Civil rights laws are the remedy for Federal corruption? You must be smoking an excess of that medical marijuana.
There’s not one thing you mentioned that’s not a regular fixture in Washington—though your quaint “liquor and prostitues” is a bit dated. Today’s Senator is more likely into young boys and hard drugs. Corruption has never been more naked, but many people still insist their politicians are clothed in only righteousness.
As for public corruption today, instead of cash for favors, the method is more often improper favor-swapping that generates legal cash or other benefits. This is because personal disclosure requirements and campaign finance reporting, ethics prohibitions as to certain relationships and conflicts of interest, modern public accounting and contracting systems, and tax rules and cash handling requirements tend to work together to make it hard for public officials to accumulate and enjoy the benefit of illegal cash.
In practice, this often makes it possible to impose sanctions for apparent public corruption without showing a quid pro quo or knowing the details of the misconduct. Thus a corrupt public official might get nailed by the IRS for unreported income or assets or currency transaction report violations. Then they may roll over on corrupt associates in return for sentencing leniency.
Or, as is too often the case, public corruption and favor-swapping go undetected and unpunished because improper transactions and arrangements are carefully designed to skirt the terms of the applicable rules. Moreover, from the outside, public corruption is hard to detect and such cases are difficult to investigate and prosecute.
As a senior FBI agent whom I knew explained, in public corruption cases, you cannot always trust your superiors or even the courts. He initiated the ABSCAM case only to have one of the targets who was caught on tape -- Senator Harrison Williams -- call the FBI director and get him removed from the case.
Harrison Williams ended up in prison, but before that could happen, my friend was transferred to Florida in political disfavor. He then put together a string of local public corruption cases. In many instances though, the cases fell apart when witnesses and even judges got flaky due to pressure and manipulations from organized crime.