Today, or possibly tomorrow, a proposal for an Office of Public Integrity to investigate Congressional corruption will be coming up for a floor vote on the Senate. And if the Senate doesn't pass the bill, any meaningful reform is dead for this year. A lot more needs to be done to end the selling of Congress to the highest bidder and lobbyist-arranged travel, but this is a critical ingredient and an important first step. Of course, corruption can't be rooted out until we have full public financing, "Clean Money" reforms, for House and Senate campaigns -- just as such states as Arizona and Vermont have for state elections -- so that special interests lose their grip on our legislators.
The ethics committees of both houses of Congress have done virtually nothing for years, while legislators like Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Bob Ney have been raking in campaign money for peddling an assortment of legislative favors. As Public Citizen, which also offers an email form to contact your Senators, alerted its members recently:
"We reported last Friday that ethics and lobbying reform was coming to a vote early this week in the Senate, and you responded with over 1,000 emails to the Senate over the weekend! Now, as the issue comes to head either this afternoon or tomorrow morning, will you help us with a final push and make a toll-free call today to your Senators to demand an independent Office of Public Integrity to investigate possible ethics violations?
The toll free number is 888-355-3588. If you are having trouble getting through on this line, you can also call your Senators directly at 202-224-3121.
Demand that your Senators vote in favor of Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz) Office of Public Integrity amendment to the main ethics and lobbying reform bill, S.2349.
Some Senators like to pretend that the ethics problems are all over in the House. Apparently they would like to forget about Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for possible insider stock trading involving his family's business. And then there is Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), who took more money from felon-lobbyist Jack Abramoff than any other member of Congress. (Abramoff stated recently that "every appropriation we wanted [from Burns] we got." You can read about one of those special earmarks in today's headlines on the Clean Up Washington blog.)
Yet the Senate ethics committee has done NO investigations on these or any other cases of possible ethical misconduct. That's why we need Sen. McCain's Office of Public Integrity.
Don't delay - call your Senators TODAY at 888-355-3588! "