SHAKING OFF SHAKEDOWNS.

The day before the House of Representatives' October 7 vote on the so-called Patients' Bill of Rights, Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-IL) met lobbyists for Aetna, Blue Cross, Cigna, and other major health insurers at the Capitol Hill Club. The cost for bacon, eggs, and an hour with the Speaker of the House? $1,000. "I wouldn't say that was the happiest timing," House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde (R-IL) told NBC's Lisa Myers.

As Elizabeth Drew reports in The Corruption of American Politics, after the GOP won control of Congress in 1994, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) "became famous for keeping a list of contributors to the Republicans and refusing to grant audiences to anyone who hadn't forked over."

Democratic fundraiser Johnny Chung famously explained what it often takes to see the President of the U.S. "The White House is like a subway--you have to put in coins to open the gates."

Equality before the law? Don't forget your checkbook. Like many Americans, CEOs have grown queasy over Washington's cash-for-favors system. They are tired of constantly being frisked for contributions from politicians who, more like private consultants than public servants, charge for "access" to their offices.

As Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Chairman Edward A. Kangas wrote in a New York Times column, "the unrelenting pressure for five- and six-figure political contributions amounts to influence peddling and a corrupting influence. What has been called legal bribery looks like extortion" to many top managers.

Time Warner announced on November 17 that it will stop making corporate "soft money" contributions. Time Warner CEO Gerald M. Levin and President Richard D. Parsons expressed their hope "to make the process by which we Americans choose our political leadership fairer and more open, less subject to manipulation and more representative." Allied Signal, Ameritech, General Motors, and Monsanto are among the companies that simply have stopped feeding the politicians' soft-money jones.

Meanwhile, CEOs such as Sara Lee's John H. Bryan and ITT Industries' Travis Engen have joined forces with other top executives to halt this endless shakedown. They have launched a project called "Investing in the People's Business" through the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a Manhattan-based, business-oriented think tank.

"Our trustees prefer to compete in the marketplace, not in the political arena," says CED President Charles Kolb. "Let's call the politicians' bluff, because nothing's going to happen" if corporations stop funding politicians, Kolb says. "Major companies should be heard, and they will be. Labor unions should be heard, and they will be. But they should not have to pay an entry fee for access to the halls of power."

Kolb urges other companies to stop donating soft money. But if corporations remove their money from politics, won't labor unions and other Democratic-leaning donors see their influence soar? Kolb is not worried. "Republicans have a pretty good donor base when it comes to individual hard-dollar contributions," he says. "When you had competitive elections in the 1980s, soft money was not a factor, and Ronald Reagan was elected and re-elected."

The CED's proposal for a federal $2 match for each $1 of the first $200 donated to a congressional campaign might disappoint free-marketeers. However, CED's call to inflation-adjust campaign donation limits from $1,000 to $3,000 makes sense, as does its suggested ban on all soft money donations from corporations, labor unions, or anyone else.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, got wind of CED's efforts. As one of the GOP's chief bag men, he was not amused. McConnell fired off a July 28 letter to key corporate donors accusing the CED of plotting "an all-out campaign to eviscerate private sector participation in politics, through so-called 'campaign reform.' " McConnell hand-scribbled on several of the letters: "I hope you will resign from CED."

McConnell's tantrum backfired. CED suffered no resignations and quickly saw the number of business leaders in its crusade soar from roughly 100 to 241 today.

With top executives now engaged, corruption reform--as it should be called--could get a serious boost. Once the sole province of "good government" types, CEOs are trying to repair a political funding system that is transforming the Land of the Free into an Indonesian-style corporatist state where public goods like ethanol subsidies and sugar import quotas are auctioned off to wealthy private bidders. In a delicious irony, some of America's most powerful and prosperous people may help return the federal government to the common man.

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is an MSNBC columnist and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, VA.