The scandal boiling around lobbyist Jack Abramoff raises hope for US energy policy. It at least helps explain why Congress has such trouble dealing constructively with energy. At best, it might provoke change in a culture hostile to the effort.
Abramoff detonated a blame bomb in the US capital Jan. 3 by pleading guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, tax evasion, and mail fraud in connection with lavish gifts to politicians. A day later he pleaded guilty to charges related to misrepresentations in the purchase of a casino boat. His promise to cooperate with investigators in a long corruption probe has dozens of politicians squirming.
Disgorging contributions
In attempts to distance themselves from Abramoff’s sleaze, officials from both major political parties have been disgorging contributions they received from the lobbyist or his clients and affiliates. They point out that accepting contributions isn’t illegal if the money doesn’t directly result in political favors. They’re right.
But the problem goes beyond technical legality. The problem is a culture in which an Abramoff can found a profitable business on assumptions that he can buy policy. It’s a culture in which politicians accept, even expect, money and noncash largess from so-called friends and pretend the benefactors expect nothing in return.
Contrary to the initial reflex of Congress, the problem has little to do with lobbyists and won’t be solved by restricting their activity. The problem is the eternal tendencies of government to believe it should act on everything and of individual officials to submit to illusions of omnipotence. Framers of the US Constitution addressed these tendencies with specific limits. Because many of those limits now are largely ignored, government has become more a dispenser of favors than the protector of individual liberties it was designed to be.
This is nowhere more evident than in energy. The US government has claimed responsibility for making fuel choices. History shows that lawmakers and regulators don’t make those choices very well. Markets handle fuel decisions much more efficiently and offer another benefit: They don’t usurp individual freedoms. But questions about competence and liberty have given way to distorted environmental arguments and the many opportunities energy creates for lawmakers to discharge political debts.
Energy legislation, the chief function of which should be to facilitate markets, thus has become a bazaar. The transformation is manifest in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The law addresses billion-dollar energy problems with nickel-and-dime prescriptions favoring costly options individuals wouldn’t choose for themselves. Instead of addressing hard necessities, such as making locked-up federal acreage available for oil and gas leasing, it spews political favors, many of which will push costs onto taxpayers and energy consumers.
Energy is not unique. The deadly combination of special-interest money and government activism lies behind grotesque farm subsidies, spendthrift transportation legislation larded with earmarks, and enormous increases in federal prescription-drug benefits. They’re all favors for somebody, expensive favors. Many are no doubt bought and paid for favors.
The Abramoff fiasco underscores the need to reform a culture gone foul, which is why it raises hope for energy policy. Congress can start but probably can’t finish the process.
It can, for example, restore discipline to legislative processes. Too many bills now skirt the deliberation traditionally provided by a formal system of hearings and markups in subcommittees and committees. Congressional leaders, who since eradication of the seniority system hold power once spread among committee chairmanships, often rush bills to chamber floors for votes. Legislation thus becomes difficult to track and ripe for stealthy, last-minute favors for well-placed lobbyists. This needs to change.
Sense of limits
Most of all, though, Congress needs to restore its sense of limits. It needs to concentrate on the quality rather than the quantity of its legislation. It needs to question the propriety of government involvement before it acts on anything. And it needs to recognize that the Constitution intends for its members to function as servants, not aristocrats.
Most current members of Congress wouldn’t support such changes. They’d see them as inconsistent with political realities. They’d see them as idealistic if not-even worse-ideological. This is why Congress as now configured probably can’t bring itself to quit acting like a legislative vending machine. And it’s why the US holds elections.✦
