New York Times
June 25, 2006
Dennis
Hastert, the speaker of the House, promised credible reform back when
the stench of illegal quid pro quo dealings between lobbyists and
ethically challenged lawmakers seized public attention. But nothing
close to true self-policing is emerging from Congress. And now Mr.
Hastert is the latest lawmaker in the limelight for the rampant
pork-barrel practice of earmarking — the swift, debate-free
inclusion in mass appropriations bills of small fortunes in government
favors for special pleaders.
In the speaker's
case, his $200 million earmark to advance a road project known as
Prairie Parkway back home in Illinois became an acute embarrassment
after local news media and critics discovered Mr. Hastert netted a fast
$2 million profit from dealing in land situated several miles from the
proposed roadway.
Mr. Hastert's
office insists that he had long supported the road plan in the booming
region and that the land parcel was far enough removed. He contends, in
short, that there was nothing improper in his purchase being made, in
partnership with the local Republican county leader, just a year before
he arranged the earmark.
That's for
voters to judge. But we can hope Mr. Hastert would see, at least in
hindsight, the cloud that this activity has cast over Congress, which
slipped 13,012 earmarks to passage this year worth $67 billion. That's
a tripling of the pork trough since the Republicans won control of the
House in 1994.
Sometimes it
seems as if earmarking is all this Congress knows how to do. Members
have spent so few calendar days in Washington that they hark back to
the "do-nothing" Congress excoriated six decades ago by President Harry
Truman.
Doing nothing
can be the lesser of two evils, however. That seems to be true of the
farce of an ethics reform bill now being fumbled around by the House
and Senate. The measure offers no hope for a true earmark crackdown and
totally avoids the core Capitol scandal — the lobbying industry's
freedom to woo grateful lawmakers with bundles of corporate campaign
contributions. Congress's unwillingness to police its behavior was
clear months ago when lawmakers rejected creation of an independent
office of public integrity that might actually enforce the sorts of
promises so easily made by Speaker Hastert.