Congress Enabling Corruption

by Gary Ruskin

On Sept. 27, 1994, more than 300 Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and endorsed the Contract With America, "to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives."

Those Republicans rightly criticized the corrupt book deal of former Speaker Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat, as well as the House Bank scandal. They correctly observed that entrenched majorities tend to become corrupt. Together, they held themselves out as the party of reform, "to restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace." In response, the American people gave them majorities in both houses of Congress.

Fast-forward ten years. Not only have Republicans forgotten their promises, they have become a mirror image of what they criticized among Democrats.

Perhaps the surest sign of a corrupt majority is an effort to stop investigations of corruption. That's what House Republicans did in January, in rules changes to eviscerate the House ethics process.

The ethics process was already in bad shape, which is what both Republicans and Democrats have wanted.

Time after time, newspapers expose apparent corruption in Congress. But it doesn't get investigated -- and especially not by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, known as the ethics committee. Here are three examples from news reports:

• House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri tried to insert a Philip Morris provision into a bill creating the Department of Homeland Security, at the request of tobacco lobbyist Abigail Perlman. Ms. Perlman, who is now Mr. Blunt's wife, is head of government affairs for Altria Corp., the parent company of Philip Morris.

• House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael G. Oxley, a Republican from Ohio, reportedly offered to relent on a congressional investigation if the Investment Company Institute hired a Republican as its top lobbyist.

• Rep. James P. Moran Jr., a Virginia Democrat, received a $25,000 unsecured loan on generous terms from a lobbyist, Terry Lierman, who is now the chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party.

The House ethics committee didn't launch a formal investigation of any of these scandals.

As if that weren't bad enough, House Republicans on Tuesday just about killed off what little was left of the House ethics process. They made it much harder to trigger an ethics investigation.

Under the old rules, if the House ethics committee was deadlocked along partisan lines, or couldn't decide whether to launch an investigation, a review happened automatically. House Republicans have replaced that with a rule that a majority of ethics committee members must approve an investigation. That means at least one Republican would have to vote to authorize an ethics investigation of a fellow Republican. In today's partisan Congress, that's very unlikely.

Perhaps worse, Speaker Dennis Hastert wants to replace the current chairman of the House ethics committee, Colorado Republican Joel Hefley, with Lamar Smith of Texas, who is notoriously soft on corruption. Mr. Smith is famous in ethics circles for being chairman of the only ethics committee ever to have asked a federal judge to grant limited immunity to the target of an investigation, GOP Rep. Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania, who was chairman of the House Committee on Transportation Infrastructure. In 1997, Mr. Smith also was the only ethics panel member to vote against reprimanding Speaker Newt Gingrich and fining the Georgia Republican $300,000.

Both these changes will lead to a climate where corruption is increasingly possible. They will make it much easier to purchase influence in Congress. That's great news for big corporations and the wealthy, who have plenty of money to buy influence with high-priced lobbyists and campaign contributions. But it's terrible for the overwhelming majority of us, who don't.

During the last 30 years, we've been moving from a system of one person, one vote to a system of one dollar, one vote. The Federal Election Commission is toothless. The Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department has flubbed some major cases. The most important federal anti-corruption laws -- the bribery and illegal gratuities laws -- have been gutted by courts. And the ethics committees are in a shambles.

The bottom line is that the battle against corruption in Congress has collapsed. That's just the way both Republicans and Democrats want it.

These days, Democrats occasionally pay lip service to opposing corruption. But when the cameras are turned off, they don't do anything serious. They could file ethics complaints, but they rarely do. What's the use of an opposition party if it doesn't even fight against corruption in the other party?

Every year, hundreds of members of Congress give speeches about getting tough on crime. But when will a single member of Congress get serious about fighting corruption in Congress?