Congress should clean up its act now (10/17/05)

Set aside the specific allegations against former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay for a moment.

Some of the information coming out of the DeLay investigation speaks of practices which virtually invite corruption.

For instance, say you are Candidate A and you’re running for re-election in a safe district for your party. You raise buckets of money, far more then you’ll ever need based upon the political make-up of the district.

So, what do you do? You start dolling that money out to Candidate X or Candidate Y or Candidate Z, folks who are running in more competitive district and need all the financial help they can get.

Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Sure there is, and the fact that such things are common practice in the House of Representatives in the 21st century doesn’t make them any less wrong.

For starters, the pass-through donations are disturbingly close to money-laundering, separating public information about the political donor from the actual recipient.

Secondly, the whole process smells way too much like vote-buying or influence peddling.

After all, if you’re Candidate X and Candidate A happens to come to you seeking your vote on a piece of legislation and you just received a transfer of tens of thousands of dollars into your campaign treasury, you’re certainly going to be inclined to vote the way Candidate A wants you to vote.

We have no idea when this sort of thing started, but we do know that under DeLay’s leadership it has become common practice.

And we know something else: It stinks of rotten politics and bad government, with a whiff of criminality.

The DeLay case may or may not go another inch further. But until Congress cleans up its act, the whole legislative process will be under a cloud. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]