From USA Today:

Scandal? What scandal? Congress ducks ethics reform
Wed Sep 6, 2006

Back in January, Congress arrived in Washington for the start of a new session on the heels of two lobbying scandals. In California, Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham had pleaded guilty to pocketing $2.4 million in bribes from a defense contractor, including a yacht, a Rolls Royce and rooms full of anti-ques. In another plea bargain reached just down the street from the Capitol, well-known Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff had admitted fraud and conspiracy and promised to help prosecutors investigate more corruption in Congress.

Democrats and Republicans were so worried about voter backlash, they fell all over each other proposing grand schemes for reform and promising quick action. This week, as Congress returned to Washington for a brief session before the elections, major reform had been all but abandoned. Leaders in the House and Senate were talking instead about a few wisps of change, if that.

Did something happen during the intervening eight months to make reform unnecessary?

No, quite the contrary. The scandals just kept coming:

o In May, prosecutors filed documents in a federal probe of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., asserting that the congressman was videotaped in 2005 accepting $100,000 from an investor wearing an FBI wire. A few days after that exchange, FBI agents found $90,000 in cash stuffed inside Jefferson's home freezer.

o Later in May, Neil Volz, a former aide to Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and lobbying colleague of Abramoff, testified in federal court about the way Capitol Hill works: "I was given tickets to sporting events, concerts, free food, free meals. In return, I gave preferential treatment to my lobbying buddies." In August, Ney announced he wouldn't seek re-election.

Congress' answer to this ethics catastrophe has been a pair of competing measures in the House and Senate, which fall far short of what was promised in January but allow incumbents campaigning for re-election to claim they "voted for lobbying reform."

Don't believe it. Both measures would provide modest changes, such as requiring better disclosure of lobbying expenditures and of the sponsors of "earmarks," special favors for lobbyists inserted quietly into spending bills.

Yet both ignore the most egregious activities. They wouldn't, for example, ban members from taking privately funded trips to resorts or cut-rate travel on corporate jets.

Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., named by House Speaker Dennis Hastert last January to oversee reform, blames Democrats for its failure. Certainly, House Democrats have not been much help, and the sleaze has been bipartisan. But Republicans hold majorities in the House and Senate. If reform was a priority, it would happen. Instead, Hastert has not even gotten around to naming lawmakers to a House-Senate committee needed to reconcile the two reform bills.

New laws and rules won't stop people such as Cunningham, who did what crooks do: They steal. They're also a small minority.

The real scandal in Washington is what's permissible, the gift-giving and favor-trading between lobbyists and lawmakers that's standard operating procedure. If lawmakers haven't learned that taking gifts, meals and lavish trips from people seeking favors looks an awful lot like bribery, then maybe the voters will teach them come Nov. 7.