Kansas City Star: Claire McCaskill Charting Her Own Course in DC

May 04, 2007

The senator's opposition to earmarks sets her apart from her party and Missouri's delegation

By David Goldstein
The Kansas City Star

WASHINGTON -- Claire McCaskill campaigned against congressional earmarks last year when she ran for the Senate.

Talk about counterintuitive politics: Passing up the chance to funnel millions into your state for roads, buildings and other projects -- and claim the political bragging rights -- is a rare thing on Capitol Hill.

But it turns out she meant it.

Since January, the freshman Democrat from Missouri has received about 200 pleas for money from all over the state and turned down every one of them.

She thinks that using earmarks -- whereby members of Congress anonymously tuck appropriations into bills without going through public hearings -- is simply not the way to govern: "I honestly believe we can find a way to make serious investments without this secret, behind-closed-door process."

Budget hardliners like the Club for Growth praise her, while Missouri colleagues in the House grumble about the millions she might be leaving on the table.

"I told her that earmarks are how the (Samuel U.) Rogers Health Center fixed the roof, that it's helping the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum expand, and it's helping build bridges in Raytown," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat. "I was not apologizing for it."

Flying solo is nothing new to McCaskill. This is, after all, the woman who challenged her party's sitting governor in 2004, beat him in the primary and then lost the general election. Some Missouri Democrats still haven't forgiven her.

McCaskill emphasizes she's a loyal Democrat and has voted with the party on the great majority of key issues, including Iraq.

But in her first 100 days as a senator, she has bolted her party on more roll call votes than any of the seven other Democratic freshmen, according to Congressional Quarterly. The magazine gave her a party loyalty score of 87 percent.

Only a handful of the 50 Democratic senators scored lower, and they included red state lawmakers like Louisiana's Mary Landrieu and Nebraska's Ben Nelson.

"She's not a rubber stamp," Nelson said.

For instance, McCaskill strayed on votes to approve $100 million to help the political parties pay for their presidential conventions next year and to boost state homeland security grants.

Her spokeswoman, Adrianne Marsh, said that the senator did not think taxpayers should help pay for the conventions and that many states were not making the best use of the security grants they already had.

McCaskill has also backed bills that her party opposed. One would have created a Senate office of Public Integrity. Another would have ensured that the Social Security Trust Fund was used only for retirement program benefits. Currently the money goes to other uses.

She also voted for a bill requiring that savings from spending cuts be used to pay down the deficit instead of financing other programs.

Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican and author of the Social Security and deficit measures, said it's hard to buck party leadership, especially for a freshman. But too many members vote in lockstep, he said.

"The pressure over time of trying to go along and support your team, it's always there," he said. "A lot of us realize that in the end, it's what put the Republicans in the minority."

McCaskill said she's "not going to vote for anything just on party loyalty. It's important to me to be seen as serious, thoughtful and substantial. Not just a maverick. People will just see you as a flame thrower, as always swimming upstream."

The Democratic Senate leadership gives McCaskill a wide berth.

"She talked about (earmarks) in her campaign and made a lot of commitments, and I think we all respect that," said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, secretary of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Missouri is a swing state, where politics can be "a delicate dance," McCaskill said. Though her opposition to earmarks appears sincere, it also doesn't hurt to be seen early on as a taxpayers' watchdog.

In recent years the numbers and costs of earmarks have ballooned. In 1996 the budget contained 3,000 at a cost of $20 billion. In 2005 there were 16,000, and the tab was nearly $50 billion.

Missouri received $433 million in earmarks in 2005, according to the Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget. Much of that was thanks to McCaskill's Missouri colleague, Republican Sen. Kit Bond. He is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where earmarks are a way of life.

Bond said he is all for more disclosure but sees nothing wrong with earmarks themselves.

"The Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, gives Congress the power of the purse," he said. "I've been very productive in being able to make sure some of the money goes to the state."

Tighter disclosure was why DeMint asked McCaskill for help last month. He wanted the Senate to require that any earmark request include the name of the member, the amount and its destination. The Senate had already approved similar disclosure requirements in January as part of an ethics reform bill. But the bill was in limbo.

The day DeMint planned to bring up his measure, McCaskill was in a Commerce Committee hearing. An aide passed her a note asking what she should tell DeMint's staff.

DeMint and McCaskill are far apart politically. He is a conservative Republican and a budget hawk. She is a moderate Democrat and a former Missouri state auditor who took her green eyeshade to Washington.

For McCaskill, backing DeMint was a no-brainer. But the look on her aide's face, she said, was "a flashing red light: You're going into uncharted waters here in terms of being out there by yourself."

Indeed, McCaskill was the only Democrat to sign on with the South Carolina Republican. When he announced on the Senate floor that she was a co-sponsor, a gasp went up among Senate aides gathered in the back of the chamber.

Democratic Senate leaders subsequently quashed the move. They said they, too, wanted more transparency. They just did not want to change Senate rules "piecemeal."

"I don't care if it's piecemeal," a frustrated McCaskill said later. "Let's just do it."

Back in her office that day, she felt nervous. The phone rang. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada wanted to speak with her.

"'Uh-oh. Dum de dum, dum,'" McCaskill recalled saying.

But Reid didn't even bring it up.

McCaskill said she knows many of the projects are worthwhile, but the notion of that much spending going unscrutinized sets off alarm bells in the former auditor. She has told each supplicant that her office would help them seek federal grants and other federal aid for their programs.

McCaskill is leaving the door slightly ajar. She said she intends to study the earmark process this year, but would not say what she would do about them in 2008

Bond and others have been working on her to change her mind. It started in her first weeks in the Senate when she met with Missouri's House Democrats in Rep. Ike Skelton's office to celebrate her victory and discuss mutual interests.

It was a roomful of old friends and allies. Skelton, dean of the delegation, has been a congressman for nearly four decades and has mentored many rising Democrats. Cleaver was a city councilman and mayor of Kansas City when McCaskill was a state legislator and then Jackson County prosecutor. They rose through the ranks together. Reps. Lacy Clay and Russ Carnahan are scions of prominent Democratic families.

"It was the first time we all met (since the election)," McCaskill said. "They were all hugs, 'This is so wonderful.'"

But when earmarks came up, "the room went from warm and effusive and cooled slightly," she said.

"I know she's trying to remain faithful to what she said on the campaign trail," Cleaver said. "At some point she may have to tell her constituents that sitting on the outside, things look quite different than they do when you get inside."