Word: lott
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...news that Attorney General Janet Reno had started the process that may end with an independent counsel to probe his White House phone calls, Clinton announced he would keep Congress in session until it debated the reform bill. That posed a problem for Senate majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, who doesn't think a system in which Republicans raised $549 million in campaign '96--at least 50% more than the Democrats--needs all that much reforming. He also knows that Fred Thompson's Senate hearings, while intended to fry the other guys, have put both parties...
...their offer of free television time to candidates who accept voluntary campaign-spending caps. Their bill's main surviving feature is a ban on "soft money" contributions, which pay for general party-building activities as opposed to individual campaigns. But even before the Senate debate started, Republican leaders, including Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, were predicting that the smaller bill would go nowhere. "We'll debate it," promised Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chief fund raiser for Senate Republicans. "And then we're going to kill...
Sadly for Gingrich and Lott (but not for Barbour, who gets paid no matter what), a couple of goody-goody freshmen had to go and ruin everything. Calling the move "midnight madness" that "shines and stinks like a mackerel in the moonlight," Democratic Senator Richard Durbin and Republican Susan Collins exposed the tax credit, which would have offset industry costs in the now ill-fated tobacco deal, to the light of day. No one came forward to defend the stinker once it was yanked from its protective package, so it went down, 95 to 3, in the Senate...
...didn't Lott and Gingrich spread the blame by giving up Barbour? After all, he makes big bucks--$50,000 a month--fronting for the industry. But fingering Barbour would force the two leaders to choose between pleading stupidity (We were tricked into it) or venality. And neither Lott nor Gingrich is inclined to annoy tobacco's top ambassador in Washington, who controls thousands if not millions of dollars in political contributions. In the past 18 months, Republicans have pocketed $1.9 million from tobacco. (Democrats got $300,000.) Barbour makes Roger Tamraz, the star of last week's campaign-finance...
...Trent Lott and some bipartisan Senators want to redesign the Senate chamber [NOTEBOOK, Sept. 8]. This would be the biggest government money pit since the construction of the Rayburn Building. The idea of putting up something that is "tasteful, historically appropriate and...television-friendly" will give way to things that are gold plated and unnecessary. The cost will easily hit $20 million because when Senators are doing for themselves, they just can't stop. I would much rather the public revolt and rip out the seats and air conditioning from both chambers. Uncomfortable legislators just might get the people...