Let’s say you’re a lobbyist who wants to do something special for a Congressman who sits on a committee which might, in the future, investigate you. Or perhaps that committee develops the wording in legislation that could affect you. While Congressional rules prohibit your paying for a trip to Mexico for that Congressman, those same rules to not prohibit the trip being funded by a non-profit organization. What is a lobbyist to do?
I’d say the simple answer is to donate money to that non-profit with the stipulation that it is to pay for the Congressman’s trip, with a little extra to sweeten the pot–let’s call it a handling fee.
Oops. You’ve already paid for that trip, but now Congress is beginning to look at such things and you’re worried your Congressman may get his hand slapped? Don’t worry. You can still get away with it by giving the non-profit some cash and asking them to “pick up the tab” anyway. Now everything is all nice, and your Congressman is even more pleased. You’ve actually managed to make him look good.
That’s how one Congressman handled the problem.
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) even asked the ethics committee to investigate him after a reporter for the newspaper Roll Call pointed out that a travel disclosure form from 2001 listed the lobbying firm Rooney Group International as paying for a $1,782 trip to Boston, which would be a violation of House rules.
Abercrombie’s aides said they have since determined that the lobbying firm’s expenses were reimbursed by the nonprofit group that Abercrombie addressed on the trip, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts.
All of this has our “representatives” scrambling like cockroaches caught in the light. Surprise! Tom DeLay isn’t the only one who may be ethically-challenged. Whodathunkit?
The PoliticalMoneyLine study reviewed 5,410 trips taken by 605 members of the House and Senate. Democratic lawmakers had the edge, taking 3,025 trips, to 2,375 trips for GOP members.
The No. 1 trip-taker in dollar terms was Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Sensenbrenner took 19 trips valued at $168,000.
In contrast, DeLay finished 28th by taking 14 trips valued at $94,568.
Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., took the most trips – 63. But Ford’s less expensive domestic jaunts only totaled $61,000.
Of course, the best way to get around all these restrictions, and manage to avoid the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) at the same time is to start your own non-profit organization. Problem solved.
For the record what, exactly, has DeLay done that violated any rules. Maybe I’m just missing something, but the trip that people were making a big deal about was, by my limited understanding of such things, on the up and up.
Comment by Tom — April 26, 2005 @ 11:50 am
To my knowledge, he is being tried on television for paying family members to work in his campaign (something Pelosi and many others have done) and for taking trips which were paid for by lobbyists. Whether any of the accusations are true or not we’ll not find out in the nightly news. And we’ll not hear what the charges really are on television are because those things are so common in the halls of Congress.
Comment by Bunker — April 26, 2005 @ 11:56 am