Congress in Action: Sweetheart Jobs and Loophole Travel

So Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., had no problem recommending his live-in girlfriend for a $153,200 a-year-gig as U.S. Attorney for Montana. Talk about your sweetheart jobs.

And despite new rules intended to do away with lobbyist-paid travel for members of Congress, many members see no problem in exploiting loopholes to visit exotic locales from Liechtenstein to Inner Mongolia. This doesn't count $13 million worth of official, taxpayer-paid Congressional travel, often on Air Force jets, for flimsy "educational" purposes.

A strange sense of entitlement creeps into some public servants of both parties at almost every level of government, giving them a tin ear for what should be a simple matters of right and wrong: You don't abuse the trust placed in you by voters, no matter much you like free stuff or with whom you are sleeping.

Mr. Baucus' actions are the scandal du jour, certainly not in the Tiger Woods class, but because of his public position, certainly more worrisome. Here is a 67-year-old man who, separated from his wife in mid-2008, begins dating Melodee Hanes, the 53-year-old director of his Montana office.

When they move in together, they decide it's not good politics to have his significant other on the Senate payroll. Besides, nine years ago she had been an assistant Yellowstone County, Mont., county prosecutor, and always wanted to be a crime-busting U.S. attorney.

Here's the point at which Mr. Baucus stopped thinking with his brain. Instead of saying, "You know, honey, that's probably not a great idea," he includes hers as one of three names he sends to the president for the opening.

Then the happy couple realizes that if she gets the job, she'd be back in Billings while he's in Washington shepherding the health care reform bill through his Senate Finance Committee.

So he withdraws her name and she gets — on her own merit, we're told — a nice job with the Justice Department in Washington.

Republicans — tired of being beat up over the sexcapades of Sens. John Ensign of Nevada, David Vitter of Louisiana and Larry Craig of Idaho and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina — are reacting with outrage. Sure our guys played around, they say, but they didn't try to put their girlfriends and/or boyfriends on the payroll.

This is a narrow point, character-wise, but a legitimate point nonetheless. But we won't hold our breath waiting for the Senate Ethics Committee to act.

Ethical probity is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It is a character issue. The New York Times reported this week that members of Congress from both parties have been traveling on private tabs despite the ethics rules imposed in 2007 after the Tom DeLay-Jack Abramoff lobbying scandals.

They do this by traveling not on lobbyists' tabs, which is against the rules, but on the lobbyists' clients' tabs, which isn't. Or they travel on the tab of not-for-profit "educational" foundations, some of which are set up purely as a way to launder Congressional freebies.

Result: while lobby-paid travel for House members is down from 1,100 trips in 2005 to just 400 this year, and in the Senate from 189 in 2005 to just 24 this year, it still goes on.

Last month, the Gallup Poll reported that public approval of the way Congress is handling its job stands at 26 percent. We're surprised it's that high.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM