If Professor Harold Hill (“The Music Man”) were here today, we’d hear: “Ya got trouble here in America – Corruption with a capital ‘C,’ that rhymes with ‘T,’ that stands for ‘Trump!’”

But then here comes Bob the Builder on PBS Kids: “Can we fix it? Yes we can!”

And who’s that with Bob? It’s our Democratic Congress next January! They’re putting on hard hats and singing:  “C-O-R-R-U-P-T!  That’s the word for G.O.P.!”

Democrats have a reform plan (read on below), and they’re ready to go.  

It’s 2007 over again, when Democrats cleaned up after Tom DeLay’s pay-to-play “K Street Project” and Jack Abramoff’s scams and bribes. The new Democratic majority passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.  But DeLay and Abramoff were pipsqueaks compared to Donald Trump and his Forty Thieves.

In fact, nothing in our history comes close to the Travesties of Trump.  

Teapot Dome, a 1920s scandal that made my sixty-grade history book, was nothing more than a Secretary of the Interior who gave an oil lease in exchange for millions.  He covered all his tracks except the bribe itself! 

Richard Nixon couldn’t bring himself to destroy the tapes.

Amateurs, these guys were amateurs at scandal.

Trump’s presidency is his cash cow.  He kept his business interests and added a D.C. hotel.  And fees for members at Mar-a-Lago doubled to $200,000.  And he doesn’t cover it up.  He’s being who he is.  

So when he chose his Cabinet, he did indeed wanted yes-people.  But he also wanted people comfortable to him – like Nixon picked Spiro Agnew as his vice-president.

Inauguration Day in 2017, Obama folk, straight arrows for eight years, turned over their crispy clean offices to snorting pigs who headed straight for the public trough to get their share.

Scott Pruitt, our man at Environment Protection, used a private email account to keep in touch with industry cronies, lived in D.C. for $50 a month in a lobbyist’s condo, the junket to Morocco with an entourage – and incidental time in Paris.

Health Services Tom Price chartered aircraft for trips when commercial flights were available.

Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin took his wife and an entourage on a nine-day frolic in Europe that included free Wimbledon tickets.  And doctored emails were involved, too.

It’s like a corruption contagion. The boss himself practices greed in the open, and his underlings, already inclined that way, catch the virus.

To all this, add the grassroots corruption that came from the Republican National Committee, not Donald Trump – the blatant gerrymandering and voter suppression that took place in states where Republicans had state legislature control and Republican governors.

In late June, Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes and 163 other Democrats filed House Resolution 975, the “By-the-People Resolution” that would do the following (from Sarbanes’ website):

 • Expanding access to the ballot box;

• Promoting national automatic voter registration;

• Ending partisan redistricting by establishing state-based, independent commissions;

• Restoring the integrity of the Voting Rights Act;

• Protecting the integrity of the election system;

• Ending the revolving door of special interests into and out of government;

• Expanding ethics laws to apply to the president and to promote greater accountability of the chief executive;

• Reforming the Office of Government Ethics;

• Updating the Lobbying Disclosure Act and prohibiting bundled campaign contributions from lobbyists;

• Strengthening bribery laws to guard against public officials profiting from public service;

• Empowering small donors and diminishing the influence of big-money campaign donors;

• Disclosing “secret money” and promoting transparency of political spending;

• Amending the Constitution to reassert Congress’ authority to regulate political spending and overturn the Citizens United ruling;

• Preventing foreign interference in our elections;

• Restoring function to the Federal Election Commission; and

• Strengthening coordination law to prevent candidate-affiliated Super PACs.

If Democrats take the House in November, they will pass these reforms.

Then, it’s up to Us, the People, to shame a Republican Senate to do the right thing and go along. 

And failing there, we take the Senate in 2020, when a whole bunch of Senate Republicans are up for re-election, and many will retire.

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Lee Ballard lives in Mars Hill.  For more “stuff Ballard wrote,” visit mountainsnail.com.