Razzle-Dazzle 'Em Ethics Reform

NY Times ^ | 6/21/06 | NY Times Editorial Board

[Oshkalaboomboom]

The House ethics committee, ever wondrous in its irresponsibility, is preparing to set itself up as the arbiter of one-stop, conscience-free junket approval for gadabout lawmakers. Last winter, as the stain of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal spread, Speaker Dennis Hastert impulsively — and properly — called for a total ban on junkets financed by private favor seekers. But lawmakers, globe-trotting at the giddy rate of $10 million a year in free private excursions, rebelled. They killed the ban outright and substituted cosmetic panaceas for their promised ethics reform.

The end product would have the ethics committee — long a still-life study in Capitol dysfunction — snap into action to prejudge junketeering requests. This should be great for the lawmakers, who will be able to wave rubber-stamped in-House visas when faced with constituents' questions about how come their tours of global trouble spots so often hit Paris.

The ethics committee would, at least, have a great deal of expertise in its new duties. It turns out the 10 committee members and their aides have enjoyed 400 privately financed trips worth $1 million in a recent five-year stretch, according to a new accounting by the independent Center for Public Integrity. Leading the beneficiaries with 80 trips worth $245,000 was Representative Howard Berman, a California Democrat, a member of the International Relations Committee and one of the principals in giving a bipartisan patina to this latest evasion.

Clearly, lawmakers are gambling that the scandals nipping at their heels will pale by Election Day.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Let them stay in Washington and do the job the taxpayers are paying them to do. They can take vacations on their own dimes.

[backhoe]

A probably long-forgotten idea of former Presidential candidate Lamar Alexander was

"Cut their pay in half, and send them home for half the year."

The idea being ( besides humbling our "critters" a little, was to force our, ahem! "representatives" to have to live under the laws they impose on us, and rub elbows with their constituents. I have always liked the idea, a lot.