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
Earmark Envy
The payback of choice for many lawmakers keen to thank lobbyists is the earmark-funds designated for special projects attached to federal legislation, often without debate. Earmarks aren't illegal, but some of the current corruption investigations are focusing on whether earmarks were swapped for gifts as an explicit quid pro quo; that would be illegal.
Nearly everyone in Congress, it seems, loves earmarks. From 1994 through last year, the number of earmarks more than tripled, while their cost shot up from $30 billion to $47 billion, according to Congressional Research Service data analyzed by Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Duke Cunningham's schemes to profit off the backs of taxpayers was only possible," says Steve Ellis with Taxpayers for Common Sense, "because earmarking was the norm."
Ethics Police, Sort Of
With all the scandals afoot, one might expect the House ethics committee to be real busy. Not quite. The committee, rather, has been paralyzed by partisanship. After it bestirred itself and finally admonished DeLay for improper conduct, House Speaker Dennis Hastert replaced the chairman of the panel, Rep. Joel Hefley, with Rep. Doc Hastings, a Hastert pal. And only in May, six months after Cunningham pleaded guilty, did the House ethics committee announce that it would investigate the ethical clouds surrounding the disgraced lawmakers, along with Ney and Jefferson.
One of the odder things about the committee is the fact that no matter what it does, it's criticized-either for being too lax or too tough because of a political vendetta. The result, says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, an ethics watchdog, is a Congress with a "Wild West, anything-goes attitude."
Incumbent Power
Democrats are betting that voter anger over all the scandals and the Iraq war will help them pick up seats in November's midterm election. But most incumbents, regardless of party, will be tough to dislodge because redistricting has created so many safe seats. The Cook Political Report rates just 46 of this fall's 435 House races as competitive; in 1992, by contrast, more than 100 House races were competitive.
Redistricting for partisan advantage is nothing new, of course; the word gerrymander was coined way back in 1812. But in the 1960s, after the Supreme Court ruled that congressional districts must have about the same number of residents, redistricting took off, and in the early 1990s, new software allowed razor-sharp redistricting of dozens of new "safe" districts.
Even Newt Gingrich, the feisty former Republican speaker of the House, says redistricting has hurt challengers. "When you have incumbents who get re-elected by focusing on gimmicks, and gerrymandering is a gimmick ... ," he said at a recent forum, "you are depriving the system of the legitimate constant reassurance that it has earned its authority from the American people."
The Price of Admission
The cost of running for office also helps incumbents. In 1990, House challengers spent an average of $282,000 to beat sitting lawmakers. That number skyrocketed to $1.6 million in 2004, largely because of the spiraling cost of TV ads.
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