Unethical aroma in the House

News that seven out of 16 members of the House panel that doles out defense spending have been targeted by House ethics investigators looking into a pay-to-play scandal is evidence that something smells very bad in Congress.

A hapless "junior staffer" reportedly now fired from a job with the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct in Washington inadvertently made public some of the inner workings of that secretive body. But sunlight is a disinfectant, and the disclosure should shame legislators into ending the ugly games they have been playing with public money.

An internal committee document, found on an Internet file-sharing site where it was not supposed to be, showed that more than 30 representatives and several aides were under investigation during the summer for a variety of alleged breaches of House rules. Committee chair Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., alerting the House to the security breach, said, "No inference to any misconduct can be made from the fact that a matter is simply before the committee."

But it is significant that the seven members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee are being subjected to two parallel ethics investigations, one by Ms. Lofgren's panel and the other by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an investigative agency. The ethics committee document says OCE investigators are looking at subcommittee members who may have been "accepting contributions or other items of value from PMA's PAC in exchange for an official act."

The reference to PMA and its political action committee concerns a now-defunct lobbying group with close links to the defense subcommittee. Its founder, Paul Magliochetti, had been a staffer on the subcommittee, and a number of other lobbyists for the group had worked for or with its members.

Last year the FBI, as part of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department, raided the offices of the PMA Group and seized records of its political donations and efforts to win earmarks for its clients. This summer it subpoenaed office records of subcommittee member Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., as part of the same probe.

The ethics committee document says the defense appropriations subcommittee chairman, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., is among those under investigation, along with Rep. Visclosky and Democrats Norm Dicks of Washington, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and James Moran of Virginia, and Republicans C.W. Young of Florida and Todd Tiahrt of Kansas.

The Washington Post reports that all had sponsored earmarks for PMA clients and had received political contributions from the firm.

Whether these exchanges crossed the line into criminal behavior or not remains to be proved. But they clearly show an ethical conflict of interest.

Members of Congress should not accept campaign contributions from those who benefit from an earmark.

That ought to be the law.