This is not the exception. This is the nature of government. This is the reason anyone fighting to keep more of the money he earns is called a radical, a racist, an exploiter, etc.
Some members of Congress send tax dollars to companies, colleges and community groups where their spouses, children and parents work as salaried employees, lobbyists or board members, according to an examination of federal disclosure forms and local public records by The Washington Post.
A U.S. senator from South Dakota helped add millions to a Pentagon program his wife evaluated as a contract employee. A Washington congressman boosted the budget of an environmental group that his son ran as executive director. A Texas congresswoman guided millions to a university where her husband served as a vice president.
Those three members are among 16 who have taken actions that aided entities connected to their immediate families. The findings stem from an examination by The Post of all 535 members of the House and Senate, comparing their financial disclosure forms with thousands of public records. The examination uncovered a broad range of connections between the public and private lives of the nation’s lawmakers.
Several of the cases have received previous media attention, raised by local newspapers or campaign opponents, but the practice has continued unabated, The Post found.
Lawmakers said in interviews that the actions they took were not intended to directly benefit their relatives or themselves. Instead, they say, the largesse was meant to assist corporations, educational programs and community organizations that employ, educate and help residents in their congressional districts.
In some cases, the lawmakers sought advice from congressional committees assigned to examine possible conflicts on Capitol Hill. The panels informed them that the practice of earmarking money to the workplaces of relatives is permissible, as long as tax dollars are not going directly to or solely benefitting their husbands, wives, sons or daughters. Several of the lawmakers also certified to congressional committees that neither they nor their immediate family members stood to benefit from the earmark in question.
Members of Congress have more leeway than executive branch officials or individuals in publicly held companies, who operate under stricter conflict-of-interest rules that generally prevent them from taking actions that might benefit businesses or institutions where their relatives work. The legislators set and enforce their own rules, giving themselves broad latitude to take steps that can end up directly benefiting their immediate family.
. . . .
For years, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) has supported a Pentagon program called Starbase that teaches science, math and engineering skills to children in dozens of locations around the country.
Johnson is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Pentagon’s budget. In 2008, Johnson, along with seven other senators, added $4 million to the Starbase budget.
At the time, Johnson’s wife, Barbara, was paid an annual salary of $80,000 as a contract employee to evaluate the program. From 2005 to September, she worked for the Spectrum Group, a lobbying and consulting firm in Alexandria, that has a $1 million Pentagon contract to monitor Starbase. A social worker and educator, Barbara Johnson was also assigned to manage its Web site.
. . . .
Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) is a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which has jurisdiction over the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Energy Department agency is tasked with securing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile and preventing nuclear proliferation.
During the past six years, the congressman has directed the agency to send millions to fund the scholarship program for at-risk high school students headed by his daughter in Arizona. She earns $75,774 a year.
Pastor obtained a $1 million federal grant for the Achieving a College Education program at the Maricopa Community Colleges about four years before his daughter, Laura, was hired as its director in 2005. Since that time, Pastor has earmarked about $4 million from the nuclear agency for the program, records show.
Pastor said he’s proud of the earmarks and pointed out that he has sent money to educational programs across his congressional district in Phoenix. Maricopa’s ACE program provides financial support to high school students who are in danger of not graduating, enabling them to take classes and summer camps to build math and science skills and attend college. While the money goes to the program, Pastor said his daughter’s salary is covered by the college.
“The perception is that you helped your daughter, but if you evaluate the kids who benefited from this, it was worth doing,” the congressman said. “I believe thousands of kids have a better life today because of this program.”
Pastor said he was searching to find ways to support the ACE scholarship program in 2005, when one of his colleagues on the appropriations committee said the nuclear security administration had grants available to fund programs at historically black colleges.
. . . .
The Post found a pattern of members of Congress who earmarked funds for colleges where their relatives were employed or on boards.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) has championed millions in earmarks to the University of Houston while her husband, Elwyn C. Lee, has helped to run the school as a senior administrator.
The congresswoman or her staff have met with other top university officials to discuss funding for school programs.
“We greatly appreciate the Congresswoman’s support over the years and hope that she can help us again this year with these requests,” a school official wrote to a staff assistant for the lawmaker in May 2011, according to internal e-mails obtained through a public records request.
Elwyn Lee has worked at the university since 1978. Twenty years later, he had risen to dual executive roles: vice president of student affairs for the university and vice chancellor of student affairs for the university system. Last March, he was named the university’s vice president for community relations and institutional access.
Since 1994, his salary has almost doubled, to $210,491 a year.
Jackson Lee, who took office in 1995, discloses her husband’s job on her financial disclosure form. She has helped obtain four congressional earmarks for the school totaling about $5.3 million since 2009, according to the university.
In 2009, she co-sponsored two earmarks to the university: $2.4 million for a “National Wind Energy Center,” and $476,000 for a “Center for Clean Fuels and Power Generation.” In 2010, she sponsored a $400,000 earmark to the university for teacher training and professional development and co-sponsored an additional $2 million for the wind center.
Last fiscal year, according to her Web site, she sought $16.5 million more for the university that was blocked by the earmark moratorium.
. . . .
As a member of the House education committee, Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.) has secured six earmarks worth $3.3 million for a scholarship program at Rutgers School of Law in Camden.
His wife, Camille Spinello Andrews, is an associate dean of the law school “in charge of enrollment, scholarships, and special legal programs,” according to the school’s Web site.
More than half the earmarks were secured prior to 2007, before the House began to require that the spending measures be publicly disclosed. The new rules prompted Andrews to seek an ethics opinion that year. The committee concluded there was no conflict because his wife did not have an “ownership interest” in the law school and the earmarks did not “affect the spouse’s salary.”
The following year, one of Andrews’s political opponents turned the earmarks into a campaign issue. Andrews continued to earmark money for the law school scholarship program, filing certifications that stated “neither I nor my spouse has any financial interest in the project.”
. . . .
From 2007 to 2009, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah)requested earmarks worth more $1.5 million for Weber State University in Ogden. Subsequent to those requests but before $1.25 million of them were ultimately secured, the university hired the congressman’s son Shule Bishop as a lobbyist. He serves as director of government relations. The congressman said the earmarks to Weber posed no conflict because none were requested when his son worked there and his son lobbies the state legislature, not Congress.
“There is no connection,” Rob Bishop said.
His spokeswoman, Melissa Subbotin, added that the congressman and his staff interact with Weber’s Washington lobbyist, not Shule Bishop.
“The congressman has been working on behalf of Weber State since he was first elected, which far predates his son’s employment there,” Subbotin noted, adding that the congressman has given earmarks to other universities in Utah.
. . . .
Since joining Congress in 2005, Rep. Daniel Lipinski has continued his father’s tradition of funding projects in Illinois as a member of the same committee. Along the way, the Chicago Democrat has helped to send federal tax dollars to a client of his father’s lobbying practice, Capricorn Communications.
Daniel Lipinski, along with other members of the Illinois congressional delegation, secured $2.5 million in earmarks since taking office for rail projects that are overseen by the Chicago Transit Authority. The CTA is one of William Lipinski’s lobbying clients and has paid the former congressman $766,330.20 in fees since 2007, according to the transit agency. Lipinski’s earmarks for his father’s client were first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2010.
The CTA said in a statement that William Lipinski helps the agency with congressional contacts outside of the Illinois delegation on the House and Senate transportation committees. Other members of the Illinois congressional delegation have also earmarked money for CTA-related projects.
. . . .
Between 2005 and 2010, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) helped secure $21.9 million in earmarks to six clients of Alcalde & Fay, a lobbying firm that employs her daughter, The Post found. During that time, the clients paid the firm more than $1 million in fees to represent them before Congress, records show.
Other earmarks by Brown have been previously reported. She was the sole sponsor of $1.79 million in earmarks to a seventh client, the Community Rehabilitation Center. At the time, her daughter, Shantrel Brown, worked as a lead lobbyist on behalf of the center, the Florida Times-Union reported in 2010.
. . . .
Sen. Bill Nelson, a fellow Democrat from Florida, joined Brown as a co-sponsor of a $750,000 earmark for the rehabilitation center in 2010. When he later discovered that Brown’s daughter was a lobbyist for the center, he decided to withdraw his support.
“We try to do our due diligence. The center had the backing of many community leaders,” Nelson spokesman Bryan Gulley told The Post. “But when we learned her daughter was involved in lobbying for the center, that raised enough concerns that we no longer supported the project.”
(Read more)
So the answer is for someone able to see the problem, able write about the problem, for that person to duck out and go to another country?
Leaving the problem to those creating the problem is really no answer. Not only that it is the wrong answer.
Here is commentary, paraphased from Bryan Crenshaw:
Making right choices in gray areas is difficult. To be aware of the dilemma is not enough. There needs to be a moral sensitivity which remembers to ask the right questions at the right time. To know what is good is not enough? There is a difference between waking up and getting up. There must be specific decision for the right. To be sensitive and aware is good. To make proper decisions is better. The way of victory is to maintain a moral stamina which continues.
Ed K
In general, I think voting with one’s feet is much more powerful than voting in these ridiculous and highly-suspect elections.
So you advocate being a do nothing? Just voting with your feet tells no one why you are voting with your feet. Some have ability to express what the wrong is and help others understand.
What is that statue of Atlas holding up the world? It demonstrates one man carrying a burden. So you are saying if someone understands the burden he should just walk away, vote with his feet?
I guess my goal here on lostrepublic is two-fold. I want to create an archive for myself. I also want to convince people that politicians are exploiters who do not deserve the reverence they usually.
Once the fraud of government legitimizing ideology is revealed, I think they’ll simply go away, but I have a lot of work to do.
For the long run, I’m optimistic.
You state, “I also want to convince people that politicians are exploiters who do not deserve the reverence they usually.”
That is not a true and accurate statement. While it is true for many it is not 100% truthful and you need to grasp that.
I have known many politicians. I have walked away when one like you discribe walks up.
I know some who are very honest, truthful and concerned. You would do well to get off your high horse and meet some good people.
No, up front, you will not agree with everything even some of the good people say, but imply that all who serve in political office are exploiters is a disservice to those who have moral courage.
I am acquainted with a “politician” who you should meet and talk to. No his name is not Ron Paul or Rand Paul, rather he lives in South Carolina and works in Washington, D.C.
However, you put him into “all who serve in political office are exploiters” without giving him a fair hearing.
You are bombastic and iconoclastic in your viewpoint. Your life’s experiences have soured your lust for life.
I have looked evil in the eye, too. And others do not believe me. Others do not believe such evil exist. You have talent to write and tell the truth.
You blindly chastise and dismiss Allen West. I agree he is not perfect, but he gets up and opposes the greater evil.
Rather than take your narrow view of Allen West, review another Youtube and find something positive in what he says.
I suggest you are capable to do so:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYgXGM_AuO8
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J8rJxQ7aRI&feature=relmfu
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I don’t hate life, I just hate the ideology that my wealth needs to taken from me at the point of a gun.
Do you really think I BLIDLY dismiss Allen West? I offered much justification: war in Iran, Patriot Act, NDAA & indefinite detention of American citizens, debt ceiling increase. How many more reasons do I need?