Campaign Detours to Capitol Hill for Budget Fights

WASHINGTON — The presidential campaign detoured Thursday to the U.S. Capitol with Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain returning to join Senate colleagues in trying to pass parts of a blueprint for the 2009 federal budget.

The voting occurred amid continued squabbling over proposals to replay the disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan, including a warning from Florida's Democratic Party that a proposed vote-by-mail presidential primary is unlikely to go forward because of strong opposition and concerns about conducting the vote.

Before the budget voting began, Obama aimed one of his sharpest criticisms yet at the Arizona senator he hopes to face this fall, charging that McCain reversed his position on President Bush's tax cuts in order to win the Republican presidential nomination this year.

The Obama campaign also took aim at Clinton over budget "earmarks," congressional provisions directing federal tax dollars to specific projects, or "pork," as critics of the process call them. Obama disclosed his budget earmark requests for 2007 and called on Clinton to do the same.

"If Senator Clinton will not agree to join Senator Obama in releasing her earmark requests, voters should ask why she doesn't believe they have the right to know she wants to spend their tax dollars," said Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs.

Clinton had $324 million in earmarks last year, 10th among all senators, according to the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. The New York senator is "proud of the investments in New York she has secured," spokesman Philippe Reines said.

Obama had $98 million in funding for Illinois projects in fiscal 2008. And according to the information released Thursday by the Obama camp, the Illinois senator had $330 million in earmark requests in fiscal 2007.

On his flight from Chicago to Washington for the budget votes, Obama noted that McCain once described the Bush tax cuts as "irresponsible" but as a presidential candidate "made a decision to reverse himself on that." He added, "That was how, I guess, you got your ticket punched to be the Republican nominee. But he was right then, and he's wrong now."

McCain did not respond directly to Obama. But a McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said in a statement that if Obama is the Democratic nominee this fall, "the American people will have a clear choice: John McCain will cut taxes while Senator Obama will raise them, hurting our economy and costing jobs for hardworking Americans."

It is McCain who is sponsoring one of the more controversial budget proposals before Congress: an amendment that would require a two-thirds majority of lawmakers to approve earmarks. And in a statement released Thursday, McCain tweaked Democrats for their "new-found enthusiasm" for a separate measure by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., that would ban all budget earmarks for a year. Among those supporting the ban are Obama and Clinton.

McCain also vowed that if elected president, "I will veto every single pork-barrel bill Congress sends me."

McCain, who initially opposed some of the Bush tax cuts when they were enacted in the president's first term, is also a sponsor of a proposal to permanently extend the tax cuts, which are set to expire by 2011.

Meanwhile, Karen Thurman, head of the Florida Democratic Party, acknowledged the difficulty of going ahead with a vote-by-mail primary in Florida as a substitute for the primary that took place in January in violation of national party rules. When asked if the alternative will be implemented, she said, "I have a feeling that this is probably closer to not, than yes," largely because of the potential problems in executing the plan for the first time in Florida.

The state party sent the Clinton and Obama campaigns and national party leaders a mail re-vote proposal on Wednesday, and is not expected to make a decision before Monday.

Under the plan, all of Florida's 4.1 million Democrats would be mailed a ballot. The deadline for returning the ballot would be June 3. The cost of the election would be between $10 million and $12 million.

Florida and Michigan were both stripped of their delegates to the national convention in August because their primaries were held in January in violation of party rules restricting voting that month to Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.