No Quorum to Vote FEC Nominees Out of Committee

See here. Here is Sen. Feinstein’s opening statement from the hearing that wasn’t. UPDATE: Apparently there was a hearing, but there is a new snag. This article in The Hill says that Senate Democrats and President Bush have not reached agreement over how to proceed because of the lack of agreement on a Sixth Commissioner, who will be a Republican. Furthermore, Roll Call is reporting that Democrats are insisting on the return of Commissioner Mason as the Sixth Commissioner.
I was very surprised to read the following in the article:

    Reid wanted Republicans to renominate outgoing FEC Commissioner David Mason — a nonstarter for the Bush administration since Mason has been known to side with the FEC’s Democratic members.
    One senior administration official said that if the White House had agreed to Reid’s proposal, it would amount to an “imbalance on the FEC.” Mason, plus the Democrats’ three picks, would essentially give Democrats a working majority on the commission, the official said.

Now I have heard from some that Commissioner Mason had made a few votes over his time that have favored the Democrats (and the most recent controversy surrounds his call to investigate whether Sen. McCain improperly pledged participation in the public financing system as a condition for a bank loan). But it is quite an exaggeration to think of Commisioner Mason as equivalent to a Democratic commissioner. Consider a paragraph from Gerry Hebert’s blog post of June 11, 2007:

    Recently, in the context of audit reports of the Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards 2004 presidential general election campaigns, the Commission split sharply on the legality of an allocation scheme employed by the candidates and their parties to evade the presidential public financing program spending limit and the coordinated party spending limit. In March of this year, Chairman Lenhard, along with Commissioners Weintraub and Walther published a statement[1] arguing that the Bush-Cheney committee received $41 million in excess in-kind contributions from the RNC, violating both the contribution limit and the presidential spending limit. Commissioner Weintraub published an even more strongly worded statement[2] elaborating on the issue. Commissioners von Spakovsky and Mason, however, voted against finding that a violation had occurred and published a statement explaining their position.[3] Without the necessary four votes to find a violation, the Lenhard, Weintraub and Walther could do nothing and the $41 million violation went unpunished. Then in May, the Commission again split with respect to whether the Kerry-Edwards campaign had likewise violated federal law using the same “hybrid ad” scheme that resulted in $11 million in illegal contributions to the presidential ticket. Commissioners Mason and von Spakovsky again published a statement explaining their position.[4]

So clearly Commissioner Mason didn’t always stray from a party line vote. The idea that he’s a Democrat in disguise is ridiculous.

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