I'm sure Ulysses S. Grant, for one, will be relieved to hear that.
What we have here another person who loves to write about what they don't know about; by far the gravest corruption in Federal government was circa 1870-1900, a period of of completely unrestricted campaign contributions, let alone overt bribery...
In those days every politician accused every other politician of corruption as a slug line in every campaign. It was probably all true. Now they can’t do that so easily since it can come right back in many cases.
While that may be true, you missed the heart of the matter that makes it much worse today in effect on the taxpayer; you clearly missed this part:
The increased role of the federal government opens the door to federal corruption. As long as the federal government spends millions of taxpayer dollars on purely state and local projects, lobbyists would be fools to stay away. As long as the federal government spends cash on bridges to nowhere and structures named after senators, political interest groups will lurk in the shadows, offering pay-for-play.
The vastly increased powers and role of the Federal government into every facet of even idividuals' lives has made things incredibly worse, in effect.