NATION, Page 18Have We Gone Too Far?Finger pointing over ethics has convulsed the Capitol anddestroyed Jim Wright, but the real scandal with Congress isfar more widespreadBy Margaret Carlson
The House of Representatives last Wednesday was part theater,
part courtroom and part confessional. As his wife Betty wept in
the visitors' gallery, Speaker Jim Wright played defense attorney,
arguing away each charge against him; thespian, wiping his brow and
lowering his voice to a whisper; and penitent: "Are there things
I would do differently? Oh, boy." As the minutes ticked away --
Wright took more than an hour -- some began to wonder whether he
was giving a resignation speech or making another plea for
forgiveness. Finally the words that had caught in his throat for
so long passed his lips: "Let me give you back this job you gave
to me."
While that was the announcement the House had been anticipating
for days, the packed chamber saved its applause for the moment when
the Speaker, the first ever to be forced from office by allegations
of misconduct, begged for an end to the hostilities in Congress.
Fist clenched, he thundered, "Both political parties must resolve
to bring this period of mindless cannibalism to an end."
The atmosphere in Congress had truly turned poisonous in the
week since Wright's position crumbled and majority whip Tony Coelho
resigned rather than face similar investigations into his
advantageous insider acquisition of a $100,000 junk bond.
Republican Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who first leveled the charges
against Wright, crowed over his victory and declared that at least
ten other Democrats were guilty of similar violations.
Was ethics becoming a tool for character assassination?
Pennsylvania Congressman William Gray, the leading candidate to
replace Coelho, had to ask Attorney General Dick Thornburgh to
investigate the source of an apparently unfounded rumor that the
FBI was looking into whether he had a no-show employee on his
payroll. Majority leader Tom Foley, the likely successor to Wright,
was asked to assure a group of conservative Democrats that nothing
in his background would embarrass them.
Voices in Congress and around Washington denounced an ethics
reign of terror that is destroying reputations and perhaps driving
good people from government. "It's genuinely frightening --
worrisome," says Thomas Mann, a congressional observer for the
Brookings Institution. "The intensive moralizing has painted the
House as utterly corrupt. It damages the institution and the
environment of the Washington community."
The spasm of mudslinging was painful and messy, and certainly
contained a measure of revenge for the earlier Democratic assaults
on such Republicans as John Tower and Ronald Reagan's Attorney
General Ed Meese. The atmosphere also suffered from the fact that
minority whip Gingrich was leading the ethics charge. Gingrich
early on admitted that an investigation of the Speaker was the
G.O.P.'s chance to undo three decades of Democratic dominance in
Congress.
While tattletales are no more appealing on Capitol Hill than
in grammar school and scattered enforcement always seems unfair,
it would be a mistake to conclude that Wright and Coelho are
victims of a deranged political environment dominated by vengeful
Republicans and gooey do-gooders. Although Coelho characterized
himself as a martyr, resigning to save his family and Congress, he
was actually getting out to save his neck. The $100,000 deal
involving one of Michael Milken's junk bonds promised to be every
bit as serious as Wright's transgressions. And the investigations
have the same salutary effect as the state trooper's pulling over
a speeder: everyone slows down for a while.
If anything, these few morality trials do not go nearly far
enough. The real scandal in Congress is not what's illegal; it is
what's legal: the blatant, shameless greasing of congressional
palms that violates good sense, good taste and good government.
Capitol Hill is polluted by money -- campaign money, speech-giving
money, outside money from investments, and money substitutes like
all-expenses-paid vacations and gifts. Fred Wertheimer, president
of the public-interest lobby Common Cause, is looked upon these
days as an ethics ayatullah, but he is not overstating by much when
he says, "Our nation faces a crisis in the way we govern ourselves.
Our nation's capital is addicted to special-interest influence
money. Members of Congress are living professionally and personally
off these funds."
Much of what Congress does legally would put Executive Branch
members behind bars. If White House chief of staff John Sununu, for
example, were to take himself and his eight children to Disneyland
at the expense of the coal industry so it could talk to him about
the disadvantages of clean-air legislation, he would probably be
accused of accepting a bribe. Yet industry-sponsored trips are a
major form of recreation for some members of Congress and their
staffs.
In January, 27 members of Congress, some with wives and
children, left the cold of Washington for the sun of the California
desert courtesy of the tobacco industry. Off they flew, at about
$1,000 per round-trip ticket, and stayed at the luxurious Hyatt
Grand Champions Resort, where suites go for $300 a night, the
greens fees are prepaid, and meals are included. In addition to
expenses, most legislators got spending money -- $1,000 to $2,000
-- for participating in one of three 90-minute panel discussions
that ended at 11:30 a.m. each day so members could tee off at noon.
The delegation at the Hyatt was hardly unique. Just across the
way, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski was
playing in a Bob Hope celebrity golf tournament and managing to
squeeze in speeches to five special-interest groups. And just after
New Year's Day, 18 Senators and their wives were flown to
Scottsdale, Ariz., to play in a charity tennis tournament with
executives of Dow Chemical, Citibank, Morgan Stanley and Motorola.
The next weekend another group of Senators was schussing down the
slopes in Park City, Utah, courtesy of American Express, Delta
Airlines and U S West.
Congressional rules state that lobbyists cannot give members
gifts worth more than $100. But the rule is offset by a loophole
that allows legislators to accept airfare, hotel rooms and meals
if attending a legislative conference, visiting a company plant or
taking part in a celebrity golf or tennis tournament. A spouse or
an aide can go along; children somehow slip in. Common Cause found
that in 1987 Congressmen took eleven years' worth of free vacations
courtesy of this proviso.
Congressmen can also take in cash directly by giving speeches
for honorariums -- a misnomer, since little honor is involved.
Consider the $2,000 the Oshkosh Truck Corp. paid each of six
members of the House Armed Services Committee on April 1, 1987, for
coming to breakfast. The eggs had barely been digested when, a few
hours later, an Armed Services subcommittee voted to purchase 500
more trucks from Oshkosh than the Army wanted.
Members of the House and Senate took in more than $9 million
in honorariums last year. The more powerful the legislators, the
more invitations come their way. Freshman Representatives without
a good committee assignment hardly get invited at all, but Dan
Rostenkowski, whose committee writes the tax bills, collected the
most money of all, $222,500. Jim Wright so easily surpassed the
$34,500 that legislators are allowed to keep for personal use that
he allegedly used sales of his book to get around the limit.
Members can also easily talk their way around the $100 cap on
gifts from a lobbyist. Former Tennessee Congressman Bill Boner
argued successfully that a camper given to him by the Recreational
Vehicle Industry Association was not a gift because he used it on
a fact-finding trip. Senator Orrin Hatch received a $7,500
gem-encrusted gold ring inscribed WITH LOVE FROM ALI after the Utah
Republican introduced a bill to allow Muhammad Ali and others
similarly situated to sue the Government over wrongful
draft-evasion convictions. Hatch laughed off any notion that the
ring was tied to the bill. "(Ali) said he would beat me up if I
didn't take it."
But $7,500 rings and $2,000 for a plant walk-through almost
seem laughable next to the huge sums that can be amassed through
campaign contributions. Even though more than 90% of congressional
incumbents are re-elected, almost all against token opposition, a
bulging campaign treasury is useful to have anyway: it scares away
potential challengers, and members elected before 1980 can keep the
money when they leave, as a kind of IRA with no strings attached.
The very best part about campaign contributions is that they
don't have to be spent on campaigns. Colorado's Democratic Senator
Tim Wirth used his campaign fund to fly himself and his wife to the
1987 Super Bowl. Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii used
$14,053 for restaurant meals -- some of which, according to
receipts submitted, curiously took place at Circuit City, an
electronics-equipment store. North Carolina's Democratic
Congressman Charles Rose bought a Jeep. South Dakota's Democratic
Senator Larry Pressler had a Canada goose stuffed for $225.75,
because he felt it would promote goose hunting in his state.
Like honorariums, campaign money follows power. Of the $172.4
million in political action committee contributions in 1988, fully
70% went to incumbents. Nor did the money stop flowing when the
election was over: $2.4 million went to incumbents after last Nov.
9. Senate Finance chairman Lloyd Bentsen collected the most PAC
money -- $2.4 million -- demonstrating that he didn't really need
to organize that $10,000 breakfast club. Richard Gephardt, Tom
Foley's probable replacement as Democratic majority leader, led
House members with $610,107. Agriculture Committee member Bill
Emerson followed with $579,478, Tom Foley with $575,086, and
minority leader Robert Michel with $555,340. Banking Committee
member David Dreier, New York's Stephen Solarz and the ever
prosperous Dan Rostenkowski all have more than $1 million in their
campaign treasuries.
Perhaps the worst part of the current culture is the amount of
time and attention elected officials lavish not on the general
public but on people who can lavish money on them. Members of
Congress take to calling their contributors friends. The confusion
makes for some convoluted rationalizations. A friend, the reasoning
goes, can cut a member in on a lucrative investment, treat him to
a luxurious vacation and supply him with cash, not because he has
an interest in a one-line amendment to a bill that will save his
industry millions of dollars, but because he is, well, a friend.
Perhaps Tony Coelho really believed it when he said that junk-bond
wizard Michael Milken "is constantly thinking about what can be
done to make this a better world." Now under indictment, Milken
faces the prospect of doing his thinking in prison.
Eventually a legislator finds it easier to understand the
plight of the constituent-friend who would be hurt by a bill
cracking down on reckless savings and loan executives than the
plight of a constituent he does not know -- Joe Sixpack faithfully
depositing his weekly savings into a 5% passbook account. When
friends of Wright and Coelho who were heading up failing S & Ls
came under investigation for fraud, the Democratic leaders were not
only willing to take their calls and visits but to stall
legislation and a federal investigation that would have cracked
down on these people.
As more and more thrift executives got into trouble in 1987
and 1988, S & L PACs simply stepped up their campaign giving; by
the time Washington finally got around to addressing the S & L
crisis this year, the cost of a bailout had swollen to an
outrageous $158 billion or more over the next eleven years. Over
the past three elections, according to the Wall Street Journal, the
S & Ls gave $4.5 million to the members of Congress willing to
protect them. House Banking Committee member Jim Leach, an Iowa
Republican who refuses to take PAC money, believes this may be the
disgrace that brings down the current congressional establishment.
"We're looking at an eleven-figure fraud story that's bigger than
Teapot Dome," he says.
The public may be paying for the S & L fraud well into the next
century. Even so, it seems unable to make the connection between
such outrages and a permanent government that too often is up for
sale to private interests. The notion that public service might
require some sacrifice has become a quaint relic. Working in
government, instead, has come to be seen as a way to enrich
oneself. Public officials remain endlessly capable of rationalizing
the trading of their office for private gain: we don't get paid
enough; everybody does it; we could make much more in the private
sector.
Oddly enough, though, few legislators voluntarily leave for
private life. Congressmen routinely run for re-election; Capitol
Hill salaries are no secret to politicians who spend years -- and
a great deal of money -- trying to get into the club. What goes
unmentioned in all the caterwauling about the sacrifices of public
service is the joy it offers. Public officials lead interesting
lives: they all have the opportunity to make a difference; some
even make history. Compared with underappreciated professions like
teaching and nursing, where doing well takes a backseat to doing
good, Congressmen are handsomely paid. The days of politicians like
Lyndon Johnson amassing a fortune may be over, but few people leave
public service poorer than when they entered it.
It does not follow, however, that public servants should be
paid a pittance. Yet right now the public seems to take the
attitude that giving legislators money only encourages them. In a
poll last week for TIME/CNN, more than 55% of 506 people surveyed
did not feel that Congressmen should be required to give up all
outside income, nor that they should get a raise in exchange for
it.
The 51% increase proposed last January may have seemed like a
pay grab, with elected officials trying to hide behind the judges
and bureaucrats who would have received comparable raises and who
are not in such bad odor with the public. But a reasonable pay
raise keyed to automatic cost of living increases -- in exchange
for a total loophole-proof ban on honorariums, gifts and free trips
-- looks like a bargain when put up against, say, the average $14
billion annual cost of the S & L bailout. Some degree of public
financing of campaigns might also help cut the umbilical cord
between Congress and special interests, but last year
campaign-reform efforts bogged down in partisan fighting and
constitutional questions. This year the issue is hopelessly
deadlocked.
In the 15 years since the Watergate scandal, repeated efforts
at reform have failed because they do not reach the systemic
problem. Public officials are now required to file endless
financial-disclosure reports, limit the private contributions they
accept and wait longer and longer periods of time before they are
allowed to lobby their former colleagues. But disclosure works for
Congress only if constituents have the opportunity to pore through
the voluminous reports and then vote based on what they find there.
This welter of regulations has done almost nothing to choke off the
cash flow.
Instead, the upshot of this codification has been to replace
a social standard of behavior with a purely legal one. Congressmen
picking up checks at a golf resort no longer have to worry about
whether their conduct is outrageous, only whether it is criminal.
Jim Wright and Tony Coelho are leaving Capitol Hill convinced that
they were operating within House rules. But under the glare of
publicity last week, Congress was being held to a long-overdue
higher standard. In the future, proposed Democratic Congressman Lee
Hamilton of Indiana, the measure of conduct should be, "What
reflects credit on this institution?"
Common Cause's Wertheimer argues that six people in Washington
have the power to reverse the current cycle: the President, the new
Speaker and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and
House. Together they could pull Congress behind them, putting
through effective reforms and purifying the Capitol's polluted
atmosphere. Until then, cynics may be justified in thinking there
are only two kinds of Congressmen: those who get rich, and those
who get caught.
-- Laurence I. Barrett and Nancy Traver/ Washington
