Newsmax reports that Republicans in the House of Representatives are looking to ban trips by congressmen that are paid with private funds.

The article doesn’t mention that the Republicans will actually decrease the number of trips, so obviously that means government travel budgets will increase. Nice.

One has to wonder with these evil lobbyists, don’t the congressmen have a choice as to whether gifts are accepted? Wasn’t there a nice exodus of Abramoff’s funds from various campaigns? It seems public disclosure was enough of a force for officials to reject money from “bad people”. The current system worked. Sing it to Pink Floyd: we don’t need no legislation.

If we have to protect our lawmakers from bad decision-making, should we not instead replace our apparently incapable lawmakers with those more capable?