Partisan gridlock, vitriolic rhetoric, and countless scandals have each done their part in recent years to eat away at public confidence in Washington. It’s a sad fact that only 9% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing today according to a CBS News/NY Times poll conducted in October. Regardless of your political views, I think we can all agree that this is not a number we can be proud of.
If we are going to put our country back on the right track, we have to restore public trust by fixing what’s wrong with Washington. That’s why I recently introduced legislation to ban lobbying by members of Congress and announced my support for a series of other reforms to restore faith in government, reduce corporate influence on our political process, and close loopholes that allow Members of Congress to benefit from their positions.
We can’t begin to restore the trust that has been lost between Congress and the American people if we don’t first change the popular perception that too many elected officials see public service only as a means to personal gain. What made the Jack Abramoff investigation so shocking to so many people wasn’t the close relationship between K Street and Capitol Hill as much as the venality and shamelessness of those involved. For too long, people have felt apprehensive about the revolving door that exists between serving in Congress and working as a corporate lobbyist, but they’ve allowed it to continue because they don’t believe they can do anything to stop it.
This is not the case, we can and we must do something about it. Public service is a sacred trust and responsibility, and we need to ensure that it is always treated and viewed as such. One way we can achieve this goal is to prevent former Members of Congress from ever cashing in on their positions by lobbying their former colleagues.
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