Sauce for the goose

For chutzpah or — let’s be frank — for sheer gall, you have to hand it to the self-appointed “good-government groups.”

These are the watchdogs that want you to believe they are guardians of our democracy, leaders in demanding that Americans have transparent government, that the work of lobbyists and their clients be exposed, and that all earmarks are tagged with the name of the lawmakers who secured them. They’re for honesty and openness and apple pie — for all the upstanding, good things of which right-thinking people approve.

Except that they don’t want you to know who finances them.

Yup, openness and transparency are just the tonic for everyone else, but try to suggest that the watchdogs should accept a bit of openness themselves and they react like a corral of horses spooked by a rattlesnake.

Groups such as Public Citizen, Common Cause and Democracy 21 have made a big deal about the creation of an independent ethics panel to police lawmaker behavior. This newspaper disapproves of the idea, regarding it as an infringement on the sovereignty of Congress.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that such an independent body is a good and necessary idea. The watchdogs want non-lawmakers to be able to file complaints about lawmakers with the panel. And who would such outsiders be? You guessed it: groups such as these very watchdogs. OK, let’s stretch and stipulate that this, too, is a good idea.

An element of the proposed House reform would oblige those who make such complaints to disclose who pays them. Seems reasonable, no? After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune. If a watchdog lodges an ethics complaint against Congressman X, shouldn’t the public know whether the watchdog is financed by people who would benefit by discrediting him? Transparency requires no less. If we need to know who is paying a lobbyist to whisper in a lawmaker’s ear, we also need to know who is paying a watchdog to cast aspersions on elected officials.

But Craig Holman, an advocate for Public Citizen, lamented, “You can imagine how upsetting this is to the donor community.”

Well, as Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio), a supporter of the independent panel, put it to The Hill’s reporter, Alexander Bolton, the watchdogs “can’t have it both ways.”

If a body is created to police Congress and if watchdog groups gain new powers to start investigations by this new policeman, then those groups will have become part of the government and should be subject to the transparency rules they so yearn to impose on everyone else.