As our blog has been saying for sometime now, new GOP House Majority Leader John Boehner is in good with K Street.Thus, he has no intention of providing ethics reform in Washington D.C. (In fact he has came out and said so)
The following report once again shows Boehner's true colors on ethics:
ONE factor behind dwindling enthusiasm for ethics reform in Congress is opposition by a powerful Republican lawmaker from Ohio who, as the New York Times reported, is "not keen on" a proposed ban on travel paid for by special interests.
No, we're not referring to U.S. Rep. Mike Oxley, Findlay's frequent flier. Mr. Oxley, who blazed a contrail as one of Congress' premier jet-setters, is leaving office at the end of the year. This time, the travelin' man is Rep. John Boehner, of West Chester, the newly minted House majority leader and inveterate golfer.
Mr. Boehner, successor in the GOP leadership to ethics-challenged Texan Tom DeLay, is perhaps best known as the recipient of a golf junket to the storied St. Andrews links course in Scotland, paid for by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose corrupt exploits set off the current ethics debate.
Depending on what source you believe, Mr. Boehner did - or did not - know that he was traveling illegally on Mr. Abramoff's dime to Scotland. But the story doesn't end there.
According to a nonprofit group called Campaign for a Cleaner Congress, records show that Mr. Boehner took 180 trips to destinations outside his southwest Ohio district from 1999 to 2005. Most of them were to exclusive golf resorts, including - yes - St. Andrews, Pebble Beach in California, and Pinehurst in North Carolina.
While golfers are plentiful among the denizens of Capitol Hill, the group pointed out that these junkets exceeded the 149 plane trips the congressman made at taxpayer expense between Washington, D.C., and home during the same time span.
As it turns out, Mr. Boehner was funding his golf addiction mostly from his personal campaign fund, which paid for 119 of the trips. Twenty-two were reported as congressional campaign trips, while 39 were privately funded.
While it's good to know that taxpayers aren't necessarily paying Mr. Boehner's greens fees, it is troubling that lobbyists are, at least part of the time. Moreover, his campaign donors might be surprised to learn that they are being soaked a good bit of the time for the congressman's expensive hobby rather than for the more mundane costs of keeping him in office.
Aides to Mr. Boehner tried to dismiss the report as politically motivated - a former Clinton administration official heads the so-called watchdog group - but they did not dispute the statistics. They just said the report was misleading because it failed to include a number of times the congressman drove home on weekends to visit his constituents.
We would be surprised - no, make that amazed - if a public official as busy as Mr. Boehner spent much time in a car driving to and from Washington.
If he did, the vehicle surely would be the one with the bumper sticker reading "I'd rather be golfing."
It it time for reform!
Read about Congressman Ford's actions on ethics reform here! (1 , 2, 3)
Read about John Boehner's views opposing ethics reform here!
Read about John Boehner's broken promises regarding ethics reform here!
