Congress has always revered Mark Twain`s maxim that ”nothing so needs reforming as other people`s habits.” So it is a great surprise to see the U.S. Senate pass a bill implying that ethics are something its members should practice as well as preach.
For Congress to indulge in hypocrisy is like a robin eating earthworms:
repulsive to some of us, but natural to the species. The Integrity in Post-Employment Act is arguably as bad as its title. But it establishes a commendable precedent in requiring our elected representatives to obey the same rules they so zealously decree for everyone else.
The bill, dubbed the ”never-again Mike Deaver bill,” erects a maze of rules a mere journalist can barely comprehend, much less explain. But the clear intent is to tighten the restrictions on what executive branch officials can do for a living once they leave office, in an attempt to keep them from squirming free to offend ethical propriety. Deaver inspired it by engaging in influence-peddling brazen enough to attract a special prosecutor, but somehow careful enough to avoid actually violating the 1978 ethics law. (His recent conviction was for perjury.)
It has been 114 years since Congress first began telling executive branch officials what they can`t do upon leaving government. In this bill, for the first time, it restricts its own. Former senators and representatives would be barred from any paid lobbying of Congress or of top administration officials for a year after leaving office. This rule is supposed to hinder them from cashing in on any influence acquired during their time on the public payroll. This did not go easily down the throats of senators, who can`t be eager to reduce their future marketability in the private sector. But it`s hard to decry the administration`s disregard for the ethics laws when Congress is exempt from those laws. Apparently, senators detect a surly mood among voters. They decided it`s better to enhance their job security in Congress than their job prospects outside.
Let`s not get overenthusiastic. The House, which is expected to be less tractable than the Senate, has yet to consider the bill. And it`s another question entirely whether ”revolving door” laws are such a great idea anyway.
What`s worse is that in other respects the congressional fidelity to double standards is as durable as ever. Members remain conveniently exempt from a host of other laws-on fair employment, civil rights, official corruption, freedom of information-that they have mandated for others.
The same bill extending the ethics laws to Congress harbors a provision strengthening the incumbent- preservation laws, otherwise known as campaign finance reform. It forbids those elected to Congress to raise funds after the election to repay personal loans to their campaigns.
This prohibition won`t hurt many members of Congress seeking re-election, since their position makes it easy for them to raise funds before the election. It will hurt the well-to-do challenger who has to finance a large share of her campaign to knock off an entrenched incumbent-gambling that she can pay herself back if she wins. Entrenched incumbents, a group to which Congress is partial, will no doubt face fewer challenges.
Thanks largely to the post-Watergate campaign laws, incumbents now win more than 90 percent of their congressional races-a sad change from the days when 40 or 50 deserving members were turned out every election day. But the incumbents are always looking for ways to make their elections unlosable.
A Senate committee recently approved a measure that would forbid the use of videotapes of Senate proceedings in campaigns-while permitting senators to use them for nonpolitical purposes, as if there were such things.
Here again, incumbents gain and challengers lose. A member can deluge his constituents and local TV stations with footage of himself making politically popular utterances on the floor of the Senate, thus improving his re-election chances. But his opponent can`t air clips of the same senator looking foolish in his natural habitat. The Jim Bakker Award for the least convincing lie of April goes to Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, who said the committee vote ”has nothing to do with politics.”
If members resent the public`s low opinion of them, they ought to stop doing things like that. Until they do, discussions of congressional integrity will call to mind John L. Lewis` question about the old American Federation of Labor`s ethical practices committee: ”Have they found any yet?”
