10 Things

(Page 2 of 2)

On top of that, House ethics rules allow them to accept gifts, luxury jet rides and free overnight trips of up to seven days abroad for meetings, fact-finding missions and speaking gigs, provided they're related to official duties and not sponsored by lobbyists. Between 2000 and 2005, congressmen and staff accepted 23,000 of these trips, often to vacation spots and worth nearly $50 million, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Turns out that 90 were sponsored by lobbyists — Mr. and Mrs. Tom DeLay's infamous $28,000 golfing trip to Scotland among them.

With elections looming, there has been talk of reform. In January, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) called for a ban on such trips and gifts, but come May he was happy to settle for the sham cleanup proposed by the Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act — which would offer optional ethics classes for congressmen but allow them to go on accepting gifts.

8. "I simply can't be fired."
Once he's elected, it's almost impossible to kick a congressman out of office, even if he becomes mentally incompetent or is sent to prison. To oust a member of the House or Senate, it takes a vote of two-thirds of his colleagues — which has happened only twice since the Civil War, five times in all of U.S. history.

House rules do discourage a congressman from participating in committees if convicted of a crime for which he could get two years or more in jail, and his own party may force him from leadership positions even if he's not convicted. For example, Democrats pushed Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) off the Ways and Means Committee last June because FBI agents swear they caught him accepting a $100,000 bribe and found $90,000 cash in his freezer. (Jefferson denies any wrongdoing.) But even if convicted and sent to prison, Jefferson could seek reelection from his cell, as did former Ohio Democrat James Traficant Jr. in 2002. Traficant received only 15% of the vote and lost his seat — but he was still allowed to collect his full pension.

9. "Lobbyists love me because I deliver the goods."
The reason lobbyists court lawmakers is that they have the power to help friends and hurt foes. For instance, a congressman can create a specific tax break or other loophole for a lobbyist's clients, giving them an unfair advantage over rivals. Congressmen also hold the power to steer federal funds to friends by earmarking money for pet projects — a power they often abuse. Case in point: the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere," a Golden Gate-size span between a small town in rural Alaska and a nearly deserted island, for which Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) persuaded Congress to earmark $223 million in 2005. Similar abuses have increased dramatically in recent years, with the number of earmarks coming out of the House Appropriations Committee nearly tripling, to 15,877 earmarks worth $47.4 billion in 2005, from just 4,126 earmarks worth $23.2 billion in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service.

10. "Rules are meant to be broken."
Congress is notorious for breaking its own rules: Only a handful of members dock their own pay when absent for reasons other than health, for example. But it's Congress's failure to follow its own legislative procedures that's truly galling. When the joint House-Senate conference committee meets to reconcile different versions of a bill, for instance, House rules forbid adding anything beyond the scope of the version the House has already approved. And once the committee comes up with a compromise bill, the House is supposed to hold at least one public meeting, giving members a written explanation of the changes and three days until the vote. But the conference committee routinely flouts these rules, often making big changes without explanation, then getting the Rules Committee to waive restrictions so they can rush bills through unread. How common is this? The Rules Committee issued so-called blanket waivers for all 18 bills that went through the conference committee from Jan. 4, 2005, through March 2006.

Last December, Speaker Hastert took it a step further by letting Sen. William Frist (R-Tenn.) add on to a bill after the conference committee was finished: 40 pages of legislation protecting makers of avian flu vaccine and similar drugs against liability even if they injured or killed patients through gross negligence. Then Hastert got the Rules Committee to make kosher what he'd done. Frist's spokesperson claims there was "bipartisan consensus" for such an incentive, but couldn't explain why it hadn't made it into the text of the bill if it was so popular. Hastert's office failed to return our calls.

	Page 1 | 2