President Bush has effectively drawn a legacy line in the sand on the war in Iraq, and history will prove him right for doing so. Now it’s time for the president to draw another line against the business-as-usual con game being played on ethics reform by both parties in Washington.
That Congress is trying to con the American people is illustrated by the fact that the same Senate and House majorities that voted for a bill named “The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007” did so only after effectively gutting the legislation of virtually all meaningful reforms. What the senators and congressmen praise with their words, they kill with their votes.
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The majority that passed the ethics reform bill gutted it by, among much else:
» Removing a provision requiring lists of all earmarks contained in legislation to be posted in searchable format on the Internet for public examination.
» Watering down the provision banning earmarks that benefit relatives and staffers of senators and representatives.
» Giving the Senate majority leader the power to exempt earmarks from public disclosure.
» Allowing passage of bills stuffed full of earmarks without prior public disclosure of those earmarks.
Nobody should be surprised that the ethics reform bill was eviscerated. The ethics truly favored in Congress was shown by the Sept. 11 vote of 82 senators against an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to direct tax dollars to fixing all dangerous bridges on the nation’s interstate highways before paying for things such as bike paths in Minnesota, Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska or rain forests in Iowa. Similar votes were recorded earlier this year in the House.
The Sept. 11 Senate tally — coming only weeks after the Interstate 35 Bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, killing 13 motorists and injuring another 125 — was more proof that the first priority of most congressmen in both political parties is preserving their ability to spend our tax dollars on their personal projects.
Note that only six senators voted for the Sept. 11 Coburn amendment and against the ethics reform bill when it came over from the House on Aug. 2: Coburn, Richard Burr of North Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, John Ensign of Nevada and Jon Kyl of Arizona.
All six are Republicans, but this is not a GOP versus Democrats issue. It’s a question of first serving either the interests of taxpayers or of Washington politicians. It’s crystal clear where the leadership and big majorities of both parties in Congress stand. Bush should call them on it by vetoing their fake ethics reform.
