cont'd at:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012306Y.shtmlSearching for a New Direction
By Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX)
t r u t h o u t | Statement
Wednesday 18 January 2006
The Abramoff scandal has been described as the biggest Washington scandal ever: bigger than Watergate; bigger than Abscam; bigger than Koreagate; bigger than the House banking scandal; bigger than Teapot Dome. Possibly so. It's certainly serious and significant.
It has prompted urgent proposals of suggested reforms to deal with the mess. If only we have more rules and regulations, more reporting requirements, and stricter enforcement of laws, the American people will be assured we mean business. Ethics and character will return to the halls of Congress. It is argued that new champions of reform should be elected to leadership positions, to show how serious we are about dealing with the crisis of confidence generated by the Abramoff affair. Then all will be well. But it's not so simple. Maybe what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg, an insidious crisis staring us in the face that we refuse to properly identify and deal with.
It's been suggested we need to change course and correct the way Congress is run. A good idea, but if we merely tinker with current attitudes about what role the federal government ought to play in our lives, it won't do much to solve the ethics crisis. True reform is impossible without addressing the immorality of wealth redistribution. Merely electing new leaders and writing more rules to regulate those who petition Congress will achieve nothing.
Could it be that we're all looking in the wrong places for a solution to recurring, constant, and pervasive corruption in government? Perhaps some of us in Congress are mistaken about the true problem; perhaps others deliberately distract us from exposing the truth about how miserably corrupt the budget process in Congress is.