US CONGRESSMEN tread a fine line between legitimate political fundraising and influence-peddling, between friendship with lobbyists and outright corruption.
The House ethics committee is supposed to act as a watchdog. But the committee is so secretive that its members sign oaths promising not to reveal its undertakings. Inquiries rarely result in more than a slap on the wrist in the form of a private letter.
Now a leaked confidential report, prepared by the committee in July and detailed in yesterday’s Washington Post, has provided a rare glimpse into the cesspool of Capitol Hill politics. It became public only because a junior staffer on the ethics committee inadvertently posted the report on a file-sharing network while working at home. Typically, the staffer – not the suspect congressmen – was fired.
The most damning information concerned the investigation of seven members of the House appropriations defence sub-committee, which is in charge of Pentagon spending. They are suspected of “accepting contributions or other items of value from PMA’s PAC (political action committee) in exchange for an official act”. Translation: the congressmen took money from PMA, a lobbying group founded by Paul Magliocchetti, a former Capitol Hill aide, then voted for defence contracts for Magliocchetti’s clients.
According to the Congressional Quarterly and Taxpayers for Common Sense, quoted by the Washington Post, the seven congressmen and women received more than $6.2 million in contributions from PMA over a decade. Could these gifts have been unrelated to the $200 million in “earmarks”, or congressionally directed federal funds, which the subcommittee steered to PMA clients?
Congressman Devin Nunes of California told the ethics committee that a PMA lobbyist threatened him, saying his defence contractor client would leave Nunes’ district and take dozens of jobs with him if Nunes didn’t vote for his earmark.
“I didn’t appreciate being threatened,” Nunes told the Post. “To me, it was a symptom of the disease we have in Congress, where a lot of members have simply gotten addicted to contributions from companies that are getting their earmarks.” Influence over defence appropriations earned PMA $114 million and made it one of the top 10 lobby groups in Washington. PMA closed down after the FBI raided its offices for records on political donations last year, on the orders of the justice department.
Don Fleming, the lobbyist who allegedly threatened congressman Nunes, has since found a new job with another lobby group called Flagship Government Relations.
In a statement this week, Fleming said he “always adhered to the strictest code of professional ethics” and noted that “an important responsibility of any government relations professional is to communicate to policymakers the impact that their decisions have on our clients.”
President Barack Obama promised to bring about change in Washington “without the same policies, the same lobbyists, or the same Washington culture.” But lobbyists have made a joke of the president’s puritan leanings.
Heather Podesta, a prominent lobbyist, wore a scarlett “L” to the Democratic convention last year. The Centre for Responsive Politics says there are still 12,500 registered lobbyists in Washington, which works out to about 23 for every member of Congress.
Congressman James Moran from Virginia is a senior member of the defence panel whose relations with PMA are under investigation by the ethics committee. His former chief of staff became a lobbyist for PMA. Moran told the Post that because Magliocchetti was practically the only Democratic defence lobbyist, “when you needed to raise money for the Democratic campaign committee, he was always the first one you went to.”
At a fundraiser for the Democratic congressional campaign committee at Moran’s home last year, attended by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Magliocchetti and PMA clients each wrote cheques for $28,500, the maximum legal donation.