The New Reformers

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 19, 2006 8:36 AM

Back in 1983, I wrote a story about senators who were making lots of speeches to lobbying groups and pocketing the cash.

Bob Dole was the leader on the Republican side, earning $134,000 (probably about 300K in today's dollars) for holding forth before banking, manufacturing, oil and health care groups that needed to curry favor with the Finance Committee, which he chaired. (Dole gave 51K to charity.) On the Democratic side, Fritz Hollings pulled in $92,000.

All perfectly legal, without the muss and bother of having to launder a golfing trip through some obscure charity. Fifteen senators cleared $50,000 in lecture fees that year. But the annual stories became embarrassing to Congress, which eventually killed the practice.

Now there's a great rush among lawmakers who have been living high on the special-interest hog to carry the banner of "reform." A year ago, Denny Hastert was defending a rule to allow indicted members (especially with the initials T.D.) to keep their House leadership jobs, the speaker now wants to crack down on questionable ethical practices. Not long ago, Rick Santorum was helping run the K Street Project, a mechanism for the GOP leadership to pressure trade associations to hire Republicans. Now he's the point man on reform.

Most Democrats weren't exactly storming the gates to change the rules either until lobbyist Jack Abramoff became an albatross they thought they could hang around the GOP's neck.

I think the press, with a few exceptions, had been snoozing about this issue until the Abramoff tale heated up. Only recently do we read that the number of lobbyists in Washington has doubled in the past few years, to 35,000. Only recently do we read that half the former members of Congress are lobbyists.

Lobbyists for all kinds of companies and causes are entitled to make their case, but the current system practically invites favor-trading and unspoken quid pro quos. Why are private interests allowed to pay for congressional travel, anyway? If a matter is important enough to warrant a lawmaker's travel, why shouldn't the taxpayers pick up the tab?

In a larger sense, is any set of rules capable of plugging this particular dike? Do you outlaw lobbying by spouses and kids? Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt's wife and son are in the biz, with his wife representing the parent company of Philip Morris, a big Blunt donor.

Case in point: The Post revealing that the Hastert plan would still allow interest groups to buy meals and trips for lawmakers as long as they hand the politician a contribution at the same time. Then it's okay!

"With a stinging attack on Republican ethics," says the New York Times, "Congressional Democrats Wednesday proposed a lobbying overhaul they said far exceeds new Republican proposals in limiting the influence of monied special interests on Capitol Hill. . . .

"The high profile Democrats gave to unveiling their ethics plan made clear that the party intends to make its portrayal of Republican corruption a central theme in the coming mid-term elections and showed that Democrats do not intend to easily strike a deal with anxious Republicans on an ethics overhaul.

"Republicans mounted a fierce counteroffensive, highlighting the ties Democrats have to lobbyists, pointing out past resistance to ethics changes, circulating Library of Congress regulations that say the facility should not to be used for political events and accusing Mr. Reid of using his Senate office to prepare political documents."

Newspapers are finally shining a light on some of the routine seaminess that takes place on the Hill. USA Today: "One day after a New York investment group raised $110,000 for Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis, the House passed a defense spending bill that preserved $160 million for a Navy project critical to the firm. The man who protected the Navy money? Lewis."

Boston Globe: "As lawmakers last month scrambled to avoid the fallout of a widening influence-peddling scandal, US Representative Michael E. Capuano of Somerville and his wife went on a $19,403 corporate-sponsored trip to Brazil -- one of the most expensive trips taken by any member of Congress during 2005, according to congressional travel records.

"The trip included several lobbyists and representatives of companies that helped finance the nonprofit business organization that sponsored the trip, according to participants."

Josh Marshall uses a news conference to ask why Hastert has been slow off the mark:

"QUESTION: Mr. Speaker, if I could ask you a question, the Abramoff scandal is what has forced you into this position. A year ago, the things that you're proposing would not have been politically possible for you to talk about. Why is the Congress reacting and why didn't it act initially if all these are good ideas?

"HASTERT: Well, you know, a year ago most people around Congress couldn't tell you who Jack Abramoff was and didn't know who his associates were or what connections there are .

"That's great. People on Capitol Hill didn't know who Jack Abramoff was or who his associates were? The guy was one of the biggest lobbyists in DC, moved huge amounts of money around Capitol Hill, was close to most of the key Republican power-brokers in and out of Congress. But no one knew who he was. And no one knew who his associates were?

"This is a deeper vein than it looks like on the surface. Denny Hastert is like the Mr. Magoo of DC Republican corruption. The DeLay Machine was the muscle and sinew of the House on his watch. The Abramoff clique ran deep tentacles all through the institution. But Hastert didn't know anything about it. It's all news to him."

The New Republic's Michael Crowley seconds Marshall's point:

"Hastert is being even more disingenuous than that. John McCain held his first two Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings on Abramoff back in the fall of 2004 -- hearings which made screamingly clear that something was very wrong with Abramoff's congressional ties. So it's been nearly 18 months since it was obvious what sort of character Abramoff is. It's hard to say whether Hastert is fibbing here or whether he's simply as clueless as some people suspect."

National Review says some of the proposals being kicked around are beside the point:

"Tightening the gift ban, so that lobbyists can't take members out to dinner, strikes us as a way to generate a lot of paperwork without doing much to fight corruption. Congressmen can't be bought for a dinner.

"An all-expense-paid trip to a glamorous locale is another matter. We were pleased to see Speaker Dennis Hastert come out for a ban on privately funded travel by congressmen Tuesday. Congressmen's travel should be funded either by the taxpayers (for official trips) or themselves (for vacations). Some congressmen have expressed the worry that their colleagues will not take serious fact-finding trips abroad for fear that voters will resent the expense. But the vast majority of lobbyist-paid trips aren't serious business: How many facts are really being found on the world's golf courses? Voters will be able to tell which trips were worth their expense. . . .

"Reformers in both parties should pick up two important reforms proposed by Congressman Frank. There should be disclosure of which congressmen, and which lobbyists, wanted which earmarked spending projects in budget bills. In many cases, the congressmen will be happy to boast about those projects to their voters. Pork gets some members reelected (and gets some meritorious legislation enacted). If the congressmen are not willing to stand up for the projects, on the other hand, they shouldn't put the earmarks in.

"And the length of the congressional work week should be extended. We know, we know: No man's life or liberty is safe while the legislature is in session. But the current Tuesday-to-Thursday congressional schedule hasn't exactly ushered in a golden age of laissez faire -- and hasn't made for improved deliberation or oversight, either."

Work five days a week? Now you're really getting radical!

On HuffPost, former recording industry honcho Hilary Rosen says what everyone knows but few admit: that all that cash is buying something:

"How strange to be a former lobbyist sitting back watching the hand wringing debate over lobbying reforms and ethics. To date nothing I've seen from Capitol Hill makes sense to me and the media is too consumed with ethics and revelation to talk about the real problem.

"Damn straight when I gave a $1,000 or $2,000 to a lawmaker I wanted him to listen to my business proposition.

"And when I helped organize an event that raised $50,000 or $100,000 you bet I expected their vote. Why else do it? Now you can argue that the Member of Congress already took that position and I and my colleagues were just showing our support for their position. But how can the public really be sure of that?

"The proposed reforms that everyone is talking about limit relationships between lobbyists and lawmakers -- no trips, no lunches, no ball games, etc. EXCEPT FOR ONE THING! It turns out that when you limit access to lawmakers for all of these things, the only time a lobbyist can talk to a lawmaker is at fundraisers. Any kind of fundraiser by the way.

"A lobbyist friend told me yesterday that enacting these reforms is like creating a 'restraint of trade' on behalf of current lobbyists. Only those who already know members of Congress are sure to succeed. Anyone else coming in -- forget it, no new relationships. The old school will be raking it in.

"Members of Congress are CONSUMED with raising money for their re-elections (or if they have a safe seat, they raise money to give to colleagues to increase their internal power). It has become a burden. And no matter how cavalier they are about it in public, their hand wringing in private is certain. And anyone, including lobbyists, who lessen that anxiety, is considered a better friend than those that don't. It is just a fact. No lobbying reforms will change that fact."

Bloomberg columnist Andrew Ferguson quakes in anticipating a ban on privately funded Hill travel:

"You don't have to be a soothsayer to imagine the unintended consequences of such a rule.

"Members will be forced to tap the federal treasury every time they want to investigate new endive-growing techniques in Kuala Lumpur or sweatshops in Bangkok. And demagogic critics will loudly complain that taxpayers foot the bill for congressional globe-trotting.

"Stung by the new globe-trotting scandal, congressmen will stay in Washington. And they will become even more insulated and out-of-touch than those same demagogic critics say they already are. Demands will be heard for congressmen to break free of the 'Washington cocoon.' Technical exemptions will have to be made to the old rule. The ethics jungle will thicken in keeping with a universal truth: Rules beget more rules."

Will all this help the Dems? ABC's Jake Tapper doesn't think so:

"To anyone who worked on Capitol Hill in 1993 and 1994 who was in any way attuned to the pulse of the people, you could feel the Republican revolution coming.

"The clueless entrenched leadership of former Speaker Tom Foley, D-WA. . . . the issue after issue he and then-Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-MO, handed over to the brilliant brigands led by Newt Gingrich, R-GA. . . . the percolation of Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio . . . those fumbling first years of President Clinton, who had yet to find his sea legs. . . .

"These were the days just before the internet, but vox populi was loud and clear. When the GOP stomped the Democrats in November it didn't surprise me one bit.

"I bring this up, because I don't detect the same thing in the air against the Republicans. For all the accusations (and incontrovertible evidence) that many of those reformers have become part of the problem, Blobbed by the sleaze they decried 12 years ago, Abramoffed, as I travel throughout the country -- to states red, blue, and purple -- I don't sense that the Public is outraged as it was in 94. I also don't sense that the Democrats are doing a particularly good job in capitalizing on the issues their counterparts have gifted them."

The administration took plenty of grief over the Sago mine disaster, but it turns out the Hill hasn't been wild about stepped-up enforcement either:

"The Mine Safety and Health Administration wants the authority to impose $220,000 fines, up from the present maximum of $60,000," says USA Today.

"The administration has sought the higher fines in the past three years but got little support in Congress. Rep. Don Sherwood, a Republican from a coal-mining region in Pennsylvania, told Labor Secretary Elaine Chao in March that high fines 'would put most of my people out of business.' "

Laura Bush takes on Hillary in this story in the Los Angeles Times:

"Sen. Hillary Clinton's controversial description of the Republican-dominated House of Representatives as a 'plantation' continued making political waves today, as First Lady Laura Bush joined the fray from Africa.

" 'I think it's ridiculous,' Bush said of her White House predecessor. 'It's a ridiculous comment. That's what I think,' she told reporters aboard her airplane over Nigeria when asked about Clinton's remarks."

My story on the questioning of Jack Murtha's medals continues to reverberate in opinion land. The NYT runs an op-ed from someone who's not exactly a screaming left-winger: James Webb, the Reagan administration's Navy secretary:

"Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing 'V' on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

"Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for 'Rising Tide,' the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh."

Morano responds in a statement: "So I guess all news reporting by ABC News's George Stephanopoulos, who worked for the Clinton administration, and NBC News's Tim Russert, who once worked for former Democratic Sen. Patrick Monahan, should all be disregarded because they have a Democratic Party background.

"Questioning a politician's war record has always been a legitimate role of journalists. . . . Why do so many believe Rep. John Murtha's war record should be above scrutiny?"