Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
When it comes to ethics reform, national lawmakers are as deaf as local politicians to public concerns about influencing peddling among those elected to serve the people. Who among them, the public wants to know, is getting what from whom, and why.
Remember the outcry from members of both national parties in the immediate aftermath of the Jack Abramoff scandal? Americans saw highly staged news conferences with both sides avidly proclaiming a need to clean their own house.
Similar hollow rhetoric accompanied coverage of former Rep. Duke Cunningham's fall from grace when he received an eight year prison sentence for taking $2.4 million in bribes.
It hasn't taken long for those esteemed lawmakers to retreat from such idealistic notions.
Already, they've shot down a proposal to make it harder for Senators and members of Congress to fly on corporate jets. And they've rejected the establishment of an independent Office of Public Integrity as a means to more strongly enforce abuses in their ranks.
When it comes to meaningful ethics reform, it seems national politicians are as adept as local legislators at maintaining the unfortunate status quo. Lobbyists will keep giving, and politicians will continue to receive, and votes will be cast under an ongoing unfortunate shadow of suspicion.
