[Mb-civic] Government As Trough - George F. Will - Washington Post
Op-Ed
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Sat Jan 14 05:19:23 PST 2006
Government As Trough
What It Might Take To Clean Up Washington
By George F. Will
Sunday, January 15, 2006; B07
Disraeli knew of a lady who asked a gentleman if he believed in platonic
friendship. He replied, "After, but not before." For congressional
Republicans, "after" has arrived.
After Abramoff. After DeLay. After the "K Street Project" -- the torrid
and mutually satisfying dalliance of Republican members with lobbyists.
Now Republicans are prepared to be, or at least want to be seen to be,
chaste. They are determined to devise reforms to steer Congress away
from the shoals of sin, so they are receiving many suggestions from
Washington's permanent cohort of Dawnists.
Those are people who believe that, given good intentions and
institutional cleverness, an era of civic virtue will dawn. They are
mistaken, but there are some reforms that, although they will not
guarantee virtue, will complicate vice, which is as much progress as is
possible in this naughty world.
End the use of continuing resolutions. Adopted at the end of fiscal
years when Congress does not complete appropriations bills, continuing
resolutions usually authorize the government to continue spending at
current levels. If Congress had to get its work done on time -- if the
only alternative were a chaotic government shutdown -- it would. Then
Congress would have less reason to loiter in Washington doing mischief.
Speaking of which . . .
Forbid appropriations to private entities. Government money should flow
directly to government agencies -- federal, state or local. And those
agencies should be required to formally testify that local projects
receiving national funding serve essential national needs.
Appropriations that are, in effect, cash flows from individual
representatives to private entities are invitations to corruption.
Federal money directed to private entities was what ex-representative
Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) was bribed to deliver.
So, end "earmarks." They write into law a representative's or senator's
edict that a particular sum be spent on a particular project in his or
her state or district.
Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, has written to the House
leadership that, "With the number and dollar value of earmarks more than
quadrupling over the past decade, pork-barrel spending has become an
unfortunate hallmark of our Republican majority." Arguing that
additional restrictions on lobbying, although perhaps needed, would be
"peripheral reform at best," Flake says, "We first have to look at our
own conduct." To do otherwise "would do more to feed public cynicism
than restore public confidence."
Often, earmarks are included in neither the House nor Senate version of
an appropriations bill but are inserted surreptitiously and at the last
minute in the report of the conference committee -- and the House rule
against this is routinely waived.
Flake proposes legislation that would prohibit federal agencies from
funding any earmark not contained in a bill's actual legislative
language. And the bill would allow a point of order to prevent the
waiving of House rules against including non-germane spending --
earmarks not included in either House or Senate spending bills -- in
conference reports.
The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif., reported last week
that a $1.28 million earmark put into the transportation bill by Rep.
Gary Miller (R-Calif.) is for improving streets in Diamond Bar, Calif.,
in front of a 70-acre planned housing and retail development of which
Miller is co-owner with those who are his largest campaign contributors.
He says Diamond Bar requested the money.
No doubt it did: If the federal government is going to finance
localities' infrastructures, localities will rush to the trough. And
most House members believe that abstaining from earmarks would be
career-killing folly. But when a primary challenger faulted Flake for
never delivering earmarks -- and for that reason three of the five
mayors in Flake's district endorsed his challenger -- Flake won easily.
Still, many Americans unblushingly enjoy in practice what they deplore
in principle -- Washington's expensive refusal to limit itself to proper
federal business. So, a final, and whimsical, proposal:
The public today is denouncing Congress for its promiscuous attention to
the public's appetites for government favors. Although it is a principle
of Washington discourse that no discouraging word shall ever be said
about the American public, nevertheless:
On the door of every congressional office into which favor-seekers
troop, there should be a sign with these words from the late George
Stigler, the Nobel Prize-winning economist from the University of
Chicago: "I consider it a cowardly concession to a false extension of
the idea of democracy to make sub rosa attacks on public tastes by
denouncing the people who serve them. It is like blaming the waiters in
restaurants for obesity."
Many people attacking Congress are also attacking themselves. And they
are correct. Twice.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/13/AR2006011301697.html
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