For most of the past week, I grappled with a dilemma about this column: Where should I focus my indignation? Unfortunately, there is an excess of targets these days, including the farce of the “line-item veto.” 

Resident Scholar Norman J. Ornstein

But my dilemma was solved when I read the story by R. Jeffrey Smith in The Washington Post on Sunday about Ed Buckham and the U.S. Family Network. I have been around the track enough to have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to scandalous behavior here in the nation’s capital, but I needed several antacids after digesting that piece.

For years, when I would chat with Republican leadership staff or Members who were close to the leadership, I would get strong warning signals about Buckham--about his tight relationship with and sway over former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), and about his willingness to push the ethical envelope. But I could not have imagined the depth of the corruption before reading about the ways in which Buckham and his buddy, former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, manipulated the nonprofit rules and bilked large numbers of people--including Abramoff’s clients, the National Republican Congressional Committee and firms that worked with Abramoff.

This was done, apparently, for personal gain, to scratch the back of Abramoff clients such as Northern Marianas sweatshop operator Willie Tan, and to give a nice monetary bonus to DeLay’s wife, Christine, and the wife of another longtime DeLay employee, Tony Rudy. Rudy, an earlier Post story reported, had acted as a kind of “mole” for Abramoff inside DeLay’s office to help one of his other clients, eLottery, head off legislation to ban Internet gambling. Soon after, Rudy left to take a lucrative lobbying job with Abramoff.

Along the way, the “nonprofit” U.S. Family Network bought expensive artwork, a fancy skybox at the then-MCI Center and lavish travel and entertainment for the Buckhams and their pals. Buckham and his wife allegedly skimmed $1 million of the $3 million raised by the network. Its receipts included a million-dollar payment from Russian energy interests, as well as money from Indian tribes, Marianas Islands employers, tobacco company RJ Reynolds, and a half-million shaken down from the NRCC, from which Buckham took a separate share of $200,000 off the top as a fundraising commission.

All the while, DeLay was carrying water for the Marianas sweatshops, the Russians and other interests, while aggressively raising money for his own charities and nonprofits.

Read these stories, along with the tales of Michael Scanlon, the former DeLay communications director and Abramoff crony who negotiated a plea deal with prosecutors, and reflect on what they all tell us about Tom DeLay. There are two possible explanations. One is that he is the most naive man ever to serve in Congress or any political office: Right under his nose, his closest and most trusted employees were running schemes to enrich themselves, subvert his office and repeatedly abuse his trust over many years. The second is that he knew what was going on, and saw their efforts as a nice way to enrich his friends, employees and family while helping accomplish his political goals.

If you accept the former explanation, you have to explain away the fact that DeLay was the most successful Whip in our lifetimes, thanks to his attention to detail, his keen understanding of people and his indefatigable energy and focus. I would like to hear how GOP Reps. Henry Bonilla (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Eric Cantor (Va.) and all the other House Republicans who went out of their way to repeatedly laud DeLay and his standards now explain DeLay’s conduct, after having learned about the doings of Buckham, Rudy and Scanlon.

Read these stories with one more issue in mind: the obvious goal of House and Senate leaders now to do as little reform of lobbying and ethics as possible. How dismaying, and how stupid. These stories are not going away, and are overwhelmingly likely to be followed by many more that are at least as damning--not all of which will be about staffers. There is little willingness on the part of the leadership to do anything to create a meaningful ethics process, or to deal effectively with the lobbyist-Member axis, or the larger issues of how money influences government and politics in Washington, D.C.

Clearly, we also need a serious and pointed focus on the misuse and abuse of nonprofits and charities by lawmakers, staffs and others. What ties do lawmakers have to pet charities or nonprofit organizations set up on their behalf or with their connivance? Where is the money coming from--and where is it going? How many staffers or family members of lawmakers are getting consulting fees or salaries from these or related organizations? DeLay, remember, fought aggressively to make sure that fundraising techniques for charities, via golf tournaments in lavish resorts and other ways of trading access for money, were not touched at all by prior rounds of campaign finance reform or other reforms.

Fundraising and spending by Member-connected charities and nonprofits cry out for a serious investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, the Senate Finance Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee. It can’t limit itself to the U.S. Family Network--it ought to look at every organization that took soft money from one of the party groups, as well as every such organization that employs a spouse or family member or provides them with consulting fees, and every nonprofit linked to Abramoff, Scanlon, Rudy, DeLay, Buckham and their cronies.

Let me close with a piece of good news. The Federal Election Commission did what it should have done and is supposed to do by passing unanimously a rule on political activity and money and the Internet that is fair, balanced and constructive. Kudos to all the commissioners, and especially Chairman Michael Toner for rebounding from the earlier regulation that was rejected by a federal judge. The commission has created a much better alternative--one that now can relegate the Hensarling bill and any alternative pieces of legislation to the remainder bin. At least somebody was doing good work this week.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.