[Mb-civic] Government As Trough - George F. Will - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060114/5ae0b04e/attachment.htm