Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted for a sham ethics reform bill, sponsored by Republicans and opposed by most Democrats. In the wake of what could be the greatest Congressional corruption scandal of modern times, the bill does virtually nothing to clean up Washington, and enables Abramoff-style influence-peddling -- from lobbyist-arranged trips and fund-raisers to subsidized charter flights -- to continue unimpeded, all enabled by a complete lack of meaningful enforcement.
Yet, as I reported at motherjones.com:
Part of the blame falls on the Democrats and their sometimes feckless response to the ethics crisis, according to some watchdog groups and even a few pro-reform Congressional staffers. Melanie Sloan, the head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), among others, argues, "The Democrats' behavior has been absolutely appalling. They want the public to think that they're pushing ethics reform but nobody really wants to give up the perks of their office. They bungled the opportunity and they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."
There's no question that this House bill is a travesty and House Democrats fought -- too late -- to oppose it, although Democratic leaders failed to arouse the public support for real reform that could have made their opposition far more effective. Still, as Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen said after the vote:
"Today lawmakers put the 'for sale' sign back outside the U.S. House of Representatives. After months of debating lobbying reform, the House passed an even weaker version than the Senate, hoping that the public would be fooled by a sham bill that does nothing to address the influence-peddling and corruption that has been festering in Congress.
"Despite the outcry for reform, this bill does nothing to disclose lobbying contacts, nothing to create independent ethics enforcement, nothing to limit congressional travel on corporate jets at cut-rate prices, and nothing to slow the revolving door for members of Congress, their staff and executive branch officials."
But earlier, Democrats went along with almost as weak a bill in the Senate, although it was opposed by some of the most dedicated reformers in the Senate: Russ Feingold, John McCain and Barack Obama. As Public Citizen, Democracy 21 and Common Cause, among others, noted at the time, the Senate bill wasn't worthy of support, either -- yet it was hailed by most Democrats as a bold step forward.
But if the Democrats are banking on tough, if hollow, reform rhetoric as a sure-fire ticket to success in November, they may be mistaken. As I discovered:
Yet by failing to push for independent, tough oversight, the Democrats have essentially helped turn Congress into an ethics-free zone that is basically unmonitored. Norman Ornstein, the co-author of the forthcoming Broken Branch, a book on Congress, compares the situation to driving on urban Massachusetts Avenue if D.C. police stopped enforcing speeding laws: "You'd have some cars going at 120 miles an hour, some [breaking the law] at 50 miles an hour, but no one would be looking at their speedometers." In Congress, he notes, "Nobody pays any attention to the rules."
And, to some observers of the politics of reform, that's just the way most Democrats like it. Craig Holman points out, "They were very slow and reluctant to come out for sweeping reforms, and they've made it quite clear that if they were the party in power the outcome would be quite similar to what we have now." And, some watchdogs believe, by talking tough on reform before the mid-term election -- without actually facing the consequences of any real reforms passing -- Democrats hope to create a political win-win situation for themselves. With the exception of a small band of dedicated reformers in both houses of Congress, the Democrats , just like the Republicans, don't want to give up all the lobbyist-linked goodies and donations available to them -- but still want to parade as reformers when challenging Republicans. "It's all just pretend, it's just positioning," Melanie Sloan says. "Democrats will campaign on the culture of corruption, but I don't know how successful they will be."