How to keep track of all the scandals afflicting Congress? And what to do about them?

The most-heard diagnosis is that the problem is “money in politics.” And the most-heard prescription is “campaign finance reform.” But if money isn’t the real source of Capitol Hill sickness, then money reform will have no effect.

The most egregious form of “money in politics,” bribery, is already illegal. Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., for example, is doing 8 years in prison for taking $2.4 million in bribes.

So long as human beings are human, some of them will succumb to temptation, including criminal temptation. The obvious answer is enforcement of existing laws, just as we enforce laws against other crimes. That’s not an exciting approach, but it seems to work as well as anything.

Yet, concern over “money in politics” has led to calls for a more radical legal “cure.” David Sirota, author of “Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government – and How We Take It Back,” argues that the problem in American politics isn’t illegal bribery, a la Cunningham. Instead, the real problem is the “legalized bribery” of the current system in which private individuals finance campaigns. The solution, according to Sirota and many others, is the full public financing of elections.

But, in fact, we already have substantially public funding for elections – or, more precisely, re-elections. Any incumbent member of Congress can easily raise a couple million dollars for his or her re-election, but that dollop of private money is dwarfed by the amount of public money that the same politico can mobilize from the federal government.

As an example, consider the phenomenon of “earmarking” – legislators allocating funds for specific pork-barrel projects to benefit the folks back home, such as the infamous $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska. Such earmarks are estimated to cost up to $45 billion. You can buy a lot of headlines with that much money; the taxpayers, therefore, are already providing “public funding” for campaigns.

But wait, there’s more. Consider the new prescription drug program for Medicare, which will cost $120 billion or so a year, about $3,300 per senior citizen. Is there any lawmaker on Capitol Hill who doesn’t plan on taking credit, come re-election time, for helping seniors take full advantage of this spending spigot?

And, of course, the federal government proposes to spend $2.7 trillion next year, about $9,000 per person. Every federal elected official’s Web site argues that all that money is being spent to help Deserving People Just Like You. And how can that not be good politics?

The answer, of course, is that federal spending is great politics. That’s one reason members of Congress are almost all re-elected, every year. They’ve got the system wired.

But now we come to the real corruption on Capitol Hill, which has little to do with money and everything to do with the sense that normal standards don’t apply. Why, for example, did Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., slug that Capitol cop in March? Because she thought she could get away with it, that’s why. Why did Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., think that he could drive drunk – oops, drive Ambien – and get special treatment from authorities last week? Because that’s the way it has always been for him.

Private cash isn’t the problem on Capitol Hill. Public spending is more of a problem, but the biggest problem of all is the accumulated arrogance of absolute power. There’s only one cure for that deep soul-corruption: Take the power away. Defeat for re-election is one remedy; another remedy is term limits.

Yet, opposition to both of those remedies – elections that incumbents can’t buy with public money, and term limits – is the quickest way to unite officeholders of both parties. When real reform is proposed, that’s when the ruling class unites around its perpetualized, tax-financed power.