Yesterday, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) proposed an amendment to the Senate ethics reform bill that was essentially the language passed by Pelosi’s Democratically-run House. While the current Senate ethics package will only allow for the public disclosure of about 5% of earmarks, adding Pelosi’s package will allow for the disclosure of all earmarks that are done in the Senate.

So the good Senator from South Carolina, in a bipartisan move, suggested adding the Democratic Speaker of the House’s ethics package to the weaker Senate package in an effort to better inform the American people about how their money is spent in Washington. Should pass the Senate unanimously, right?

Wrong.

The Senate Majority Leadership engaged in tactics reminiscent of the House Majority’s actions in 2003 in order to twist arms to pass the Medicare Part D bill. The Club For Growth provides the best rundown of how this happened:

The Senate is boiling with excitement right now. For background, the Senate is proposing very weak earmark reform rules. In contrast, Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats implemented some very strong earmark rules in the lower chamber last week.

In response, Senator Jim DeMint, who is a very strong advocate for more transparency, figured, “Let’s just offer Pelosi’s reforms as an amendment to the Senate bill.”

It was a very clever strategy. Dick Durbin, the Majority Whip, threw a fit on the Senate floor and offered a motion to table it (kill it).

Let’s be clear about the rich irony here. Senate Leadership tried to kill a bill that House Leadership supported and passed. Harry Reid and Dick Durbin are basically saying that they want their pork no matter what, even if it embarrasses their own party.

So when the motion to kill the bill came to a vote, Durbin and the Democrats lost! [ed. note: At this point, the Senate erupted. The chair, who I think was Maria Cantwell, banged the gavel repeatedly to bring the room to order. The Democrats were frantically performing triage in an attempt to recover.]

It should be noted that a majority should never offer a motion to table if they aren’t sure they can win. It was very embarrassing. Especially since Durbin was trying to kill a proposal that his Leadership colleagues in the House offered!

Anyways, after the motion failed, DeMint asked for a voice vote, which is common. It’s basically used to save time since de facto support of the bill was decided when the motion failed. However, Big Ted Kennedy objected, which is all that it needed to skip a voice vote.

The Dems are now off the floor whipping the hell out of their members for when they take a real roll call vote later this afternoon.

Read the entire piece for all the updates on how this played out on the Senate last night. The Club also reports today that the motion to table won’t be brought back up today, showing that Reid’s attempts to whip solid Democratic opposition to the amendment has not been successful yet.

More from HUMAN EVENTS, RedState (with the best headline, “Cue the Clown Music”), and the Americans For Prosperity has a list of the 10 Democrats who defected to the Republican side and the 7 Republicans who are likeminded with Reid (guess who’s on the list? Republican Whip “Getting damn tired of those Porkbusters” Lott!).

UPDATE: Reid Waves White Flag. The Amendment will be attached to the bill and Senators will have to disclose earmarks just like their counterparts in the House do.