One Of Congress’s Finer Moments

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial in its November 28, 2007 edition about the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the world-wide battle against public corruption. “Global Cleansing” is available here (but the online WSJ is still by subscription only).

Here’s a sample: “Improving the rule of law in developing countries, which the EU and the U.S. ought to make a stringent condition for aid, is one of the best ways to fight corruption. But if there is a problem with culture, let’s start with breaking Western corporate culture.

“That’s just what prosecutors and lawmakers, spurred on by activist groups such as Transparency International, have tried to do. The U.S. took the lead in 1977 with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which made it a crime for American nationals to pay off foreigners abroad in the course of business. Seen as quixotic at the time, passage of this law is now viewed as one of Congress’s finer moments.” [emphasis added]