1115.org

“Keep it fair, keep it fair.”

Our republic is only as good as the representatives sent to look after the public interest. The current ethics storm swirling around Tom DeLay, and by extension many House Republicans, demonstrates how fragile our system has become. As new reports hit the media each day detailing the latest instances of alleged corruption, investigations are launched to determine precisely which laws or House rules were broken. But while breaking house rules is deplorable, there is something more at stake: the people’s trust.

Politicians developing close ties with special interests and the lobbyists who represent them is nothing new. On the contrary, it’s a way of life in in D.C., and one of the examples Republicans used to takeover the Congress in the 1994 elections. In fact, one of the reasons that term limits were a major facet of the Contract With America was to prevent coziness between elected officials and those they regulate:

Proponents [of term limits] see career politicians as the greater threat. They say careerists are so intent to stay in office that they are more likely to betray their constituents and bow to corruption…They hope term limits will encourage newcomers to take risks and push for ethics reform.

27 years ago, Tom DeLay made politics his career. He is currently a captive of business interests and has repeatedly betrayed his constituents. In fact, it would be surprising if any of the residents of Sugarland, TX can even get a call or letter returned:

Over two years, Rep. Tom DeLay had at least two dozen discussions with a lobbyist working to keep a U.S. territory’s factories free from new labor laws. The lobbyist contributed to the House leader’s campaigns and arranged travel for him. Records show that DeLay’s staff spoke with the lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, or his team almost daily during this period. DeLay’s office kept Abramoff, now under criminal investigation, routinely apprised of congressional efforts to block new regulations on his client, the Northern Mariana Islands.

Abramoff certainly isn’t a DeLay constituent, and the people of the Texas 22nd district are placed at a disadvantage when they have to work under labor laws that don’t apply to Abramoff’s clients in the Northern Mariana Islands. Of course DeLay would argue that no one should be encumbered by labor laws, but there’s not much popular support for bringing back domestic sweatshops. Whether or not is it strictly legal to “routinely apprise” lobbyists, it is a waste of time and not befitting a senior leader of the House. And at the heart of the matter is the simple fact that all the time DeLay and his staff spent on vacation, on the phone, and providing reports to Abramoff, was not spent serving the people who sent him to Washington.

Likewise, his trip to Russia (at a time when that country was secretly supporting the same Serbs that the men and women of our military were fighting in the Balkans,) and playing golf in Scotland on Abramoff’s credit card were also not in service of his constituents. His actions suggest that he places Abramoff’s interests above the voters. Exactly the reason he and others sought to limit the number of terms anyone could spend in the Congress. In fact, it appears that the only way to even get DeLay’s attention is to throw money at him or exist in a persistent vegetative state.

As an everyday working, taxpaying American, it would be nearly impossible to ask a question of DeLay, the President or most other elected officials. This is not confined to one party, Democrats have had their own lobbying and fundraising issues, but it’s the Republicans who are in charge now, and it’s this President who is using tax money to fly around the country misleading the public about a plan he has yet to announce. Something is askew when the public is paying for “town hall meetings” that bar anyone who might offer dissent:

In that case, three people who had done nothing wrong said they were ejected from a Social Security town hall meeting by a man who looked and acted like a Secret Service agent.

The Secret Service investigated the incident and reported that the man was a Republican Party staffer. The agency told the three that the man admitted removing them solely because they arrived in a car bearing a “No more blood for oil” bumper sticker. The White House has said that the man removed them “out of concern they might try to disrupt the event.”

Under Republican control, this country is moving farther and farther away from its supposed guiding principles. Fairness, transparency, representation by peers, free speech, input into decisions that affect and related ideas are quaint relics from a time when a lobbyist couldn’t get away with slipping a roll of bills into a Congressman’s hand and asking him to “keep it fair, keep it fair.”