Congress Members Quotes
15% of the entire Brazilian national legislature were accused of taking bribes, and most member of the ruling party had not even been investigated yet.
implicit in the weak ethics rules of the U.S. House of Representatives
At that time there was a much greater lag from election to office taking.
Louis had maintained that the earmark was a cowardly and corrupt way of a congressman bringing pork back to their districts and paying back campaign contributors. He argued that if what the Congressmen were doing were right, why not introduce a bill publicly, debate it, defend it, and try to get a majority for it rather than sneak it in some large piece of legislation without anyone knowing who even introduced the legislation or got the pork into the bill.