Abramoff Scandal Forces Republican Reversal on New Ethics Laws !!!

[papau]

The GOP ethics leaders are Santorum and Dreier. Dreier is famed for his 1/17/06 statement that "the Republican Party has been and continues to be the party of reform" which followed the famous Dreier's Rules Committee 2001 proposal to bring Shays's legislation banning unlimited corporate contributions to the parties to the floor under rules that would have made it harder to pass -which was rejected by a vote on the House floor, the first time such a proposal from the Rules Committee had been turned down under House Speaker Dennis Hastert -And Dreier later voted against the final measure. But the Santorum story is equally funny (and not in the media) as he is coming from Jan. 25 testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where he cited his efforts to impose term limits and eliminate subsidies for the Senate barber shop and restaurant, after the post GOP control year of 1995 the GOP wanted only to get money and jobs from K Street lobbyists and they relaxed ethics rules to make that possible.



Abramoff Scandal Forces Republican Reversal on New Ethics Laws

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=audoIi_YSaz0

By Jonathan D. Salant

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative David Dreier once tried to torpedo an effort to limit corporate political donations. He voted to allow charities to fly lawmakers to their events and to let Republicans keep their leadership posts even if indicted.

Now, the California lawmaker has been tapped by Republicans in the House of Representatives as the leader of a move to strengthen lobbying and ethics laws amid the scandal involving Jack Abramoff. Dreier's record, and those of other Republican leaders, illustrates why the party may struggle to convince voters it's serious about overhauling the money-in-politics system.

Congressional Republicans are standing against their own history of embracing lobbyists and relaxing ethics rules since they took control of Congress in 1995, some lawmakers and analysts say.

``We don't have a good track record,'' said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican and co-author of the 2002 law banning unlimited corporate, union and individual donations to the political parties that Dreier tried to stop. <snip>