Don't fool yourself...a lot of our leaders would be happy to turn the US "red."

Although Speaker Nancy Pelosi hardly “drained the swamp” regarding corruption in Congress as she extravagantly promised, she did do more to establish genuine, non-partisan oversight of the genuine, non-partisan sleaziness in the House of Representatives. Last year, 20 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep Mel Watt, co-sponsored legislation that would have gutted and neutralized the Pelosi-created Office of Congressional Ethics. Why did the Congressional Black Caucus have it in for the OCE? Well, a disproportionate number of its members were being investigated for ethics problems. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who crafted that bill, suggested that this was because the office was racist. In fact, it was because the Congressional Black Caucus has a disproportional number of wheeler-dealers whose definition of “ethics” is self-serving at best, and the OCE, not being subject to political intimidation like the House Ethics Committee, just followed the money and raised the appropriate questions about members’ activities, Republican or Democrat, black or white.

Fudge’s bill died, never coming to a vote in committee or on the House floor, since the House realized that effectively ending ethics oversight after the disgraceful Rangel affair would not look good to voters. Now, however, ethics isn’t the main focus; cutting spending is. So Congressional Black Caucus member (and one-time target of an OCE investigation) Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) is seeking to add an amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill that would cut OCE’s funding by 40 percent. The money would be allocated to reduce the nation’s debt, and would also reduce the operating budget of the ethics office sufficiently to make it worthless, allowing Watt and his colleagues to go back to their money-grubbing ways without fear of exposure or discipline.

Of course, cutting back on ethics oversight in the House of Representatives is guaranteed to worsen the deficit and the debt, as members will be free to exchange political pork for campaign money, and budgets be damned. Every good government group and ethics watchdog has condemned Watt’s plan, particularly because it combines cynical exploitation with a vendetta. “It’s particularly sad that the amendment is being introduced by someone who was investigated by the OCE,” said David Vance, a spokesman for the Campaign Legal Center, told The Hill. “The OCE has been very professional and very bipartisan,” he added. “Basically, it’s the only transparent and functioning ethics entity in the House.”

Cutting ethics oversight is the perfect example of being “penny wise and pound foolish,” though that old saw trivializes the outrageousness of Watt’s amendment. If the United States thinks it has problems now, just wait until corruption gets into its bloodstream and turns the nation into a culture of “cheat the other guy before he can cheat you.” Ask the nations of Africa, South America and Southeast Asia how costly that is, and remember that the cost isn’t just measured in money, but in loss of character, fairness, and hope. When corruption is accepted and protected in a nation’s leadership, nothing can stop its spread. This, and no less, is what Rep. Watt’s amendment aims to do.

All for the debt, of course.