One of the most important thing to voters in November was cleaning up congress. Ethics reform. Guess the Republicans didn’t get the message. Maybe they’ll get it in 08! Talk about shooting themselves in the foot. It’s going to be a long two years.

Senate Republicans scuttled broad legislation last night to curtail lobbyists’ influence and tighten [tag]congressional ethics rules, refusing to let the bill pass[/tag] without a vote on an unrelated measure that would give President Bush virtual line-item-veto power.

The bill could be brought back up later this year. Indeed, Democrats will try one last time today to break the impasse. But its unexpected collapse last night infuriated Democrats and the government watchdog groups that had been pushing it since the lobbying scandals that rocked the last Congress. Proponents charged that Republicans had used the spending-control measure as a ruse to thwart ethics rules they dared not defeat in a straight vote.

“It’s as obvious as the sun coming up somewhere in this world that they tried to kill this bill,” a furious Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last night in an interview. “And all 21 Republican senators up for reelection are going to have to explain how they brought down the most significant reform ever to come before this Congress. They brought this baby down.”

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said insistence on a line-item-veto vote was proof that the GOP is serious about passing the toughest possible overhaul of the way Congress conducts its business. Efforts to give Bush power to strike individual items from spending bills have been struck down by the Supreme Court, but Senate Republicans insist that the latest version will pass constitutional muster.

The bill was to be the Democratic-controlled Senate’s first piece of legislation, a statement of bipartisanship and a break from the scandals that helped return the party to power. Instead, a measure that began with Reid and McConnell as co’sponsors was chased from the floor in a partisan showdown when Republicans prevented the Democratic leadership from bringing it to a vote. The 51 to 46 vote was nowhere close to the two-thirds majority needed to break the Republican filibuster.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said he hopes “this is just going to be a bump in the road,” but, he added, “this is going to be a long road over the next two years and this is not a good start.”

Read more at the Washington Post