Newt on the Abramoff Scandal

Newt on the Abramoff Scandal
Handout to the DC Rotary Club

Wednesday, January 4, 2006
by Newt Gingrich

“Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Lord Acton

“It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.”

Federalist Papers number 48, 1788

Lord Acton understood a principle which lay at the heart of the Founding Fathers development of a Constitution of limited effective government.

The Founding Fathers, having watched the corruption of the British governments of the 18th century, came to believe that power had to be limited, that there was an inherent bias toward corruption among those who had power and that big government was dangerous government.

The Abramoff scandal (and it is a scandal) is only one symptom of the growing profoundly unhealthy nature of power in Washington. Abramoff is the product of the system, not the system is the product of Abramoff. Abramoff did not create the system, but he did use it. It is important to start by stating flatly that this is not a lobbyist scandal. This is a lobbyist-incumbent-staff scandal. Abramoff and every other guilty person should go to jail.

The questions of lobbying should be looked at. But looking only at lobbyists protects the heart of the current system of incumbency protection-big government spending and power-Washington insider domination of the country which as a system is much more dangerous than the Abramoff scandal alone. The Congressional earmarks for pork, the special powers of Senators to blackmail the Executive Branch, the special provisions written into an overly complex tax code late at night in hidden meetings are symptoms of this larger problem of which Abramoff is only the tip of the iceberg. Efforts to focus reforms only on lobbying are efforts that will fail to move beyond the symptoms and look at the entire disease of corrupt power which is slowly engulfing the national government.

Consider these other symptoms:

One person spends $100 million personally to first buy a senate seat and then buy a governorship, and while spending that $100 million, votes for the McCain-Feingold bill to limit every middle class citizen to $2,500 an election per campaign.

Foreign governments and entities increasingly understand they can buy influence in Washington, and from the campaign scandals of 1996 to the recent donation of $20 million by a Saudi Prince to a major University, there has been a flood of foreign money designed to influence the most powerful government in the world.

The election process has turned into an incumbency protection process in which lobbyists attend PAC fundraisers to raise money for incumbents so they can drown potential opponents, thus creating war chests which convince potential candidates not to run and freeing up the incumbents to spend more time at Washington PAC fundraisers. The McCain-Feingold limits create ridiculously low contribution limits which requires more and more time be spent raising money in small amounts to maintain the war chests.

The very wealthy simply go through a loophole in the new campaign law and create irresponsible 527 organizations turning the 2004 Presidential campaign into the most relentlessly negative and harsh in modern times.

Senators abuse their power to blackmail the Executive Branch by allowing individual Senators to hold up Presidential appointments in order to extort things from the Executive Branch in a bazaar of negotiation.

Faced with incumbency protection, lobbyist friends, and huge war chests, House and Senate Members find it impossible to say no and simply keep bloating the federal government into a bigger and bigger engine of spending which attracts even more money into lobbying and interest group activities and makes the system even more vulnerable to corruption.

PRINCIPLES

The American people should be able to hold those to whom they loan power (incumbents) accountable and the bias of the system should be toward power back home rather than power in Washington.

Lobbying is an honorable and legitimate function but it should be transparent and accountable.

Middle class candidates should be able to challenge incumbents and millionaires with adequate resources raised from their own constituency.

Foreign influence buying is potentially fatal to our system of government and has to be tightly scrutinized and monitored.

Americans should expect the majority of the House and Senate to put the country first and to restrain or defeat those efforts at personal aggrandizement and personal power which undermine the effectiveness and the legitimacy of the government.

Members of Congress should apply at least as strong a set of rules to themselves as they have applied to business chief executive officers through the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation




FIRST STEPS TO REFORM

The Congress and the President should take these symptoms of dysfunction and corruption seriously and should look at the entire range of problems in a series of hearings and commissions which go to the very fundamentals of what the American people should expect and how the laws and regulations could be changed to strengthen the American people and weaken both the lobbyists and the incumbent politicians.

There are some practical reforms but they will go against the grain of the Washington elite and the establishment desire for bigger government with more rules and more regulations. Here are some key steps:

1. Abolish fundraising in Washington. There is no reason for incumbents to raise money in the capitol. Washington should be defined broadly so there are no loopholes for suburban fundraisers. The intent should be clear and decisive. Cut the connection between lobbying and campaign money;

2. Allow unlimited contributions by citizens in the Congressional District of a House race or in the state of a Senate race. There is no reason the honest working citizens back home should have a restriction on their donation while millionaires buy seats and lobbyists host special interest fundraisers. No single step would shift power toward home and away from Washington faster than allowing citizens unlimited funds to donate to elect their own candidates in their own district. One millionaires’ $100 million purchase of a Senate seat and a Governorship in New Jersey should stand as convincing proof that the average citizen should be allowed to donate to the poorer candidate to offset the big rich ability to buy power;

3. Require that all lobbying contacts between government officials (elected and unelected) and lobbyists be posted on the internet weekly so people can understand who is doing what. Require that the lobbyist file one report and the member or staff file a parallel report so there is a continuous process of confirming accuracy and honesty in reporting. Make it a felony to deliberately misreport;

4. Create a foreign travel approval board to certify that any non-government travel is a legitimate educational trip and not a sham event;
5. All special provisions (earmarks) should be required to have the members name and an explanation attached so people can identify who is putting in special provisions;
6. All spending bills (including conference reports and continuing resolutions) should be filed and have a mandatory 72 hour posting on Thomas before being voted on. This would allow the bloggers, the media, and citizen activists to identify any outrages before the vote rather than after;
7. All government grants and contracts should be posted on line so they can be scrutinized immediately. Transparency is the key first step toward accountability;
8. Any systematic or significant violation of the gift band by staff which shows up in the dual reporting system established in reform 3 should lead to immediate review and dismissal if guilty. There should be a staff violation review board and anyone who encounters violations should be encouraged them to report to the board. Staff arrogance and violation of the rules has become a larger problem than member violations and staffs have so much power in the modern gigantic Washington government that they have to be held to the standards of honesty and public service.
9. The Senate should review its rules and restrictions and bring them up to the House standard. In many ways the Senate rules are two decades behind the House in transparency, accountability and limitation of influence;
10. Require all foreign monies being used to influence government to be reported and posted on the internet so there is one center of information about the flow of cash. It will stun people to learn how many foreign entities now seek to influence the United States;
11. Establish a back home standard of honesty and expectations. If you can’t explain it back home without lying then it is wrong. Service before self is a pretty good standard even in Washington. If you have to pretend something is charitable when it is clearly personal it is wrong. Washington will presently get caught up in sophisticated, complicated self analysis when the facts are pretty simple. People did the wrong things and they should not be allowed to get away with it.



There are two broader measures that are symptomatic of an unhealthy system:

1. End the Senate hold system on Presidential appointments and eliminate the arrogance of individual Senators blackmailing the President of the United States over extraneous issues with the compliance of their colleagues in what is in effect a mugging of the Executive Branch and a major contribution to the arrogance of power in the Senate;

2. Shrink the size of the federal government and move power out of Washington and back to the 50 states, the 3300 counties and even more importantly to the American people. As long as government is this big, spends this much, and is this powerful the struggle to control and influence it will overwhelm any legal and regulatory remedy. All real reformers should want smaller government and less power in Washington.

Enforce the existing rules. Many of the problems exist because people have been winking at the rules. Punish the wrong doers. Eliminate from authority those with bad judgment. Set a clear standard of honesty and candor.