Free To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich

much-heralded promises of transparency, accountability, and higher ethical standards, the current Congress has featured unprecedented corruption and secrecy.
    During Obama’s presidency, we have seen Democrats ram massive, complex legislation through the House and Senate and sign it into law so fast that members—as well as the American people—had no time to read it.
    We’ve also seen Nancy Pelosi protect Democratic congressmen under criminal investigation. One such congressman, Charles Rangel from New York, who has taken a “leave of absence” from his position as head of the committee that writes our tax laws, is under an ethics committee investigation for alleged tax dodging, filing deficient financial disclosure forms, and other charges. Although the committee “admonished” him—its weakest reprimand—for taking corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean, Pelosi declined to join many of her Democratic colleagues in calling for Rangel to step down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. In fact, in an interview with ABC News’ This Week , Pelosi conceded that the admonishment of Rangel was “not good,” but stressed that Rangel’s actions were “not something that jeopardized our country in any
way.” Is this the new ethical standard we were promised—that corruption is acceptable as long as it doesn’t “jeopardize” the country?
    In fact, under the Democrats, we’ve seen the very apparatuses used to police ethics in Congress made more and more feckless. For example, even though they created the Independent Office of Congressional Ethics, the Democrats failed to give it subpoena power and have ignored its findings.
    Meanwhile, under Democratic control, the ethics committee seems surprisingly eager to clear members of Congress of wrongdoing. The committee cleared two members of Congress who, according to the panel, tacitly tied requests for campaign donations to earmarks that would have benefited the donors. Five others—four congressmen and one delegate—who took the same Caribbean trips as Congressman Rangel were cleared after claiming they did not realize the trips were sponsored by corporations, even though they repeatedly took pictures in front of corporate logos. The ethics committee has even issued guidelines for congressmen on how to get around new rules that prohibit lobbyists from throwing parties in their honor: make sure the parties are honoring more than one member of Congress.
    Most significant, in order to get President Obama’s initiatives approved in Congress, the Democratic leadership used the American people’s money to buy the votes of key senators and congressmen and to pay back their own political allies, behavior that the Founding Fathers rightly called corruption and for which they rebelled against Britain.
    Look, for example, at the shameless bribes used to get wavering Democratic senators to vote for the healthcare bill. These bribes were so outrageous—even by Washington standards—they each earned a nickname:
    • The Louisiana Purchase—Senator Landrieu was promised an additional $300 million in Medicaid funding for Louisiana.
    • The Cornhusker Kickback—Perhaps inspired by his Louisiana colleague, Senator Ben Nelson secured exemptions for Nebraska’s Medicaid payments worth around $100 million. Along with Michigan senator Carl Levin, he also got a carve-out from the insurance fees for his state’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield programs. Moreover, insurance fees for Medigap policies sold by Mutual of Omaha and other Nebraska companies were reduced. As California governor Arnold Schwarzenneger put it, “[Nelson] got the corn, we got the husk.”
    • The U-Con—Senator Chris Dodd was promised $100 million for a medical center in Connecticut.
    • Gator Aid—Senator Bill Nelson inserted a grandfather clause that would protect Florida’s Medicare Advantage program, a $2.5-3 billion buyoff.
    • Handout Montana—Senator Max Baucus obtained Medicare coverage for