Articles

Lobbying limits: GOP owes party and the people

Opinion by Newt Gingrich
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jan. 13, 2006

Federalist Paper 48 states "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."

This wisdom of the Founders is more relevant than ever. Hamilton and Madison would not be surprised with the ethics scandal swirling around Washington because they understood Lord Acton's principle that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In Washington today, neither party has been willing to put effective limits on the growth of federal spending. Together with a broken campaign finance system, growing Washington power is simply a recipe for corruption.

Lawbreaking by Jack Abramoff is only one piece of the current perversion of federal power. By all means, those who are guilty in the current scandal should go to jail, including congressmen and staff who are found to have been willing accomplices. But don't let that fool you into believing the problem is solved. Reforms cannot focus on lobbying alone. The problem is much deeper. Politicians in a relentless pursuit of incumbency protection and power have used big government spending to perfect a Washington-insider dominated system to maintain control at the expense of good governance. As a system, this is much more dangerous than the Abramoff scandal alone.

Although corrupt in nature, this self-perpetuating incumbency protection racket is legal because Congress makes it so.

The earmarks for pork, the exploitative nature of the Senate that hogties presidential appointments, the special provisions written into an overly complex tax code, and late-night meetings are all part of this larger problem of political power passing the limits assigned to it. We must not only address Abramoff's crimes, we must get at the roots of the corrupting influences that threaten our system of self-government.

Consider these examples:

• One candidate spends $100 million personally to buy a Senate seat, then a governorship, then votes for the McCain-Feingold to limit every middle-class citizen to $2,500 in donations per election campaign.
• Legal 527 political organizations turned the 2004 presidential race into the most relentlessly negative and harsh campaign in modern times.
• One single bill coming out of Congress contained 6,371 earmarks — funding for pet projects.
• Senators hold up presidential appointments to extort concessions from the executive branch.

With lobbyists at the heart of the incumbency protection conspiracy, House and Senate members are seduced into a harmful distorted system that results in a bloated federal government that grows bigger and more powerful, making the system even more vulnerable to corruption.

This must stop. The American people pay for our representatives to do the people's business in our nation's capital. Yet, too many politicians are scheduling their governance duties around their fund-raising opportunities. There is no good reason to raise money in Washington, and this practice, especially in light of the current abuses, should be banned.

Moreover, Congress should apply to its members a set of financial disclosure rules at least as strong as it has applied to business chief executive officers through the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. Congress should also make it possible for middle-class candidates to challenge incumbents and millionaires by allowing them to raise adequate resources from their own district.

No party is solely responsible for this system, but Republicans, who came to power in Congress in 1994 as the party of reform, have a special obligation to act. Lest it risk its majority, the GOP must reclaim the high ground of reform, both for the future of the party and the good of the nation. We Republicans aren't supposed to be the party of pork; we are the party of the people who actually pay for the pork. The scandal in Washington today not only offends our principles, it betrays the moral basis of our nation's self-government.

Ronald Reagan used to say that there are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. The simple — but not necessarily easy — way out of the current troubles begins with shrinking the size of the federal government. As long as government is this big, spends this much and is this powerful, no law or regulation can hold back the tide of corrupting influences.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America."

Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. More information: www.ajc.com.

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