New York Times editorial: Follow the Money to the Floor
Three House members got word the other day that investigators have recommended that the ethics committee delve into their fund-raising from Wall Street donors — lucrative labors that happened to coincide precisely with some big votes on reforming Wall Street. Five other members were cleared in the same inquiry, raising the question of exactly what it might take to violate the Capitol’s notoriously porous rules about political fund-raising.
The track history of the full ethics committee suggests nothing much will come of the inquiry. But at least the new House watchdog — the semi-independent Office of Congressional Ethics — has dared to focus on the meat and potatoes of Capitol culture.
Members don’t twitter about it to the folks back home, but the heart of the workday often involves writing laws with one hand, then ducking out of the people’s House to beg for money with the other. It’s not that inconvenient. The smarter special-interest check writers are right in the neighborhood.
In the same fashion, lawmakers of both houses must go out of the Capitol to nearby political party offices where colorless cubicles are maintained for them to “dial for dollars” — beg for more money — from donor lists. Privately, members admit loathing such politicking, but they follow this proven, cash-rich way to protect incumbency.
Many from both parties have taken care to sign on to a worthy alternative proposal, the Fair Elections Now Act, which would allow qualified candidates public subsidies to compete free from lobbyist-designed bundles from influential donors. Proponents like Common Cause are hoping the House might take committee action soon, but no one is predicting swift passage. President Obama already has outstanding his pledge to reform the presidential subsidy system that he chose to skirt in his campaign. The president could and should ignite the movement for public alternatives.
Taxpayers may wonder why the existing deep-pocket system came to be licit, why their elected public servants can (must?) routinely behave as crass mendicants. It remains incumbents’ standard model. The Republican minority leader, John Boehner, is busy promising ethics reforms better than what the Democrats have imposed. But, like so many others on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Boehner is identified with the rich status quo. He is remembered for smoothly surviving the apology he had to make some years back when he was seen on the House floor passing out checks from the tobacco industry to his colleagues.
