Up to Their Old Tricks

"Drive for show; putt for dough" is an expression golfers understand. So should members of Congress, many of whom are fond of playing the game at someone else's expense. However, despite the legislative long balls hit over the past season, Capitol Hill's 535 members were unable to master one essential stroke: reforming the rules for their own behavior. True, both the House and Senate gave the appearance of movement on laws designed to tighten campaign financing and lobbying regulations. But both bodies moved so late and in such contradictory directions that any reconciliation they are able to fashion next year would still not apply to 1994 elections.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. A Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress spent the year contemplating ways to change lawmakers' staffing and spending. After producing many recommendations, though, none have been enacted.

Least of all the zealous proposals by some reform-minded neophytes to limit gifts -- such as the meals and trips -- that members of Congress can accept from lobbyists. A survey by the watchdog group Public Citizen showed that in 1991 House members took 4,000 free trips, two-thirds of them paid for by corporations or trade associations.

As matters stand, it's perfectly legal for members to accept speechmaking or "briefing" invitations from well-heeled lobbyists -- typically at cushy resorts in balmier climes during dreary winter months. Last January, for example, U.S. Tobacco staged a legislative briefing in Boca Raton, Florida, with 17 past and present members of Congress. In April, 10 members and their spouses spent four days and three nights at the South Seas Plantation resort off Florida's Gulf Coast, with airfares, hotel bills and, of course, greens fees paid for by the Electronics Industries Association.

Idealistic first-termers in Congress tried unsuccessfully to impose a $20 limit on gifts that members may accept from lobbyists. That measure would have had no effect on the seaside getaways favored by the Congressional Golf Caucus, as the regular junketeers are derisively called. Still, when the proposal stalled, fingers pointed at House Speaker Tom Foley. "He has found a million reasons for why this is a problem or that is a problem," complains one freshman lawmaker. Foley first insisted that he was not blocking the measure, then cited miscommunication with the Republicans when the measure failed to get a vote last week. Not so, countered the G.O.P., prompting Foley to claim that there may have been "some misunderstanding."

You're up, Mr. Speaker.