If You Give a Congressman a Cookie

Check out ReddHedd at FDL:

Yesterday's NYTimes had an op-ed from Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann entitled "If You Give a Congressman a Cookie." I've been struggling to put my thoughts on this article into words, because the pervasive corruption and contempt of the GOP leadership for the rules of Congress and the wider ethical norms of this country is truly breathtaking in its moral decay and scope.

If you didn't get a chance to read the op-ed, you should. It details a number of issues that the authors, both long-time policy and legislative analysts at AEI (Ornstein) and The Brookings Institution (Mann), see in this Congress and in the political culture of today's Washington, through the lens of how much more corrupt and grasping this particular incarnation of Congress has been under the Republican leadership -- how much further the GOP has taken the notion of "we can do whatever the hell we want, because we are the law."

That the authors chose a title cribbed from the children's book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" is apt -- I read this book often to my daughter at bedtime, and the tale of the greedy little mouse who continually wants more and more and more, never satisfied with gaining his latest objective, is a perfect analogy for the KStreet project and its adherents.

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We have a Congress and an Executive Branch, run by a Republican majority gone amok, drunk on power and dispensing legislative largesse on their contributors at every turn. A legislature which hands out pork and plums to clients of their KStreet pals, in order to secure employment for chosen staffers...in order to secure more access to cash for campaigns and for travel boondoggles. (Notice how the interests of the American public don't really factor in there.) We have a legislative ethics process that has essentially stalled or disappeared altogether (via Ornstein and Mann):

Indeed, Mr. Hastert showed open contempt for the House ethics process last year when he fired the Republican chairman of the ethics committee and ousted two Republican members after they did their duty and reprimanded Tom DeLay for three violations of standards. Mr. Hastert then appointed two members to the committee who had given large sums to the DeLay legal defense fund - when the main matter pending before the committee involved Representative DeLay.

The same attitude produced the K Street Project, in which the new Republican majority, led by Mr. DeLay, used its governmental power to demand that trade associations and lobbying groups fire Democratic lobbyists and hire designated Republicans, who could then be expected to show their gratitude by contributing generously to party candidates and committees. Jack Abramoff was one of the progenitors of that initiative.

The Republican party controls both the legislative and executive branches of government. They are responsible for how business is currently being conducted. They should be held accountable for the mess that government has become.