Three Congressional embarrassments are on today’s agenda. The first is Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.). Here, so far as I can tell, are the facts: McKinney, not wearing her official pin that signals she is a Member of Congress and wearing a completely different hairstyle than the one she wore for years, bypassed the security apparatus in the Longworth House Office Building, walking rapidly and refusing to stop when a Capitol Police officer repeatedly asked her to do so. He rushed after her and grabbed her arm. Then she hit him in the chest with her mobile phone.

Resident Scholar Norman J. Ornstein

Now, last week should have erased any remaining doubt that United 93 was headed for the Capitol on Sept. 11, 2001, when Zacarias Moussaoui testified that he had been scheduled to pilot a fifth plane aimed at the White House. Terrorists have tried to destroy the Capitol and Congress before, and will try again. What is a U.S. Capitol Police officer to do when a person--any person--rushes past the security detectors into a Congressional building and refuses repeated requests to stop?

Many years ago, long before the current security system was in place, I entered the Russell Senate Office Building at the same time as then-Sen. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.). The police officer at the desk did not recognize him--quite remarkable, since he was one of the most famous and recognizable members of the Senate at the time--and demanded to see an ID. Bayh went from annoyance to bemusement, as he pulled his wallet out of his pocket and watched the fear-struck and embarrassed officer usher him in. He didn’t scream or hit anybody.

The notion that all officers should always recognize all Members of Congress is, of course, ridiculous. McKinney was wrong, utterly wrong. It seems as if she were spoiling for a fight. This is not the first time she has shown, shall we say, a lack of appropriate judgment or temperament. When I heard of the incident, I thought back to how Denise Majette beat McKinney in the 2002 Democratic primary and seemed to be inaugurating a stellar career here. But then Majette inexplicably chose a suicide path to a Senate nomination, leaving the seat open again for McKinney to regain. Oh Denise, why did you forsake us?

The second embarrassment is the House ethics committee. Its continued gridlock at a time of a huge and widening Congressional scandal has soiled the reputation of the House and reinforced the reality that major reform of the process is urgently needed.

The Senate’s childish, self-centered rejection of an Office of Public Integrity is bad enough, but at least the passive and reactive Senate Ethics Committee has a pulse. After the plea deal by Tony Rudy, a lobbyist and former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), and the clear signs that fellow DeLay aide-turned-lobbyist Ed Buckham is directly in the prosecutors’ cross hairs, more indictments are sure to follow. Several Members of Congress will be fingered for bribery, official corruption and other violations, joining former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) in the dock and possibly in prison.

In other words, the scandal issue will erupt again, in a big way--and what will the House have to show for it? Unfortunately, that its indifference to ethics--no, make that its leaders’ aggressive efforts to quash any investigations of ethics violations--is its signature.

The third embarrassment is the budget. How can anyone look at the performance of the House Budget Committee and the Senate and not cringe with embarrassment? Or wince at the realization of what our current elected representatives are doing to our children and grandchildren? Federal spending is pushing 21 percent of the gross domestic product, up sharply since the beginning of the Bush presidency, and showing every sign of pushing ever higher during its remaining 33 months. In the meantime, Congress is determined to drive federal revenues down to 16 percent of the GDP.

The budget that was passed out of the House Budget Committee on a party-line vote shuns any serious restraint on entitlements, and it does little on discretionary spending. It budgets a sham $50 billion for additional Iraq war costs--probably half of, or less than, the realistic amount--and it leaves open the likelihood of additional budget flimflammery through supplemental spending requests.

As a result, the pressure will be on the 15 percent of the budget that is discretionary domestic spending, meaning that we are likely to get another vicious, zero-sum battle that will threaten areas such as funding for basic research, first responders, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a panoply of programs for the poor.

The fact that this country is moving toward deficits approaching 5 percent of the GDP is deeply unsettling. The larger, frightening reality is that entitlement-driven spending is headed toward 24 percent of the GDP by 2040 (at the latest), leaving a huge gap of 7 percent to 8 percent of the GDP--meaning economic catastrophe.

Yet the Republicans have rejected the one device that has been proved in the past to bring fiscal discipline, the pay-as-you-go provisions that governed fiscal policy through the golden years in the 1990s. Instead, they are pushing a sham version of the line-item veto, basically just a sharply enhanced rescission authority for the president. Congress would pass its spending bills, the president would pluck out items he did not like and send them back to Congress to vote on them again.

Leave aside the simple abdication of responsibility by Congress here--the refusal to set up a provision to have separate votes on earmarks or related items before any bill gets to the president, and the basic message of “stop us before we spend again.” The larger reality is that this gives the president a great additional mischief-making capability, to pluck out items to punish lawmakers he doesn’t like, or to threaten individual lawmakers to get votes on other things, without having any noticeable impact on budget growth or restraint.

More broadly, it simply shows the complete lack of institutional integrity and patriotism by the majority in Congress. They have lots of ways to put the responsibility on budget restraint where it belongs--on themselves. Instead, they willingly, even eagerly, try to turn their most basic power over to the president. Shameful, just shameful.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.