Congressional Scandals
by Marion Edwyn Harrison

No recent Congressional scandal or appearance of scandal has equaled the drama of $90,000.00 all neatly rolled up in the freezer of Representative William J. Jefferson (D-LA). But scandals and grounds for scandal keep seeping into public view. Profligate and outrageous earmarks may be just as bad. Millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money are diverted to projects (worthy or otherwise) of United States Senators and Representatives who exercise the necessary temerity and clout.

Jefferson is far from alone. Now we read that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) has reaped a windfall profit in real estate. The accusation is that the Speaker in 2005 earmarked appropriations totaling some $207 million of Federal taxpayers’ money to construct a highway and an interchange near Plano, Illinois, in his Congressional district. All Federal highways, at least presumptively, are part of our interstate commerce system and, therefore, a Constitutionally permissible Federal expenditure. There was some local disagreement as to the worth of this particular proposed construction but that does not trigger a Constitutional question.

The question, rather, is that of the Speaker’s motivation and lack of disclosure. The Speaker and two partners in 2002 lawfully purchased some 196 acres of a largely landlocked site without major roadway access. That they did so through a trust, without public disclosure of ownership interest, may suggest motivation.

In 2005, shortly after the appropriation, the land trust of which the Speaker was an equity owner sold the land to a developer.  The Speaker’s share of the gross profit apparently was about $ 1.8 million. The Speaker, so far as one can discern, violated neither a statute nor a House ethics rule. The Speaker is, of course, by statute is second in line for the Presidency should fatal tragedy overcome the President and Vice President. Were he not Speaker likely even less attention would have been focused upon this profitable quasi-secret deal. Certainly there is much worse among Members of both parties but is this action worthy of his high office?

It is nickels and dimes by comparison, the $ 500,000.00 of Federal taxpayers’ money earmarked to build a swimming pool in Banning, California, in rapidly growing Riverside County by Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA). On the one hand, this misuse of non-Banning taxpayers’ money did not peculiarly benefit Mr. Lewis. On the other hand, it illustrates the Constitutional infirmity of much earmarking. There is no Constitutional or other Federal purpose in a Banning swimming pool, just a give-away by a Member of Congress of taxpayers’ money from across the country to his constituents in Banning.

The foregoing two incidents also dramatize the decline in propriety of Congressional appropriations. In the 80th Congress (1947 - 1948) all of Riverside, Imperial and Orange Counties comprised a single Congressional district. Population explosion now has expanded that one district into almost ten. It was represented by the late John Phillips, who lived in Banning. “JP,” as he allowed a few of us to call him, honored this writer by appointing him a House page. JP was Chairman of the Independent Offices Subcommittee of Appropriations - the largest appropriations jurisdiction outside national defense.

JP prided himself upon the extent to which he successfully cut appropriations requests from the Harry S. Truman White House (although, a strong conservative, JP and his wife did not dislike the Trumans and the wives liked one another). The evil of earmarks as we know them had not been invented. If there were sufficient JP equivalents in Congress today there would be few, if any, earmarks. Likewise, if the likes of the late John Taber, of Auburn, New York, were Chairman of the full Appropriations Committee, JP equivalents would chair the subcommittees and the House, which originates all appropriations bills, would be reducing Federal expenditures - not uncontrollably, and sometimes unethically, raising them.

We need more John Taber’s and John Phillips’ in Congress today and fewer who enrich themselves or hand out other people’s goodies to their constituents.

Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq. is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.