Cracking down on lobbyists, but not on themselves

Steve Huntley succinctly summarizes what is wrong with the ethics bill for which Congress is patting itself on its collective back.

The just-approved ethics bill puts new restrictions on accepting gifts and cheap private jet travel from special interests and requires legislators to disclose the names of lobbyists responsible for bundling $15,000 in campaign contributions during a six-month period.

This measure focuses on the sins of lobbyists while giving lawmakers a break on their own transgressions. It carries watered-down versions of proposals intended to put greater transparency in the legislative bonanza in which lawmakers dispense funding for special interest projects through earmarks. The notorious "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska is just the best known of the billions of dollars in earmarks Congress has hidden in bills.

The legislation did away with a proposed ban on earmarks in which a lawmaker's family or staff stood to make money, and substituted a weaker measure to prohibit an earmark if it is intended only to give a "pecuniary" benefit to a lawmaker or his family. It leaves it up to party leaders to decide if a bill meets earmark disclosure rules, rather than the neutral Senate parliamentarian. It says the earmarks can be put on a database only if "technically feasible." What is not technically feasible about posting the text of a bill in this Internet age?

These look like loopholes aimed at keeping at least some earmarks hidden. While lawmakers passed landmark ethics provisions in cracking down on lobbying abuses, they haven't been so tough on themselves and their pet projects.

If lawmakers want to argue that they didn't water down the provisions on transparency i order to be better able to slip earmarks into bills, then perhaps they can explain to us why they made these changes from an earlier form of the bill that had much stricter provisions on earmarks and transparency.