Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 12, 1992 TAG: 9203120459
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's comic relief in a decade of real outrages, including not just the rancid alphabet stew of S&L, BCCI and HUD scandals, but a host of crimes against the public interest - in health care, education, the welfare of children, the economy; you name it. Of the reasons for Washington's repute, the bouncing-checks business isn't the most compelling. (You want to talk bouncing checks? Check out the national debt.)
Still, let's not let our representatives off the hook.
The public seems indignant still that Congress members - not Virginia's, thank goodness - were overdrawing their personal accounts without paying penalties at the House's now-defunct taxpayer-financed bank. Many willfully and frequently wrote bad checks, in effect drawing thousands of dollars in interest-free loans. Their constituents should be so lucky.
Which speaks to the heart of the issue: The attitude, apparently held by some of our representatives, that they are apart from and above the rest of us. The offenders - all 296 current and 59 House members who got by with creative financing - should have to show their reddened faces.
The House ethics committee, trying to defuse the lingering controversy, has said it will identify 19 current and five former members whom the panel judged to be the "worst" abusers. In other words, throw 24 bodies to the wolves so everybody else can crawl quietly away.
Not acceptable. Some members wrote more than 800 rubber checks each, some bounced checks totaling more in value than some people earn at their jobs in a year. Yet they apparently wouldn't have to explain their behavior to voters because they don't meet the committee's criteria for "worst" offenders.
Unless - like all members of Virginia's delegation - they can produce letters saying they weren't involved, they can pretend to be victims of a careless little mistake, or two, or three, and who's the wiser?
Let's instead have full disclosure. Name all the names, and let the representatives plead their cases. The public should put this sordid show in context: Most voting records include public betrayals far more serious than personal check bouncing. But it should be, in any case, up to the voters, not the ethics committee, to decide which abuses are serious and which are not.
by CNB