Krugman explains the key to understanding the Culture of Corruption and the Abramoff scandal. The direct campaign contributions are almost beside the point. The real issue is the Republican machine that is in place to reward compliant politicians with jobs for relatives, lush trips, and extremely well-paid positions once they leave office. January 20, 2006 Op-Ed Columnist The K Street Prescription By PAUL KRUGMAN The new prescription drug benefit is off to a catastrophic start. Tens of thousands of older Americans have arrived at pharmacies to discover that their old drug benefits have been canceled, but that they aren't on the list for the new program. More than two dozen states have taken emergency action. At first, federal officials were oblivious. "This is going very well," a Medicare spokesman declared a few days into the disaster. Then officials started making excuses. Some conservatives even insist that the debacle vindicates their ideology: see, government can't do anything right. (conservatives ARE the gubmint!) But government works when it's run by people who take public policy seriously. As Jonathan Cohn points out in The New Republic, when Medicare began 40 years ago, things went remarkably smoothly from the start. But this time the people putting together a new federal program had one foot out the revolving door: this was a drug bill written by and for lobbyists. Consider the career trajectories of the two men who played the most important role in putting together the Medicare legislation. Thomas Scully was a hospital industry lobbyist before President Bush appointed him to run Medicare. In that job, he famously threatened to fire his chief actuary if he told Congress the truth about cost projections for the Medicare drug program. Mr. Scully had good reasons not to let anything stand in the way of the drug bill. He had received a special ethics waiver from his superiors allowing him to negotiate for future jobs with lobbying and investment firms - firms that had a strong financial stake in the form of the bill - while still in public office. He left public service, if that's what it was, almost as soon as the bill was passed, and is once again a lobbyist, now for drug companies. Meanwhile, Representative Billy Tauzin, the bill's point man on Capitol Hill, quickly left Congress once the bill was passed to become president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the powerful drug industry lobby. Surely both men's decisions while in office were influenced by the desire to please their potential future employers. And that undue influence explains why the drug legislation is such a mess. The most important problem with the drug bill is that it doesn't offer direct coverage from Medicare. Instead, people must sign up with private plans offered by insurance companies. This has three bad effects. First, the elderly face wildly confusing choices. Second, costs are high, because the bill creates an extra, unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Finally, the fragmentation into private plans prevents Medicare from using bulk purchasing to reduce drug prices. It's all bad, from the public's point of view. But it's good for insurance companies, which get extra business even though they serve no useful function, and it's even better for drug companies, which are able to charge premium prices. So whose interests do you think Mr. Scully and Mr. Tauzin represented? Which brings us to the larger question of cronyism and corruption. Thanks to Jack Abramoff, the K Street project orchestrated by Tom DeLay is finally getting some serious attention in the news media. Mr. DeLay and his allies have sought, with great success, to ensure that lobbying firms hire only Republicans. But most reports on the project still miss the main point by emphasizing the effect on campaign contributions. The more important effect of the K Street project is that it allows the party machine to offer lavish personal rewards to the faithful. If you're a congressman, toeing the line on legislation brings you free meals in Jack Abramoff's restaurant, invitations to his sky box, golf trips to Scotland, cushy jobs for family members and a lavish salary once you leave office. The same rewards are there for loyal members of the administration, especially given the Bush administration's practice of appointing lobbyists to key positions. I don't want to overstate Mr. Abramoff's role: although he was an important player in this system, he wasn't the only one. In particular, he doesn't seem to have been involved in the Medicare drug deal. It's interesting, though, that Scott McClellan has announced that the White House, contrary to earlier promises, won't provide any specific information about contacts between Mr. Abramoff and staff members. So I have a question for my colleagues in the news media: Why isn't the decision by the White House to stonewall on the largest corruption scandal since Warren Harding considered major news? http://groups.google.com/group/Open...="paul+krugman"&rnum=3&hl=en#08336a5225553b87
Here's more about the Republican's "culture of corruption." COMMENTARY Bookman: In Republican Washington, it's raining money Jay Bookman, COX NEWSPAPERS Tuesday, January 24, 2006 Just as sharks are drawn by blood, lobbyists swarm to money. So it tells you something about Republican Washington that the number of lobbyists registered to do business in that town has more than doubled in just five years, from 16,342 in 2000 to 34,785 last year. What caused such a dramatic increase? It's pretty simple: When you start passing out money by the wagonload, you draw a crowd. And in the past five years, the federal government has become quite the friendly place for Gucci-loafered special pleaders, especially those bearing campaign checks and airline tickets to luxury golf destinations. In effect, the doors to the federal chicken coop have been flung wide open, and the predators have descended en masse. If you think that's an exaggeration, here are a few more numbers to digest: First, $193 million. That's the amount being spent per month by special interests wining, dining and seducing federal officials. Again, that's per month, and there's no sign that money is being wasted. Then there's 13,997. That's the number of pork projects that individual members of Congress slipped into spending bills last year without debate, without discussion — without any process or discipline whatsoever. By comparison, the number of pork projects in 1995 — the first year the Republicans held control of Congress — was 1,439, according to Citizens Against Government Waste. Do the math — in barely a decade, the number of pork projects grew almost ten-fold. No wonder lobbyists are in a feeding frenzy. I can't imagine how such a record could be defended. At best, you could spin it by saying that the Republicans are governing by biblical principle, just as they promised. They're telling lobbyists: "Ask, and thou shall receive." As the pork numbers demonstrate, some of the plunder has come in the form of million-dollar contracts steered by congressmen to companies that have treated them extra nice. In other cases, though, special interests have been handed entire government agencies. Take the mining industry, which has been particularly generous in its campaign donations and lobbying. The Bush administration has rewarded that kindness by ceding control of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. It appointed a mining executive to head the agency, blocked proposals to improve mine safety, cut fines assessed for safety violations and slashed the number of mine safety inspectors. Given that arrangement, the Sago mine tragedy that killed 12 miners comes as little surprise. And all across government, the story is repeated. Last week, an inspector general announced that the agency charged with ensuring competition in the meatpacking industry hadn't pursued a case since 1999. Top agency management was refusing to let investigators do their work and were even making up phony investigations to hide their inactivity. Then there's the administration's botched Medicare prescription drug benefit. During the drafting of that bill, it was almost impossible to distinguish between pharmaceutical lobbyists and government officials, because both shared the same primary goal: Protect at all costs the interests of the drug companies, which the final bill did very well. The goal of creating a drug benefit that would actually meet the needs of senior citizens while protecting taxpayers was purely secondary, and it shows in the final product. Tax cuts — hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax cuts, mostly handed out to those rich and powerful enough to hire lobbyists — have been another form of plunder. Because of those cuts, taxes collected by the federal government now amount to less than 17 percent of our gross domestic product, easily the lowest ratio in at least 40 years. That has allowed Washington Republicans to assure folks back home that they're staying true to their small-government roots, but the image is an utter fraud. While they're passing hefty tax cuts, they're also sending government budgets through the roof. Nondefense spending has risen faster in the last five years than at any time since the '60s, a fact that ought to outrage any true conservative. With that record, the GOP has forfeited any claim whatsoever to be the party of fiscal restraint or small government. In fact, in just a few short years, the party that used to complain bitterly about free-spending liberals and a corrupt Congress has made the party of LBJ and FDR seem like a tight-fisted paragon of moral virtue. It would be funnier if it weren't so tragic. http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/01/24bookman_edit.html Keep D&D Civil.
Anyone else besides me thinks this is not a form of terrorism, and FBI should not wiretap the folks creating the raw deal for the vast American seniors who are being terrorized?
