US House votes ethics rules

Tittle : Us House votes tougher ethics rules
Source: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/ (The World)
Date of publication: Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Vocabulary:

- provisions: a condition or an agreement in a legal document.
- disclosure: (formal) the act of making something known or public that was previously secret.
- pet: that you are very interested in: pet project.
- lobby: to try to influence a politician or the government and persuade them to support or oppose a change in the law.
- aide: a person who helps another person, especially a politician in their job.
- earmarks: to decide that something will be used for a particular purpose, or to state that something will happen to somebody or someting in the future.
- dole (dole something out): to give out an amount of food, money, etc. to a number of people in a group.
- peddle: influence-peddling scandals: to spread an idea or story in order to get people to accept it.

Main Ideas:
- The US House of Representatives approved legislation to toughen congressional ethics and lobbying rules and laws.
- Previsions require disclosure of projects slipped into masive spending measures, prhibit pensions to lawmakers convicted of bribery and disclosure of campaign domations lobbyists.
- The House passed the meassure and sent it to the Senate.
- A number of Senate Republicans have complained the meassure does not go far enough but a Senate aide said most Republicans appear to support it.
- Advocacy groups have urged its passage and President G. Bush is expected to sign the legislation into law.
- What Democrats denounced as a Republican culture of corruption in Congress was a major factor in last year's congresional elections.
- Republican Reps.Bob Ney (Ohio) and Randy Duke Cunningham (California) were convicted to bribery.
- But problems were not confined only to Republicans, democratic Rep. Willian Jeferson (Lousiana) was disclosure of an expansion of pet projects placed in big spending bills.
- The bill would require that all earmarks be identified on the Internet before final congressional passage so that they could be challenged.
- The measure would also prohibit lobbyist paid parties in their honour and prohibit lobbyist from providing members gifts.

Personal Reaction:

Democratic leader Stengy Hoyer (Maryland) declared that "the Congress that was elected last November is pledging to clean up the culture of corruption". To believe that this is what is actually happening may be quite difficult for American citizens taking into account that there have been many cases that involved members of the Congress in bribery. And that the US House votes tougher ethic rules is just one first step necessary to stop any wrong doing from part of its members.
This step should have been taken long time ago. Maybe is not casual that the legislation is passed to the Congress during these days, because the US is preparing for next year elections. Democrats won power recently because a spate of mostly Republican scandal took place. And the dispute among the two parties is for sure going to rise stronger as the next year elections come closer.
Despite of what an electional atmosphere can cause whithin politicians and their campaigns, ethic rules should be impossed in every government. Competition has got quite inside the political world, everywhere, and laws should start to affect them. This first step to end up with the mentioned problem is the first step to a possible solution, which can probably deal with the actual political reality that make most of people fell very discoraged towars it.