Audit them all and make the results public
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
February 4, 2009
Tom Daschle prudently withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services, but that’s not the most important tax story on Washington politicians, influence peddlers and lobbyists. People typically believe big guys in this town are treated one way and little guys another, usually far more harshly.
Too often, those people are absolutely right.
Daschle was only the most visible of President Barack Obama’s nominees with serious tax problems. Nancy Killefer was going to be Obama’s “performance czar” until we found out she forgot to pay payroll taxes on her household help. And Timothy Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in taxes over a four-year period but still managed to be confirmed as Treasury Secretary.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel is up to his eyeballs in tax problems because he failed to report income from a Caribbean vacation home and a New York apartment complex he owns. He is predicting, however, that the House Ethics Committee will clear him. No surprise there.
Slapping ever-stricter ethics and financial disclosure regulations is the usual fix favored by Washington movers and shakers, and no wonder. Congressional financial disclosure forms are monuments to vacuity, allowing Members to “report” income by categories of amounts.
Thanks to groups like the Sunlight Foundation and OpenSecrets.org, it’s not nearly so difficult to find those forms now, but they remain needlessly opague. What we do know for sure is that a bunch of people in Congress leave much wealthier than they were when they got here.
A lot of people get rich soon after leaving Congress, too. Washington is running over with formers – folks who were once senators, congressmen, high-level executive branch appointees or key congressional committee or leadership staffers - who use their contacts, experience and access to influence public policy decisions on behalf of corporate clients who pay them millions.
That’s why Democrat Daschle was able to earn $5 million in the four years since he was defeated for re-election in 2004. It’s also why Republican Trent Lott had dollar signs in his eyes on the day in 2007 he announced his surprise retirement. Shortly thereafter, he partnered with another former senator, Democrat John Breaux, in a new high-dollar lobbying firm.
Formers like Daschle, Lott and Breaux make fortunes because they have priceless access to current Members, they have little trouble getting their telephone calls returned, and they often know better than anybody else how to work the levers of power and influence on the Hill, regardless of which party is in power.
Sure, they have to wait a couple of years after leaving Congress to officially lobby and they do have to register, but that hardly seems to be stopping the revolving door from twirling at warp speed these days.
As for the lobbyists who aren’t former members, but who ply the Hill daily in search of Members worried about getting re-elected, they often have millions of dollars in campaign donations to parcel out. Ever looked at a congressional lobbyist disclosure form? Let me assure you that reading them is somewhat less entertaining than watching a barrel of monkees doing stupid dog tricks.
With government spending exploding and federal regulation about to become more pervasive than ever before, having power and influence in Washington, D.C. is the ticket to riches. With Big Government comes abundant opportunities for smart guys to make more “honest mistakes” like not knowing a limo and driver provided at no cost to you is taxable as income.
There is only one way to change the perception of a double standard in the law that favors the big guys – Audit them all and make the results public every year.
I can already hear the outraged cries of “what about my privacy.”
To which I say: As long as Washington’s political class insists on sticking government’s bureaucratic nose into every corner of American life, passing laws that apply to everybody but them, sending billions of tax dollars to their friends, family members and campaign donors via earmarks, and blatantly running a tax credit bazaar in the halls of Congress, forget your privacy.
That’s our money you’re spending, we work hard for it and we have a right to know who’s getting it. That’s the price you pay for corrupting the once-noble ideal of public service.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on dcexaminer.com.
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