Same Cess, Different Pool

Posted by J.D. Dunn on 11.01.2009

Democrats giving 2006 Republicans a run for their corrupt dollar.

&KFor the past two election cycles, we've seen the excision of the most cancerously corrupt Republicans from the right side of the aisle. Gone is Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who resigned in shame after admitting to accepting bribes from Athena Innovative Solutions. Gone is Mark Foley, who admitted to "inappropriate relations" with his young, male staffers. Gone is former House Whip Tom Delay, whose rap sheet is long and still pending (and just wait until his potential cellmates see his Dancing With the Stars footage). Gone is Bob Ney, who pled guilty of conspiring to defraud the government in the Jack Abramoff scandal.
One would think that, with all of these corrupt parasites gone from our government (and this is just the tip of the iceberg), the newly empowered Democrats would at least give it a few cycles before following the siren song of malfeasance.

One would think that, but one would be wrong.

The Washington Post broke the story that 30 current lawmakers are under investigation for ethics violations. Some of the investigations are effectively defunct or banal inquiries, such as that of Jane Harman (D- Calif.) who has been cleared of trading influence for an Israeli lobbyist.

Others, though, are not so easily brushed aside. Take the cases of seven members of the 16-member House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. The committee, chaired by Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) "boasts" nearly half of its members as targets of bribery investigations. At issue is whether the seven members — Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) , James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.), and C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) — steered appropriations fund to the PMA Group in exchange for campaign contributions.

PMA Group is a defense lobbying firm founded by Paul Magliochetti, a former staffer of… Jack Murtha. Magliochetti's company, which folded in 2008 after the FBI raided their offices in a corruption scandal, donated more than $2 million to Murtha's campaign coffers from 2002-06. Murtha, who became Chairman of the Subcommittee when the Democrats returned to power in 2007, steered nearly $95 million to PMA's clients. Congressman Visclosky and Congressman Moran, who also received hefty campaign contributions, earmarked an additional $42 million taxpayer dollars to PMA clients. All told, the seven members of the committee have granted contracts and benefits totaling $200 million to PMA clients.

That Murtha should be involved in a pay-for-play scandal should come as no surprise. Murtha consistently ranks among the most corrupt politicians according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). His involvement in corruption stretches all the way back to the Abscam scandal in the 1980s. Murtha became a hero of the left by becoming the first defense-oriented congressman to vociferously criticize the war in Iraq, an act that seems to have bought him some political cover for his alleged bribery scandals.

Murtha and his defense subcommittee are hardly alone in this, however. Rep. Laura Richardson (D.-Calif.) is under investigation for allegedly receiving preferential treatment in a subprime home-loan scandal. Rep. Maxine Waters (D.-Calif.) takes the award for chutzpah, though, pushing for an earmark to obtain funding for "The Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center," an adult-employment training school. This, of course, is not illegal, but arranging for a meeting OneUnited Bank (of which her husband is a former director) and the U.S. Treasury so that the bank could obtain $12 million in TARP funds just might be.

All of this brings us to the bizarre story surrounding the possible filibuster of healthcare legislation in the Senate. While Waters is under investigation for allegedly helping her husband's bank obtain taxpayer bailout funds, Joe Lieberman (I.-Conn.) and Evan Bayh (D.-Ind.) are openly engaging in policies that make their spouses richer.

Hadassah Lieberman, wife of Joe Lieberman, has a long history of working for healthcare lobbying groups, and in fact, it was her work for Hill & Knowlton — a lobbying firm that has represented everything from Coppertone to cigarettes to foreign dictators — that became a sticking point in Lieberman's 2006 primary. This relationship between husband-Senator and wife-lobbyist makes for an awkward ethical situation to say the least. To be fair, Hadassah Lieberman parted ways with H in the mid-2000s, but the relationship between Sen. Lieberman and the healthcare industry remains.


Lieberman in 2006, courtesy the DailyKos.com

This pales in comparison to the situation Senator Evan Bayh finds himself in. Bayh's wife, Susan, sits on the board of Wellpoint, the largest health insurance company in the U.S.A.. While Mrs. Bayh is paid well in salary, her Wellpoint stock options yield much more when exercised. It's worth noting that, the day following the announcement of a public option in the Senate bill health insurance stocks plunged and spiked just after Lieberman's filibuster announcement.


Courtesy onepennysheet.com

Sen. Bayh has waffled on the filibuster, initially indicating that he'd join Lieberman and Republicans before favoring an up-or-down vote (he'll still oppose the public option on the floor). To his credit, Bayh has banned his staffers from talking to Wellpoint lobbyists, but when one's wife misses out in a potential $400,000 in stock options because of a policy, it doesn't exactly take a lot of lobbying to sway one the other way, does it?

The big ethics violation seems to be that none of this is considered unethical. A judge would certainly have to recuse himself or herself from a case involving a spouse. A doctor can't even treat a spouse in most states, barring emergency. So why then are congressmen and senators given the benefit of the doubt when voting on legislation that affects their spouses' (and, by proxy, their own) bank accounts?

The running joke in the 2006 midterms was that it took Republicans only 10 years to become as corrupt as it took for the Democrats to become in 40 (the span of dominance of the Democrats in the House). Now, it appears that the Democrats are trying to beat that mark by becoming as corrupt in only four years.

If nothing else, the Democrats in congress can claim that they're beating the Republicans in the efficiency of corruption.