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Saving the House
By DAVID BROOKS
01/16/06 "New
York Times" -- -- I don't know what's more
pathetic, Jack Abramoff's sleaze or Republican paralysis in the
face of it. Abramoff walks out of a D.C. courthouse in his
pseudo-Hasidic homburg, and all that leading Republicans can do
is promise to return his money and remind everyone that some
Democrats are involved in the scandal, too. That's a great G.O.P.
talking point: some Democrats are so sleazy, they get involved
with the likes of us.
If Republicans want to emerge from this affair with their
self-respect or electoral prospects intact, they need to get in
front of it with a comprehensive reform offensive.
First, they need to hold new leadership elections. As Newt
Gingrich and Vin Weber told me yesterday, Tom DeLay needs to
take care of his own legal problems and give up the dream of
returning as majority leader.
But Republicans need to do more than bump DeLay. They need to
put the entire leadership team up for a re-vote. That's because
the real problem wasn't DeLay, it was DeLayism, the whole
culture that merged K Street with the Hill, and held that
raising money is the most important way to contribute to the
team.
New leadership elections would, at least, make the current
leaders re-earn their slots with new platforms. At best, they
would allow the party to reinvigorate itself under new
management. A party led by young talents like Paul Ryan, Eric
Cantor, Mike Pence and Mark Kirk would be taken seriously as a
party of reform.
Second, the Republicans need to get a grip on earmarks.
Earmarks are the provisions that single members can stick into
gigantic bills to steer spending toward favored projects.
They're an invitation to corruption. If individual members of
Congress can control $100 million federal contracts or
billion-dollar pork barrel projects, then of course companies
are going to find ways to funnel graft to those members.
To prove they're serious about special-interest spending,
Republicans could declare a one-year earmark moratorium until
they get a handle on this problem. Or they could promote
legislation mandating that earmarks eat up only 1 percent of any
spending bill's total cost.
Third, Republicans need to steal David Obey and Barney Frank's
lobbying-reform ideas. For some insane reason, having to do with
their own special interests, Democrats have been slow to trumpet
the ideas coming from their own party. Republicans have a chance
to hijack them before the country notices.
Specifically, there should be a ban on lobbyist-paid travel.
(Members should be allowed to take spouses on publicly financed
travel because it is important that members get out and see the
world.) Former members should not be allowed to lobby on the
House floor. All lobbyist contacts with government officials
should be posted on the Internet.
Gingrich intriguingly suggests abolishing all fund-raising in
the Washington metro area. Make the lobbyists go to the
districts if they want to attend $1,000 cocktail parties.
Fourth, enforce House rules. There's bound to be corruption when
spending provisions can be slipped into legislation in the dead
of night, outside the normal oversight procedures. There's bound
to be corruption when members are forced to vote on sprawling
bills nobody has a chance to inspect. Instead, all legislation
should be posted online for 72 hours before the vote, so the
staff and bloggers can nitpick and expose.
Fifth, rebuild the ethics committees. Norman Ornstein of the
American Enterprise Institute proposes a bifurcated process. The
investigations should be conducted by a commission of former
members and former staffers. That way, current members are not
investigating one another. Then the committees can vote on the
commission recommendations.
Sixth, readopt the pay-as-you-go budget rules. As long as a
$2.6-trillion-a-year government is expanding into more areas of
national life, businesses will have an incentive to invest in
lobbyists. The 1990 pay-as-you-go rules, which forced Congress
to offset new expenditures with spending restraint not only
imposed fiscal discipline but also forced pork projects to
compete for limited resources.
Finally, today before noon, fire Bob Ney as chairman of the
House Administration Committee. For God's sake, Republicans,
show a little moral revulsion.
Back in the dim recesses of my mind, I remember a party that
thought of itself as a reform, or even a revolutionary movement.
That party used to be known as the Republican Party. I wonder if
it still exists.
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