By David Nather, CQ Staff

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama outlined a broad plan to “reform the greed and excesses of Washington” on Monday, calling for a series of changes in the way Congress does business.

It’s not clear whether Democratic leaders in Congress are willing to go along with what their party’s nominee is suggesting.

The plan goes well beyond responding to the financial meltdown, which has become Washington’s top priority.

It would require Congress, among other things, to hold all conference committee meetings and committee markups in public and spell out who benefits from all tax breaks in all new tax bills — in keeping with the open-government theme the senator from Illinois has championed throughout his campaign.

“As president, I will make it impossible for congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork-barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one is looking, because when I am president, meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. No more secrecy,” Obama said as he outlined the plan at a campaign speech in Green Bay, Wis.

“When there is a tax bill being debated in Congress, you will know the names of the corporations that would benefit and how much money they would get,” Obama said. “And we will put every corporate tax break and every pork-barrel project online for every American to see. You will know who asked for them, and you can cast your vote accordingly.”

In his speech Monday, Obama pledged never to sign legislation into law, except in emergencies, without giving the public five days to review it online.

He promised not to attach “signing statements that undermine the legislative intent” — a reference to President Bush’s practice of using routine signing statements to list provisions he would consider advisory only, arguing that Congress had no authority to require the executive branch to comply with them. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee, has made a similar pledge about signing statements.

To enforce the changes to congressional practices, however, Obama would have to persuade Democratic leaders to write them into House and Senate rules.

That could be a challenge, considering that those leaders have abandoned openness in the past when it has not suited their needs.

A Mixed Record

Democrats’ overhaul of lobbying and ethics rules last year (PL 110-81) — for which Obama was a central player in the Senate — was finalized without a formal conference committee negotiation to work out the differences between the House and Senate bills.

Senate Republicans blocked the appointment of a conference committee to try to win guarantees that strict earmark disclosure language would survive in the final version.