That sentiment seems to be the overwhelming feeling everyone has nowadays.And who could blame them? John Boehner is their new leader and he has already said he is against ethics reform. That comes in spite of the Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, and Duke Cunningham scandals.
Below is just another article that suggests the GOP is not interested in really reforming ethics:
Congress returns to Washington today poised to take up bills to change how lobbyists do business - and no one seems happy about the likely outcome.
Reformers are unenthusiastic because they view the proposals that the House and Senate will debate this week as badly diluted, even though the bills would change how lobbyists disclose their activities, make it harder for former members to lobby Congress, and identify the currently anonymous authors of special projects embedded in legislation.
Those changes don't go far enough, say the watchdog groups, who Friday sent a letter to House members urging them to oppose the bill this week.
"House leaders are trying to trick voters into thinking that the leadership is addressing the problem," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "Voters should not be fooled. This is not real reform."
The groups are upset that tougher reforms, such as creation of an independent office to investigate possible abuses, are unlikely to win approval.
The idea of a new ethics cop draws strong opposition from members of both parties, including Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who takes umbrage at the idea that strong reform is needed.
"I find every senator to be a man of integrity, committed to hard work and making sacrifices for the good of the country," he said. "The best ethics test in the world is an election."
Also unhappy are lobbyists, but not necessarily because the changes would hurt them. They're upset that Washington and the nation view them as uniformly dishonorable.
"Like any profession, we have bad apples, and no matter what rules we put in place, there will always be those who choose to break them," said Paul A. Miller, president of the American League of Lobbyists. "Unfortunately, we often find our bad apples on the front page of every newspaper."
Making it even tougher for the reformers is an absence of public clamor for change, an apathy that robs the Democratic bill managers, Sens. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., and Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., of badly needed political momentum.
A CBS-New York Times poll in mid-March asked voters to cite the issue most important to them, and lobbying reform did not crack the list of the seven most often mentioned.
The Pew Research Center's "news interest index," a monthly survey of stories people follow, ranked financial ties between lobbyists and members of Congress eighth this month.
News about Iraq and the Dubai ports deal topped the list, followed by the Hurricane Katrina cleanup, Vice President Dick Cheney's shooting of a friend, and reports about bird flu, Iran and the new South Dakota abortion law.
Reform is "a complicated issue," said Mike Surrusco, director of Common Cause's ethics campaign. "Unless you can reduce it to a sound bite about corruption, people don't follow it."
Reformers had a glimmer of hope earlier this year, when high-powered lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to fraud, tax evasion and bribery charges and was expected to name names. He may yet do so, but so far no revelations have rocked the city.
The other well-known figure driving ethics changes, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, not only stepped down from that post in January but was replaced by Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, who fashioned himself as the candidate of change.
Boehner and his lieutenants have been actively promoting ethics reform, promising House action this week.
"The Republican Party is the party of reform," said House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif. "We have been and continue to be committed to ensuring that this institution is more deliberative, accountable and transparent."
The proposals the House will consider would make it harder for former members to lobby current members; force sponsors of "earmarks," or funding for special projects, to identify themselves; bar congressional travel paid by private interests through the end of this year; and strengthen lobbying disclosure requirements.
Reformers see the plan as largely cosmetic, and lobbyists see it changing some of their methods, but not many.
Former Connecticut Rep. Toby Moffett is now a lobbyist with a long list of clients. As a former member, Moffett had access to the House gym and could go onto the House floor - practices reformers restricted in the first wave of reform votes last month.
Big deal, Moffett said.
He did not go to the House floor anyway, he said, and, "When I go to the gym to play basketball, usually with my friends, there aren't that many members' basketball games anymore, because Congress is never in session. People go home."
And if they don't, they typically are not hard to find. "If I want to see members, I see members," Moffett said. "I see them at church, at the golf course, the Safeway, at dinner parties."
But reformers still think more rules and regulation are needed. Lobbying is estimated to be Washington's third-biggest industry, with more than 27,000 registered congressional lobbyists. Their spending has increased 30 percent since the start of the Bush administration and is now estimated at $2.1 billion, according to data compiled by James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.
Thurber's figure includes spending reported by registered lobbyists in public records, and does not include funds for grass-roots activity, issue advertising or Internet advocacy. Thurber said some estimates of spending on lobbying run as high as $8 billion a year.
Currently, legislative ethics committees investigate allegations of improper lobbying, but Thurber found "they have not been doing their job. [They] have neither the resources nor the inclination to investigate serious allegations of ethics violations by members of Congress."
A group of lawmakers, including Lieberman and Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th District, want an independent office to investigate ethics complaints.
The Senate version of the plan, authored by Lieberman and Sen. Susan M. Collins, R-Maine, lost by a lopsided vote in the Senate governmental affairs committee, so they plan to offer a revised version during the full Senate debate, perhaps as early as today.
But they are likely to face new resistance.
"It says this body of 100 senators is so institutionally corrupt, it can't police its own," said Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn. Let the ethics committee continue to enforce the rules, he said. "To say we can't delegate to six colleagues, and trust them, I find to be a terribly wrong statement to the American people."
Without the office, reformers think meaningful change is unlikely. New rules will be passed, they said, but without a tenacious watchdog Congress is not expected to significantly change a system that watchdog groups see as troubled.
"What you can expect," said Nick Nyhart, executive director of Public Campaign, a reform group, "is to see as little reform as possible, but enough to make people believe Congress did something."
It is 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!
