Wave of Corruption Fails to Move Congress to Act on Ethics Legislation

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Monday, May 29, 2006

In the face of what might be the biggest wave of congressional scandals in a generation, federal lawmakers are surprisingly lackadaisical about tightening their ethics rules.

New revelations come from the Capitol all the time. Federal prosecutors say they found a $90,000 payoff in the freezer of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.). In January, powerful lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe public officials. Late last year, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a former Republican congressman from California, resigned after confessing to taking $2.4 million in bribes, including a Rolls-Royce.

Yet the Congress dawdles. Its leaders held news conferences in January to proclaim ethics "reform" their top priority as a way to prevent future Abramoffs and Cunninghams. But the legislation isn't near completion despite predictions that it would be finished in March. Congressional ethics committees insist they are vigilant but they accomplish very little. And lobbyists watching the soap opera unfold can only laugh and say that nothing of substance will change.

I believe them. Despite a barrage of news reports, voters aren't complaining much about the scandals back home. Maybe they expect lawmakers to be dishonest. Or maybe they've seen how halfhearted the lobbying legislation actually is and refuse to give Congress credit for it.

In any case, the inattention to the topic is so pronounced that there's an outside chance that ethics legislation won't happen at all this year. How can I say that? Nearly six months after Abramoff's guilty plea stirred a "crisis" that made a lobbying bill a must, the House-Senate conference committee charged with drafting the final compromise has not even met. That's how little Congress cares about the issue.

The Senate passed its ethics bill March 29. The House passed its weaker version May 3. The Senate has named conferees, but the House left town for a 10-day break without appointing negotiators, which means Congress will have a hard time passing any lobbying law changes by the Fourth of July, if then.

I know legislation always takes longer than early forecasts. And it's likely that something will pass eventually, even if it's "reform" in name only. But the slowdown is notable given the urgency with which the effort was launched. I can come to only one conclusion: Congress is indifferent to what Democrats like to call the "corruption issue."

Another piece of evidence along these lines is the lack of genuine movement by the ethics committees. The Senate's panel beat back a bipartisan effort to create an independent Office of Public Integrity to police ethics rules on Capitol Hill by arguing that the ethics panel is already doing an excellent job.

At the same time, the committee is proudly ignoring the Senate's biggest ethical problem: the federal probe into whether the Senate's top Republican, Bill Frist of Tennessee, sold shares in his family's hospital company after receiving an insider's tip. How can the panel stand down on that one? Its members say it doesn't investigate accusations that federal agencies are already looking into.

The House ethics committee isn't hamstrung by the same self-serving rule. But it, too, isn't doing much. It recently revived itself after an embarrassing 16-month hiatus. Congressional legal experts such as Stanley M. Brand of the Brand Legal Group say the turnaround is mostly for show.

The committee, formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, agreed two weeks ago to investigate Jefferson and Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio). Ney is implicated in the Abramoff affair.

Both lawmakers, who assert their innocence, are known to be battling the Justice Department and could be indicted any time. If that happens, the chance that the ethics committee will do anything about their cases -- ranging from a warning to expulsion -- is nearly nil. The panel has already taken a pass on former House majority leader Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas). He slipped a new ethics probe because he is resigning from Congress next month. If Ney and Jefferson leave the House or are not reelected, the committee will probably drop their cases, too.

The committee is starting its inquiries so late in the legislative year that Brand, a former House counsel, predicts the panel will not have time to complete its deliberations before a new Congress convenes in 2007. Therefore, the committee's bold assertion that it has risen from the dead sounds more like a public relations gimmick than a real effort to do something meaningful about official misconduct.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan watchdog group, calls the House committee's plans "a total cop-out." He said, "Simply opening these investigations doesn't get the committee off the hook. There are a number of serious matters it is not looking at in the Abramoff scandal."

The few actions that lawmakers are intending to take don't amount to much, lobbyists agree. A prominent Democratic lobbyist pulled me aside the other day to say that unless Congress deprives itself of chartered jet service for which members pay only first-class-ticket rates, then the ethics exercise is nothing but a farce.

Neither the House nor the Senate bill would end the private jet benefit. Nor would either bill ban privately funded travel (as House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert proposed in January). Nor would they create a new and improved enforcement regimen, which even the mildest reformers thought was fundamental.

The bills would, on the other hand, expand the frequency of disclosure by lobbyists and require that they report a few more items than they already do, such as campaign donations. But even defenders of the legislation call that a minimal improvement. Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), one of the architects of the House-passed measure, said he would like to "pursue more reform" after the current legislation passes.

And when will that be? If more indictments come down and the public begins to revolt noticeably against incumbents over the issue, maybe Congress will bestir itself to act more quickly and aggressively.

But my guess is that incumbents won't feel the wrath of voters until Election Day, and regret their inaction too late.

Officer's Case to Be Reheard

In March, I wrote about a federal appeals court decision involving a D.C. police officer that could well make it harder for prosecutors to convict lawmakers implicated in the Abramoff lobbying scandal, among other similar cases. In an opinion dated Feb. 24, a three-judge panel ruled that Nelson Valdes could not be convicted of accepting illegal gratuities because the activity for which he took money -- running license plates through a database -- was not a formal part of his job.

Well, never mind. On May 15, a majority of the same appeals court vacated that decision and agreed that the entire court should rehear the case. A date has not yet been set but prosecutors and defense attorneys will surely be watching this one closely.

Jeffrey Birnbaum writes about the intersection of government and business every other Monday. His e-mail address iskstreetconfidential@washpost.com. He will be online to discuss lobbying, lawmaking and the ethics bill at noon tomorrow athttp://www.washingtonpost.com.