Without Crooked Congressmen....

...There'd be no crooked lobbyists.

An interesting anecdote concerning lobbyists: When major league baseball returned to Washington, lobbyists lobbied the team owners to reserve a block of special seats behind home plate. The seat price: $49.95 but you can't buy them for that. Only corporate buyers can have these seats. Why you ask would any team sell seats behind home plate for $49.95?

Congressmen are limited to gifts of $50 or less.

Both sides of the debate to clean up Congress are missing the point, although I have t0 give points to a John McCain proposal to strip the Congressional retirement from anyone convicted of a felony related to their service in Congress. We're talking about limiting gifts, about limiting access by former members but we're not addressing the number one cause of corruption in Congress: Republicans, in their haste to create a culture of corruption in Washington, have gutted the ethics committees and are unable to police themselves.

Neither house has an effective self-policing agency and neither side is proposing creating one. Even if reforms were to add an effective ethics committee structure, it would be composed of Congressmen who are benefiting from the very systems they are to police. Would a Republican vote to eject a congressman for violating pay-for-play regulations or taking campaign funds from a lobbyist when they're doing it themselves? Would a Republican break party unity and vote against one of their own even if it were proven that the congressman was as corrupt as, say, Tom Delay? Delay was cited three times for ethics violations before the Republicans gutted the ethics committee and put their yes-man in charge of it rather than having their number two man brought up on ethics charges again. Yet he was still allowed to hold the number two position in the House. Were there any integrity in Washington, he would have been ejected from the House, a right the House has under the Constitution, by the way.

And I doubt Democrats would do any better. Were they the party in power, they'd be offered bribes just as the Republicans were. They'd set up systems to favor their own power just as the Republicans did. The only difference is that the Republicans, organized and monolithic as they tend to believe, are just far more efficient at it. Organized corruption requires an organization, something Democrats traditionally lack and something Republicans are typically very good at, hence the magnitude of the scandals of Republican Washington.

Any reform package that doesn't address internal ethics in the Congress is futile. No matter what restrictions are in place, crooked lobbyists will find crooked congressmen. Lobbying must be reformed but Congress itself must be also. Strip the pensions from crooked congressmen, ban earmarks, I don't care how many Republican pork mongers object, and slam-dunks of legislation. Limit gifts to congressmen to a rational value, zero, and in that include trips on private or corporate conveyances, even on "official business". Eliminate lobbying from the House and Senate floors, gymnasiums, cafeterias, and any other place where powerful and corruptible men can gather away from the public eye. And put the name of the individual writing sections of the law into the margins of the law. Most importantly, restrict lobbying companies from campaign contributions, whether monetary or in-kind.

It's obvious and easy to try to blame Republican Washington's corruption on the lobbying machine the Republicans created. Blame the Republican Congress that became so corruptible, too, and remember that without crooked congressmen, there is no corruption.