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."
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.
Elected officials now rely more than ever on lobbyists-and their clients-to help them raise the cash they need to run. The amount of money given to candidates by big money interests-including corporations, unions, and lobbyists-increased to $1.7 billion in 2004 from $319 million in 1990. "The reason some of us end up at dinner with some of these people is not because we enjoy their company," Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said, referring to lobbyists, "but because we need their help." And help they do. Abramoff, for example, directed his Indian tribe clients to donate more than $5 million to Republicans and Democrats.
Polarized Politics
The increasing ideological polarization between the two parties is further thwarting Congress's ability to do its job. Political scientists say the country's growing blue-red divide is partly responsible. But they also say congressional relationships grew more shrill in 1994, when the Republicans regained control of the House after being marginalized for decades and after talk radio became such a powerful political force. "Every issue now," says Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, "is framed in political terms."
Which is why Congress spent so much time this year debating politicized issues like flag burning and gay marriage but didn't work across the aisle and act on issues so many Americans really care about, like health insurance, the budget deficit, and immigration, says Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "Ideological goals and partisan positioning seem clever, but they don't produce real law."
Cleaning Up the Mess
Watchdog groups say there are remedies that could put Congress back on the right track. For example: banning gifts, meals, and privately funded travel. Reformers are also pressing to limit contributions from lobbyists and strengthen enforcement of campaign finance laws. But the key change, experts say, would be creation of a new independent ethics enforcement office that could investigate complaints and issue subpoenas.
In January, after the Abramoff scandal broke and Cunningham pleaded guilty, it seemed as if the moment for reform had arrived. Hastert pledged to overhaul the rules and ban privately funded trips. But the reforms that passed the House focused only on lobbying disclosure and curbing earmarks. The Senate went a little further by banning gifts and meals. And now momentum on reconciling the two bills has stalled, and the chances of anything passing before the midterm election look bleak.
Congress has taken action in the past. In 2002, it passed the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. Some lawmakers say the difference between then and now is that despite the current scandals, the Iraq war and national security dominate the agenda. "It's just hard for it to get the attention that it was able to get when the international scene was much calmer," says Sen. Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin. What will it take to get Congress to get tough on itself? "Even greater scandals," says Feingold. The defeat of a few incumbents probably wouldn't hurt either. Now there's a reason to get out and vote.
With Dan Gilgoff
This story appears in the September 11, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.