Razzle-Dazzle 'Em
Ethics Reform
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, June 21, 2006
The House ethics committee, ever
wondrous in its irresponsibility, is preparing to set itself up as the arbiter
of one-stop, conscience-free junket approval for gadabout lawmakers. Last
winter, as the stain of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal spread, Speaker
Dennis Hastert impulsively — and properly — called for a total ban on junkets
financed by private favor seekers. But lawmakers, globe-trotting at the
giddy rate of $10 million a year in free private excursions, rebelled.
They killed the ban outright and substituted cosmetic panaceas for their
promised ethics reform.
The end product would have the ethics committee — long a still-life study in
Capitol dysfunction — snap into action to prejudge junketeering requests.
This should be great for the lawmakers, who will be able to wave rubber-stamped
in-House visas when faced with constituents' questions about how come their
tours of global trouble spots so often hit Paris.
The ethics committee would, at least, have a great deal of expertise in its new
duties. It turns out the 10 committee members and their aides have enjoyed
400 privately financed trips worth $1 million in a recent five-year stretch,
according to a new accounting by the independent Center for Public Integrity.
Leading the beneficiaries with 80 trips worth $245,000 was Representative Howard
Berman, a California Democrat, a member of the International Relations Committee
and one of the principals in giving a bipartisan patina to this latest evasion.
Clearly, lawmakers are gambling that the scandals nipping at their heels will
pale by Election Day. Not so: as the new House rules were being
cobbled together, David Safavian, a former White House aide, was found guilty of
lying about his ties to Jack Abramoff. No less significant, Mr. Abramoff
has reportedly received three additional months' grace before going to prison so
that he can cooperate more fully with criminal prosecutors looking into the
ethical misbehavior that finds Congress in deep denial.
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