Counting House could have something like this:
Choose: +2 Cards or [discard 2 cards, +$1, +1 Buy] <-- not all on the card, just chucking a few ideas into the same pot.
The +2 cards needs to be optional otherwise it would break any combos with deck-into-discard. The benefit of +2 cards is not huge, but helps speed up the general play of Counting House perhaps. I'm not sure it needs a serious boost to each time it's played as that would likely become overpowered, so far that reason I'm less sure about things like +1 Buy as that could a really strong effect each time and would help you pick up coppers - I wonder if that would have a bit too much self-synergy.
Scout:
+1 Card sounds fair, but is rather uninspiring - it essentially makes it a worse version of Cartographer (which is really already is I suppose). What about something a bit more controversial like "gain a VP costing less than 5" ? Or increase the number drawn to 5 or even 6?
Eidt : hah, a couple of my ideas got posted while I typed.