Reform What?

Reform is in the air these days. There is understandable rage at lobbyists because of the Abramoff scandal. But lobbyists have been around for ages, and the act of lobbying (attempting to persuade someone to support your cause) is a constitutional right, protected under free speech. Bribery, on the other hand, which is what Abramoff is accused of doing, is not constitutionally protected, and in fact is a serious crime. Mark L. Levin has a good post on his blog over at NRO about this, reminding us that chief reformer John McCain was also a member of the Keating 5, a scandal that the media, in its fawning coverage of McCain, conveniently forgets. The anger that many people, including myself, feel at Congress is not because of lobbying, or because of the scandal. This stuff happens occasionally, and when it does we should punish the perpetrators. In fact, I actually feel good in a way about this particular Abramoff scandal. Abramoff's a Republican with major Republican ties. Many of the politicians involved are Republicans. And it is a Republican Administration, and a Republican Justice Department, that is going full bore after everyone involved. If is a far cry from the Clinton Administration, where Janet Reno actively subverted full investigations into schemes like the fund-raising scandals. Remember "no controlling legal authority" anyone? So the Bush Administration is pretty effectively policing its own, no matter who is involved. The issue that has all of us furious is not the scandal but out of control federal spending.

And Bob Novak has a good column today on something that really does have to be addressed, earmarks. Under the current system, special project funding can be inserted secretly into spending bills by Senators, sometimes literally in the dead of night. No one knows who is inserting the spending provision, it isn't presented publicly to the full Senate for review, and it isn't voted on in the usual manner. Earmarks are usually inserted into a piece of major legislation that looks as if it will pass overwhelmingly and is veto proof. I feel that if a project is good enough to funded by the federal government, then the Senate should be able to discuss its merits, have the project defended by its sponsor, and voted on by the full Senate. Anything less is just a shell game. From Novak's column:

"Make no mistake that Republicans McCain and Coburn are climbing uphill against a bipartisan pork coalition, as was made clear from both sides of the aisle this week. "Who knows best where to put a bridge or a highway or a red light in their district?" said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, defending earmarks on the Michael Reagan radio program. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on PBS: "There's nothing basically wrong with the earmarks. They've been going on since we were a country."

Coburn disputes Reid's history. "Contrary to conventional Beltway wisdom," the freshman senator said, "the pork process is not an ancient tradition that is impossible to change." The 1982 highway bill contained 10 earmarked pork projects; 150 earmarks in the 1987 bill helped provoke a veto by President Reagan; the number rose to 1,400 in 1998, and to 6,300 in 2005.

In an age of polarization, addiction to pork cuts across party lines. The $2 million for a public park in the Presidio of San Francisco added to Defense spending benefits the district of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, a leading attacker of Republican fiscal irresponsibility."

There were 15,268 earmarked pork projects last year! Many, if not most of them, are probably projects that would get wide public support prior to passage. What the public objects to is the opaque process that's involved - that's what has to change.