House of Horrors
OK, maybe not horrors exactly, but things on Capitol Hill are pretty bad, and there's not much reason to think they'll get better
Congress returns to work this week, but the August recess was no picnic for most lawmakers. These are not exactly the best of times, especially for the Republicans. Sure, they control the House and the Senate, but to say they got an earful back home these past few weeks would be an understatement: Recent polls show that just about 1 in 4 Americans believes Congress is doing a good job.
To make matters worse, more than a few members are facing trouble with the law. The corruption scandal surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff has already ensnared former staffers of former House Whip Tom DeLay and embattled Ohio Rep. Bob Ney. Prosecutors are focusing hard on Ney, who denies wrongdoing but has decided not to seek re-election. The list goes on. FBI agents found $90,000 cash in the freezer of Rep. William Jefferson, but the Louisiana Democrat says he has done nothing wrong. Former California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham is already doing hard time for bribery, but sources say there are more shoes to drop, with the continuing inquiry very likely to yield further indictments.
You could chalk it all up to greed and bad judgment, but a growing number of current and former lawmakers and congressional scholars say the scandals are symptomatic of something far more serious: a legislative body that seems to have lost its moral compass. The increasing influence of lobbyists and the spiraling cost of campaigns, they say, combined with the growing ideological polarization and entrenched power of incumbents, have created a Congress incapable of legislating honestly and overseeing effectively. Each new scandal generates a brief spasm of reform rhetoric, but few Congress watchers believe enough lawmakers have the stomach to change the way they do business. "Congress has created a climate of total insensitivity to the ethical issues surrounding politics, power, and money," says political scientist Norman Ornstein, coauthor of a new book on the institution. "But I'm not optimistic that we can turn this around in the short term."
Golf and Real Nice Gifts
The spike in scandals parallels the rise in the number of registered lobbyists in Washington, which has more than tripled since 1996, from 10,800 to 32,900 in 2005. That's 61 lobbyists for every single member of Congress. The amount of money lobbyists spend in Washington ballooned from $1.4 billion in 1998 to $2.4 billion last year.
A good chunk of that money goes to gifts and trips for lawmakers and their staff. More than 640 former or current members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have received about $21 million since 2000 in the form of travel around the world at the expense of private organizations. The junket on the tip of everyone's tongue in Washington, of course, is Abramoff's golf outing to St. Andrews in Scotland a few summers back with Ney and his staff. Private jets, five-star hotels, it was, even by Washington standards, an eye-popper. But not all that unusual. "When I was on Capitol Hill," Ney's former chief of staff, Neil Volz, testified, "I was given tickets to sporting events, concerts, free food, free meals. In return, I gave preferential treatment to my lobbying buddies."
advertisement
