Pay to play -- taxpayer style

IN THE WAKE of the Jack Abramoff scandal, we’re having one of those “reform moments” when everybody in Washington is suddenly itching to demonstrate their commitment to the public interest and abhorrence for sleazy inside dealings. The last reform moment occurred after the Enron scandal broke, and it lasted a month or two. I give this one a few months, tops.

Oh, sure, at the moment everybody is grasping for the reform mantle. Senate Republicans have tapped Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania to lead their reform effort. Santorum once spearheaded the Senate GOP wing of the “K Street Project,” a Republican effort to force business lobbyists to reserve their campaign donations and plum jobs exclusively for Republicans, in return for which Republicans would make their wildest legislative dreams come true.

House Republicans, meanwhile, are conducting a race for majority leader centered primarily on which candidate is less ethically compromised. The first two candidates are John Boehner of Ohio, who famously distributed checks from tobacco lobbyists on the House floor, and Missouri’s Roy Blunt, who left his wife to marry a tobacco lobbyist. They have been able to present themselves as representatives of good government because, unlike some of their colleagues, their enmeshment with lobbyists falls short of the legal definition of bribery. (Come to think of it, “falls short of the legal definition of bribery” might make for a great GOP campaign slogan this fall.)

Luckily, not everybody has to pretend to be appalled at the influence lobbyists hold over Washington. The Wall Street Journal editorial page noted with dismay that the House leadership may propose “a ban on lobbyist-paid golf junkets or limits on the House floor privileges of former members of Congress,” and complained that such draconian measures would “further restrict the constitutional rights of other Americans to influence members of Congress.”

Were you aware that the Constitution granted you a right to influence members of Congress? I wasn’t. I knew I was allowed to “petition” them, which can take the form of phone calls, letters, pamphlets and the like. I had no idea this right included hiring a former member of Congress to buttonhole them on the House floor, or plying them with golf junkets in the hopes of influencing their votes. Apparently liberals aren’t the only ones constantly “discovering new constitutional rights,” to use a favorite Journal phrase.

On the other hand, sensible conservatives are starting to realize that a Congress in thrall to the business lobby will not always produce conservative legislation. (Witness the Medicare bill, farm subsidies, the energy bill and other K Street goodies handed out by the GOP.) National Review Editor Rich Lowry noted recently that paying members of Congress salaries competitive with lobbying gigs and funding worthwhile overseas travel would reduce lobbyist influence. He’s right.

The reform that would make the most difference would be providing generous public campaign funding. Maybe you can’t ban private donations, but if candidates get ample funding for their races from the government, then those envelopes from lobbyists suddenly carry a lot less weight.

Why do I expect none of these things to happen? Because they run afoul of yahoo anti-government populism. Nothing riles up anger against elected officials more than when they raise their own pay. Politicians cultivating an image of honesty, including Democratic do-gooders such as Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, are constantly offering to forgo pay hikes, as if it promotes good government to have a system where members of Congress know they can instantly triple their salary by joining a lobby firm. And if you think it looks bad to accept trips from lobbyists, wait until you see the next round of ads attacking members of Congress who flew overseas courtesy of your taxpayer dollars.

The sad fact is that voters who think foreign aid is the largest item in the federal budget -- when it’s less than 1% -- don’t realize that paying competitive public salaries or financing campaigns would amount to a pittance of their tax dollars. The ultimate reason we have a corrupt system isn’t that our representatives in Washington aren’t honest enough -- though they aren’t -- but that the voters aren’t bright enough.