[The inside the beltway moderate repug view. Still, makes interesting points.]
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/opinion/19ornstein.html
The New York Times
January 19, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
If You Give a Congressman a Cookie
By NORMAN ORNSTEIN and THOMAS E. MANN
CONGRESSIONAL Republicans are suddenly taking a strong interest in
lobbying reform. Speaker Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority
leader, Bill Frist, are rallying behind a reform package that will
include measures like increasing disclosure and doubling the length
of time after leaving Congress before lawmakers and staff can lobby
their colleagues. These are commendable and desirable reforms. But
to get to the root of what ails Washington's political culture, a
more basic change is necessary.
The two of us have been immersed in Washington politics for more
than 36 years. We have never seen the culture so sick or the
legislative process so dysfunctional. The plea deals of Jack
Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, the indictment of Tom Delay and his
resignation as House majority leader, and the demise of
Representative Randy Cunningham notwithstanding, this is not simply
a problem of a rogue lobbyist or a pack of them. Nor is it a matter
of a handful of disconnected, corrupt lawmakers taking favors in
return for official actions.
The problem starts not with lobbyists but inside Congress. Over the
past five years, the rules and norms that govern Congressional
deliberation, debate and voting - what legislative aficionados call
"the regular order" - have routinely been violated, especially in
the House of Representatives, and in ways that mark a dramatic
break from custom.
Roll call votes on the House floor, which are supposed to take 15
minutes, are frequently stretched to one, two or three hours. Rules
forbidding any amendments to bills on the floor have proliferated,
stifling dissent and quashing legitimate debate. Omnibus bills,
sometimes thousands of pages long, are brought to the floor with no
notice, let alone the 72 hours the rules require. Conference
committees exclude minority members and cut deals in private,
sometimes even adding major provisions after the conference has
closed. Majority leaders still pressure members who object to the
chicanery to vote yea in the legislation's one up-or-down vote.
To be sure, bills have been passed under this regime, on party-line
votes with slender majorities. But the results have not always been
true to party objectives or conservative ideals. Democrats aren't
the only ones undermined by a process whose methods, like the
cynical use of earmarks for pet projects, serve to bloat government
bureaucracies.
Some of the abuses are straightforward breaches of the rules. The
majority Republicans bypass normal procedures and ignore objections
that parliamentary rules have been violated. They then reframe
substantive issues as procedural matters that demand party
discipline. Other abuses do not violate the rules, but they do
transgress longstanding practice. For example, House rules don't
set a maximum period of 15 minutes for most roll call votes. But
since the advent of electronic voting in 1973, 15 minutes has been
the norm.
In 1987, when the majority Democrats once - and only once -
stretched a budget vote to 30 minutes because they found themselves
unexpectedly down by one vote when time was supposed to expire, the
minority Republicans loudly protested, with their whip, Dick
Cheney, saying it was the worst abuse of power he had ever seen in
Congress. Now it is routine to bring up a bill and troll for enough
votes to pass it, even when a clear majority of the House - 218
members - has voted nay.
What has all this got to do with corruption? If you can play fast
and loose with the rules of the game in lawmaking, it becomes
easier to consider playing fast and loose with everything else,
including relations with lobbyists, acceptance of favors, the use
of official resources and the discharge of governmental power.
We saw similar abuses leading to similar patterns of corruption
during the Democrats' majority reign. But they were neither as
widespread nor as audacious as those we have seen in the past few
years. The arrogance of power that was evident in Democratic
lawmakers like Jack Brooks of Texas - the 21-term Democrat who was
famed for twisting the rules to get pork for his district - is now
evident in a much wider range of members and leaders, who all seem
to share the attitude that because they are in charge, no one can
hold them accountable.
Indeed, Mr. Hastert showed open contempt for the House ethics
process last year when he fired the Republican chairman of the
ethics committee and ousted two Republican members after they did
their duty and reprimanded Tom DeLay for three violations of
standards. Mr. Hastert then appointed two members to the committee
who had given large sums to the DeLay legal defense fund - when the
main matter pending before the committee involved Representative
DeLay.
The same attitude produced the K Street Project, in which the new
Republican majority, led by Mr. DeLay, used its governmental power
to demand that trade associations and lobbying groups fire
Democratic lobbyists and hire designated Republicans, who could
then be expected to show their gratitude by contributing generously
to party candidates and committees. Jack Abramoff was one of the
progenitors of that initiative.
What can be done? First, Mr. Hastert; Representative David Dreier,
the Rules Committee chairman; and the new House majority leader
should declare that there will be a return to the regular order and
to a reasonable deliberative process. And they must be prepared to
follow through on that declaration.
But there are also rules reforms that would help. Two- or
three-hour votes should become a thing of the past. Any major bill
should be presented at least three days before it is considered,
unless a supermajority votes to waive that rule. Votes should be
required on objections to excessive earmarking in bills, and
members should be required to declare that they have no personal
interest in the earmarks they promote. Real debate and reasonable
amendments must be allowed on most bills, and the integrity of
conference committees needs to be reestablished. Finally, if there
is to be real and credible ethics oversight, that process, too,
must be overhauled.
Quick and decisive Congressional actions could minimize the damage
done by the explosion of scandals related to Mr. Abramoff. But
lobbying reform alone is a temporary solution. The real solution is
for Congress to behave like the deliberative body it is supposed to
be.
Norman Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute. Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution. They are co-authors of the forthcoming "The Broken
Branch."
* Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company