[lbo-talk] The connection between hardball and corruption

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Jan 18 23:59:06 PST 2006


[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



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