“A gaffe happens when someone slips up and tells the truth,” goes the old Washington saw. But there is a corollary: A scandal occurs when someone gets caught doing what everyone else is doing. Gambling in the casino!?! He had an affair?!? Ethics impropriety in the U.S. Congress!?! Clutch the pearls, call for an investigation, restore order.
Something like this is at play in the current excoriation of Charlie Rangel, who has been accused by the House Committee On Standards of Official Conduct of improperly raising money from companies with business before his committee for a non-profit cause–an academic center named in his honor–that amounted to a personal benefit. In a new story on Time.com, I explain why this sin is not exceptional in anything more than some of the specifics, like the type of stationary he used and the fact that, at one point, the academic center planned to give him an office. Some other examples, from my story, with different fact patterns that fit the same theme:
Reasonable persons, if they can still be found in Washington, might find interest in the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, for which Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell raised funds from many of the same companies that seek his legislative favor. The defense contractor United Defense, for instance, pledged $500,000 to the center after its founding in 1991. In the current 2010 budget, McConnell requested at least $17 million in earmarks for BAE, the company that now owns United Defense, including money for a former United Defense plant in Kentucky. The McConnell Center is housed in the same building as the archives of McConnell and his wife, along with a museum-style exhibit showing the couple’s childhood photos. Though the archives are technically funded separately, the archivist reports to the head of the McConnell-backed center, which uses the archives as an educational tool, says a university spokeswoman. “I don’t see any comparability to the Rangel matter,” McConnell said in a recent interview on Fox News.*
Academic centers are by no means the only questionable game in town. Consider the eponymous Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel, which mentors Baltimore-area teenagers with trips to the Holy Land. In July of 2009, one week after the Democratic Congressman praised the program in a newspaper article, the cable giant Comcast made a $25,000 contribution, followed by another check for $35,000, which was celebrated by Cummings at a March gala dinner. Cummings, meanwhile, sent two letters in the past year to the Federal Communications Commission, one siding with Comcast to oppose new Net-neutrality rules and the other supporting the company’s proposed merger with NBC Universal. A Cummings spokesman says the fundraising has “always been in compliance with the rules and regulations” and did not influence the Congressman’s official actions.
Then there are the oil paintings. After Tennessee’s Bart Gordon, the head of the Science and Technology Committee, said he would not run for re-election this year, his former chief of staff, Chuck Atkins, began soliciting contributions to pay for Gordon’s official congressional portrait. Nissan North America, which benefited from a $1.4 billion Energy Department grant Gordon supported, chipped in $5,000. Bridgestone Americas, which benefited from Gordon’s support for a tax on Chinese tires, gave $2,500.
There are lots of other examples, some of which I mention in the story, others that I don’t mention. The New York Times had a fine story last week with a number of other examples of members taking money for academic programs in their honor. If you want to find out if your own senator or congressman has been involved in fund raising for a non-profit, there is an easily searchable online database of filings since 2008 by companies that lobby before Congress who give to a cause that honors, in some way, a sitting member. I will explain how to access it, after the jump.
First you have to go to this web page for the Lobbying Contributions Database, which is maintained by the Senate Office of Public Records. Check the boxes for “contribution type” and “honoree” and hit submit.
On the next page, under contribution type, select “honorary expenses.” By honoree, type the last name of the member you want to find out about. You will get results in the form of pdf filings, which you then have to sort through. If you go back to the home page, you can also use the same database to search the donations to specific charities, called “payee,” or from specific companies, called “contributor.” Happy hunting.
*The McConnell paragraph from my Time.com story has been changed slightly since it was originally published. A clarification note was appended here.