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much less of a concern today than it was in previous eras. And, with measures such as the
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977) and the International Anti-Bribery Act (1998), which
work to increase transparency in international commerce and make it illegal for U.S.
citizens or representatives of U.S. companies to give or accept bribes abroad, the United
States is often on the front line in the struggle against international corruption.

Nonetheless, the popular perception of U.S. public servants’ integrity appears to be
deteriorating, and the U.S. government is frequently seen as more corrupt than those of
Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and most of northwestern Europe. Transparency
International gave the United States a ranking of 20 out of 163 countries surveyed in its
2006 Corruption Perceptions Index, finding that 19 countries had a lower perceived level
of corruption.36 The American public’s growing sense of pervasive government corruption
is apparently due to an expansion of the sphere of behavior that most Americans consider
corrupt, and to the apparent willingness of politicians to engage in, or at least tolerate,
technically legal practices that are widely viewed as unethical.
One example of such questionable behavior is the ever-increasing eagerness of profit-
driven companies and large interest groups to invest heavily in political outcomes.
Collectively, these groups now spend over $2.25 billion a year to lobby Congress, more
than $2.5 billion every other year to influence legislative elections, and another $2 billion
every forth year to elect a president. Many Americans seem to have concluded that interest
groups would not be spending such sums if they were not receiving a clear benefit in the
form of influence over public policy.

Federal officials in recent years have elicited further contempt by failing to pass ethics
reform legislation in the wake of lobbying scandals, continuing to make decisions that
appear to benefit private interests without regard for the public, and failing to adequately
protect whistleblowers even as they draw media attention for exposing evidence of
government fraud, waste, and incompetence.

If the federal government is to quell the growing perception that political corruption is a
significant problem in the United States, it must act aggressively to stamp out unseemly
behavior and work to end practices that fuel the appearance of undue influence. In
addition to enacting meaningful lobbying reform, Congress needs to push for more
vigorous enforcement of existing campaign finance restrictions and pass additional reforms
that reduce the ability of special interests to act on the behalf of any one candidate.
Furthermore, the current and future administrations must resist the temptation to make
appointments based on favoritism and political loyalty, and submit to congressional checks
on questionable executive-branch behavior.

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