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THE juiciest gossip in Washington this week concerns photographs of George Bush shaking hands with Jack Abramoff, a crooked lobbyist. So far, only a few people have seen them, but it cannot be long before they are leaked, published and festooned with amusing captions.

Mr Abramoff, whose clients gave money to at least 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats, pleaded guilty to fraud earlier this month. Since then, the Democrats have attacked the Republican “culture of corruption”, their case bolstered by the admission of Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham that he accepted bribes from defence contractors. And Mr Abramoff is expected to tarnish more reputations in the hope of reducing his sentence.

White House officials admit that Mr Bush has met Mr Abramoff, but deny that the two knew each other well. The president has his picture taken with thousands of people. All you have to do to join a presidential meet-and-greet line is donate a stack of money to the Republican Party. For lobbyists, such donations are a good investment, since the resulting photo may convince gullible clients (a niche market in which Mr Abramoff specialised) that you wield more influence than you do.

Inevitably, both parties are calling for a clean-up. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, vowed last week “to turn the most closed, corrupt Congress in history into the most open and honest Congress in history”. Her party's proposals include banning all gifts from lobbyists to politicians, including free “fact-finding” trips to golf courses, and toughening public disclosure of lobbying activity. The Republican Speaker, Dennis Hastert, suggested a similar package of lobbyist-bashing reforms, equally sensible but equally beside the point.

Lobbying can't be banned—Americans have a constitutional right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances”. And they have an awful lot of grievances. For instance, Ted Townsend, a meat-packing tycoon, is aggrieved that his home state of Iowa has no indoor rainforest. He's been pitching the idea for several years: it would be “the coolest new attraction on Earth”, not to mention a “goose that will lay enormous golden eggs” for Iowa.

In 2003, Mr Townsend gave $3,000 in campaign contributions to his Republican senator, Chuck Grassley. The next year Mr Grassley secured $50m from the federal budget for Mr Townsend's rainforest. There was absolutely nothing illegal about this. Mr Grassley was entitled to accept Mr Townsend's cash, and he no doubt sincerely believes that an indoor rainforest will benefit Iowa.

This story illustrates why influence-peddling is such a problem. Individual lawmakers have immense power to take money out of the public purse for the narrowest of purposes. Any one of them can slip an extra paragraph into a bill to secure funding for a project that may have nothing to do with the bill's stated purpose. Such “earmarks” are often inserted at the last moment and pass without scrutiny.

Projects funded this way are typically those that make sense on someone else's dime. (Iowans, weirdly, have been somewhat reluctant to chip in more than peanuts to their rainforest, prompting Senator Grassley to say he may cut back the federal contribution.) Earmarks are also an open invitation to corruption, since you only have to incentivise one congressman to win a fat slice of federal cash, and there are lots of legal ways to do it.

So long as the contribution conforms with campaign-finance laws and no legislative favour is explicitly traded, you are probably in the clear. And the congressman who takes your money will not consider himself corrupt, because he is not trying to enrich himself. With a few exceptions, such as Duke Cunningham, congressmen solicit money to get re-elected, not to lounge on yachts. From an ordinary citizen's perspective, however, it is not clear how this is better.

Lobbyists are not the disease, merely the symptom. Their numbers (in Washington) have doubled in the past five years, to 35,000, because federal spending has grown larger and more wasteful. Earmarks have proliferated under the Republicans, from 1,439 in 1995 to 13,997 last year. Politicians of both parties love them, because they allow an individual lawmaker to take credit for delivering a specific goody to his constituents.

The worst offenders are usually the most senior members of Congress. Because they sit on powerful committees, they have more power to shower interest groups with taxpayers' money. Those interest groups reward them with campaign donations. After a while, incumbents become so good at raising money that they are impossible to dislodge. In his last race, Senator Grassley spent 47 times more than his challenger and beat him by 42 percentage points.

When it comes to regulations, lobbyists push in many different directions, but when it comes to spending, they almost all push the same way. The lobby for spending less is “tiny to non-existent”, says John Samples of the libertarian Cato Institute.

Lawmakers face perverse incentives. Voters reward them for bringing home the bacon, not for standing back while their colleagues scoff the lot. So, at a time of looming fiscal meltdown, politicians brag about their profligacy. Robert Byrd, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, whose name is carved on to $1 billion-worth of highways and office complexes in West Virginia, says he enjoys being called the “King of Pork”.

And the deficit grew

Ms Pelosi, who secured $115m this year for transport, housing, science and the arts in her needy native San Francisco, proposes an end to “dead-of-night special-interest provisions that turn bills into special-interest giveaways”. In other words, she'd like to make earmarks more transparent, but not get rid of them.

Among Republicans, the most interesting debate is between the three candidates to succeed Tom DeLay, the legally troubled House leader (see article). Roy Blunt, John Boehner and John Shadegg all agree with Ms Pelosi that earmarks should be more transparent. Critics charge, however, that Mr Blunt and Mr Boehner are too cosy with lobbyists to make plausible champions of reform. Small-government enthusiasts tend to back Mr Shadegg, who wants to force Congress to spend less and abide by its own budgets.

Restrictions on lobbying would be good, as can be deduced from the fact that the lobbying industry is already lobbying against them. And greater scrutiny of earmarks would doubtless weed out a few cowgirl museums and tattoo-removal programmes. But there is a larger challenge.

The government's estimated liabilities (including future obligations under Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) jumped from $20 trillion in 2000 to $43 trillion in 2004, according to the Government Accountability Office. That implies a fiscal catastrophe that Congress doesn't seem serious about averting, perhaps because that would mean placing restrictions on itself, not just on lobbyists.