'Reform' and the fine art of hypocrisy

Among the purported achievements of the new Democratic majority’s excessively celebrated “100 hours” blitz in Congress were new ethics rules to rein in lobbyists and curb pork-spending abuses. Looks like people celebrated too soon.

As the New York Times reported this weekend, lawmakers have found creative new ways to get lobbyists to pick up the tab for their fundraising and entertainment – birthday parties, wine-tasting tours, hunting tips, golf tournaments and a weekend at Disney World. All the lobbyists have to do to circumvent the new rules is pay for the outings indirectly through a political fundraising committee.
“Members of Congress are becoming more and more creative in finding ways to engage lobbyists to help pay for their campaigns,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center.

So don’t be surprised if that other major piece of reform – the one regarding “earmarks,” or dedicated spending items that are anonymously slipped into budget bills literally at the last minute – isn’t all it was cracked up to be. The last budget round contained 15,000 earmark items costing taxpayers $50 billion.
Earmarks often are the way lawmakers ingratiate themselves to special interests and their lobbyists, so there’s plenty of incentive to find loopholes to retain such power, whichever party is in power.

There’s plenty of hypocrisy to go around here:
-- Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., known as the Senate’s “King of Pork” for decades, now has gotten religion and is leading the charge to (technically, at least) eliminate earmarks from the agriculture bill, but not reduce the spending level. The executive branch could cut some of the spending items, but you know the special-interest pressure will be intense to keep them.
-- President Bush, who never could seem to find his veto pen or his voice against outrageous spending when his party was in charge, now has called on Congress to cut the number and cost of earmarks in half.
Where were these guys when we needed them?