Victory For K Street

David Donnelly

March 31, 2006

David Donnelly is the national campaigns director of the Public Campaign Action Fund.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Miami sentenced disgraced and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to 70 months in prison. Within a few hours, some 900 miles away, the U.S. Senate passed a lobbying “reform” bill that sentenced America to ongoing scandal.

The contrast was striking. With irony thicker than a wad of bills, Abramoff began to atone, but our elected officials did not.

Before receiving his sentence for a wire fraud conviction connected to his bizarre purchase of a casino fleet in Florida, the former lobbyist told federal judge Paul C. Huck that, “In the past two years, I have started the process of becoming a new man.” Abramoff is cooperating with federal prosecutors on a corruption investigation that is said to involve as many as 20 federal officeholders and congressional and Bush administration employees.