Ellen Miller
February 24, 2005

The business of Capitol Hill has become a feeding frenzy for corporate
campaign contributors, to the tune of $600 million in the last election
cycle. Case in point: Rep. Jim McCrery, Bush's right-hand man for Social
Security, who has accepted hundreds of thousands from Wall Street
securities firms. But corruption only thrives when Congress is allowed
to operate beyond the reach of the public eye. Ellen Miller—with the
Project For An Accountable Congress—explains why constituents must be
the checks and balances on corruption.

Ellen Miller is deputy director of the Campaign For America's Future
and co-director of Project For An Accountable Congress .

Americans know all too well the corrupting influence of money on the
political process. But combine rigidly ideological politicians with a
party that has an iron lock on power in Washington and you’ve got the
most corrupt Congress in recent memory.

The right wing has control of the White House and both houses of
Congress, eliminating the checks and balances on power that America’s
founders intended. Campaign contributions—even after reforms—have
soared. The business of Capitol Hill has become a feeding frenzy for
corporate campaign contributors.

The top 50 industry contributions added up to more than $600 million in
the last election cycle alone.

Watch how swiftly the Senate will reward their credit card company
contributors by passing the bankruptcy bill. Barely a month after the
swearing in of the 109th Congress, lawmakers paid off corporations with
the passage of the class action bill—which shields them from liability
for negligence and curbs a citizen’s right to sue.

Now do we have your attention? Next on the agenda, Republicans in
Congress will be pushing a budget that cuts funding for schools even as
it slashes taxes for millionaires, and an energy plan that pays off big
oil interests, while making us more dependent on foreign oil. That's
just a flavor of what the right-wing agenda has in store for this Congress.

Corruption in Congress only survives when politicians are free to
operate outside of the public's watch. By shining a bright light into
Congress' shadowy halls and back rooms, we can make sure that what
happens in the dark is exposed in lawmaker's hometowns—where, after all,
it counts the most. If the corruption of Congress is just seen as an
institutional problem no one gets the blame. That's why the Campaign for
America’s Future is looking at individual lawmakers whose positions and
votes on issues—juxtaposed with their campaign money and questionable
ethics—make them stand out as the emblems of the rampant corruption that
has overtaken the institution.

One of the leaders of this corrupt and unethical Congress is House
Majority leader Tom “The Hammer” DeLay. Not only has DeLay been rebuked
multiple times by the usually moribund bipartisan House Ethics
Committee, he also faces indictment in a fundraising scandal in Texas
where a number of his aides have already been brought to justice.
Instead of removing DeLay from his leadership post, though, the
Republican majority shot the judge. Earlier this month, they booted the
Ethics Committee chair, removed the two Republicans from the committee
who threatened to act independently and replaced them with DeLay loyalists.

With DeLay setting the tone, there is no question that the corporate
feeding frenzy will ensue.

Likely the biggest payoff will be to securities and commercial banking
companies that are among the biggest contributors to Congress—to the
tune of more than $100 million in the last election cycle—when President
Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security starts to move through Congress.

Enter Rep. Jim McCrery , a Republican from Louisiana. He’s the new
chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee, and the lynchpin in
President Bush’s plan to ram his plan through Congress.

Rep. McCrery has pocketed more than $200,000 since 2000 from the banking
and securities companies that will benefit from privatization of the
Social Security system. In the last cycle alone, his contributions from
this sector increased by 42 percent. Imagine what the contributions will
look like in this election cycle!

These companies have reason to give McCrery big bucks. Dr. Austan
Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist, has estimated that the
president’s Social Security privatization plan could result in nearly $1
trillion for financial services firms.

McCrery—after initially resisting the president’s privatization
plan—recently embraced it. But this is about more than just a flip-flop.
Thousands of people in his district and tens of millions nationwide will
see their guaranteed benefits cut because of decisions McCrery will
make. He can’t make those decisions fairly with Wall Street’s money in
his pocket.

His judgment on Social Security cannot be trusted. His campaign
contribution record and his ties to lobbyists (two former staffers now
work for the trade association pushing the legislation to privatize
Social Security) should make anyone—particularly his own constituents in
Louisiana—question whether he will be exercising his responsibilities on
their behalf or helping out his Wall Street backers. How can Rep.
McCrery possibly make decisions about Social Security in the interest of
his constituents when his biggest campaign contributors have him in
their pocket?

Some might say that the situation with McCrery is business as usual in
Congress. But according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, 80 percent
of Americans believe that politicians often do special favors for people
and groups who give them campaign contributions. We say that Congressman
better keep his eyes open.

Even the conservative-leaning Supreme Court has recognized the link
between money and lawmakers' judgement. In ruling on the McCain-Feingold
legislation, the Court said, “To claim that [campaign contributions] do
not change legislative outcomes surely misunderstands the legislative
process.”

We’d love to get into a debate with Rep. McCrery about whether campaign
cash corrupts the political process. Or better yet, it's a debate he
should have with his constituents.