House passed the hate crimes language by itself in April.)

More importantly, Roy Blunt is the last person would should be railing against the attachment of unrelated legislation to bills.  It was Blunt, after all, who tried to slip in sweet benefits for Philip Morris into a homeland security bill in 2003, offending even his colleagues in the GOP leadership.  Recall:

Only hours after Rep. Roy Blunt was named to the House's third-highest leadership job in November, he surprised his fellow top Republicans by trying to quietly insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the 475-page bill creating a Department of Homeland Security, according to several people familiar with the effort.

The new majority whip, who has close personal and political ties to the company, instructed congressional aides to add the tobacco provision to the bill -- then within hours of a final House vote -- even though no one else in leadership supported it or knew he was trying to squeeze it in.

Once alerted to the provision, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, quickly had it pulled out, said a senior GOP leader who requested anonymity. Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) also opposed what Blunt (Mo.) was trying to do, the member said, and "worked against it" when he learned of it...

It is highly unusual for a House Republican to insert a last-minute contentious provision that has never gone through a committee, never faced a House vote and never been approved by the speaker or majority leader. Blunt's attempt became known only to a small circle of House and White House officials. They kept it quiet, preferring no publicity on a matter involving favors for the nation's biggest tobacco company and possible claims of conflicts of interest...

A senior Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said some GOP members worried at the time that it would be "embarrassing" to the party and its new whip if details of the effort were made public. Another Republican said Blunt's effort angered some leaders because there was "so little support for" a pro-tobacco provision likely to generate controversy...

Because Blunt's actions in the Philip Morris matter were kept quiet, there were no apparent repercussions or threats to his leadership ambitions. Meanwhile, there is evidence that the majority whip has continued to work aggressively on behalf of companies to which he has ties.

In April, for instance, Blunt managed to have a provision inserted into a Senate bill, without debate, on behalf of United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. The two companies were seeking to block the expansion of a foreign rival's U.S. operations. Blunt's son Andrew also represents UPS in Missouri, as the Wall Street Journal first reported, and the two companies have contributed a total of $120,000 to Blunt since 2001, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Also this spring, Blunt brokered a deal with Rep. Ernie Fletcher (R-Ky.) to fight for a vote on legislation that could open the door to Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco, a top priority for Philip Morris, a senior House GOP leader said. Philip Morris would benefit because it is far ahead of its competitors in designing and selling "safer" cigarettes that could be permitted if the FDA gains regulatory power, lawmakers and industry experts said.

Another week, another shamelessly hypocritical stand by Roy Blunt. 

Image Credit: CBS News