AP story notes all sorts of contacts with Abramoff's lobbyists and Reid's office regarding a bill to increase the minimum wage in the Marianas Islands.
Josh Marshall takes it from there:
What did Reid do in response? That's really the key issue.
Did he intervene on behalf of Abramoff's Marianas clients? The gist of the whole narrative is that Reid was Team Abramoff's go-to guy to kill the bill that would have hurt the Marianas sweatshop owners.
But did he actually rise to the bait?
I rung up Reid spokesman Jim Manley. He said Reid was a "cosponsor of Sen. Kennedy's bill; he spoke in favor of the bill on the Senate; he was a strong supporter of the bill." When I pressed Manley on whether Sen. Reid took any action adverse to the bill or made changes in timing that lead to the bill's demise, he said, "No."
Then I got hold of Ron Platt, the lobbyist referenced in the passage above, on his cell phone while he was down at a conference in Florida. I asked him whether, to the best of his recollection, Reid had taken any action against the Kennedy bill. "I'm sure he didn't," Platt told me.
According to Platt, the purpose of his contacts was to see what information he could get about the timing and status of the legislation. Reid's position on the minimum wage issue was well known and there would have been no point trying to get his help blocking it. That's what Platt says. "I didn't ask Reid to intervene," said Platt. "I wouldn't have asked him to intervene. I don't think anyone else would have asked. And I'm sure he didn't."
The problem exists when a lobbyist buys off an elected official. Here, let me give you an example:
U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., met with a Marianas official who had close ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in the weeks before Burns received an Abramoff-related $5,000 contribution from the Marianas and reversed his earlier position on a bill about the islands [...]
8 percent of the island's population were noncitizen immigrants, drawn to the island's garment manufacturing jobs, government reports show. At the time, workers in the factories earned a minimum of $3.05 an hour, below the U.S. minimum wage of $5.15.
Burns voted against a bill in May 2001 that would have strengthened U.S. oversight over the commonwealth's labor and immigration laws. A little more than a year before Burns had not opposed an identical measure.
Reid didn't just support the increase in the island's minimum wage, but he co-sponsored it.
And the AP piece, penned by John Solomon and Sharon Theimer, conveniently omits that crucial bit of information.
