Last week the Washington Free Beacon reported that roughly half of Congressman Luis Gutiérrez’s campaign expenditures were paid to his wife, who serves as his campaign manager. What is most noteworthy about this is that Gutiérrez does not really need to worry about campaigning.
Illinois’s Fourth Congressional District, which Gutiérrez represents, is gerrymandered precisely to create a Latino majority. So refined are the district lines that its two halves are connected in one place only by I-294. In his 13 successful races for the seat, Gutiérrez has never received less than 75 percent of the vote. In 2016, unopposed, he received 100 percent. Gutiérrez has no worries about reelection, yet his wife received $12,000 in compensation in the first quarter alone.
It is legal for members of Congress to employ their family members in their campaigns, but it is an ethical gray area. Individual donors and interest groups are permitted to give to reelection campaigns, but not to members personally. Employing one’s spouse or relative can serve as a way around this restriction. The practice is unfortunately common. In 2011 Roll Call reported on several members of Congress who have paid their spouses or relatives—including current members Joe Barton of Texas, William Lacy Clay of Missouri, Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, Hank Johnson of Georgia, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, and Bobby Rush of Illinois.
This can obviously be a way for members of Congress to monetize their careers—transforming election campaigns into cash for themselves and significant others. There are numerous ways members can cash in on public service, and this is one of the easiest.
Spousal lobbying is another such strategy—and again, it is common. In 2014, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that Loretta Durbin, the wife of Senator Dick Durbin, lobbied on behalf of clients who “received federal funding promoted by her husband.” Durbin is hardly the only senator who has a spouse or family member working as a lobbyist. A CBS News investigation from 2010 found 19 federal lobbyists “closely related” to members of Congress.
And spouses who do not lobby can still get in on the action. In 2013, the Huffington Post reported that then-Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu’s husband, a real estate agent, had worked with campaign donors and lobbyists. Again, it is perfectly legal, and Landrieu was not even required to report the contacts in her Senate ethics disclosures.
Prior to the 2008 financial collapse, Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association, elevated this kind of practice into an art form. They opened branches across the country and employed relatives of well-placed members of Congress, like the son of then-Utah senator Bob Bennett, who held a key position on the Banking Committee. Fannie Mae’s foundation also lavished contributions on charities connected to members of Congress.
Members do not even need a spouse or family member to cash in. In his 2005 book Do Members of Congress Reward Their Future Employers?, political scientist Adolfo Santos documented what acute observers have always suspected: Members of Congress who plan to retire and join the ranks of lobbyists often use “their positions to send signals to prospective employers, or [reward] their future employers with favorable legislation.”
Some of these overlaps are no doubt innocent. Maybe most of them are. The problem is, it is impossible to differentiate the blameless from the crooked. Influence-peddling can be a subtle process, one that does not necessarily require an intent to misuse one’s authority. People who travel in the same economic, social, religious, and cultural circles often develop the same views on issues and the same sense of right and wrong—meaning that in the minds of congressmen, the difference between special interests and the public interest can become blurred.
Members of Congress have been cashing in since the very first days of our government. Alexander Hamilton unveiled his groundbreaking Report on the Public Credit in January 1790—an ambitious plan to repay the national debt in full and assume the state debts. Plugged-in speculators received advance notice of its contents prior to its submission to Congress, bringing about a rapid increase in the price of government securities. Many members of Congress were in on the action—dispatching agents to the Carolinas to buy up state debts from holders who did not yet know of Hamilton’s plan. Andrew Craigie, apothecary general in the Revolutionary War, recorded in his diary that Congress suspended debate on the debt assumption plan “because their private arrangements are not in readiness for speculation.”
Members of Congress are tempted to use their political authority for private gain because they are human beings—and such temptations are embedded in our very nature. Writing in 1787, James Madison argued that there were three reasons people sought positions in government: private gain, personal ambition, and concern for the general welfare. “Unhappily the two first are proved by experience to be most prevalent,” he wrote, and those who feel such impulses are often “the most industrious, and most successful in pursuing their object.” When they comprise a “majority in the legislative Councils,” they can “join in a perfidious sacrifice” of the public interest for their personal interests.
The saving grace of republican government is that power originates from the people, who can always throw these sorts of bums out. Public rebukes are not unprecedented. For instance, the 14th Congress was one of the most vigorous in American history, but in 1816 it voted to give itself a pay increase, which the voters did not take kindly to, sweeping out many incumbents. More recently, the Pennsylvania legislature gave itself a pay raise in 2005, voting in the dead of night without an opportunity for public review of the law. Realizing their mistake, legislators quickly repealed the law, but many incumbents
lost reelection.
Still, these temporary outbursts of voter frustration are hardly sufficient to police bad behavior among legislators. Unfortunately, the issue of public corruption is one where the party system inhibits rather than enhances the public discourse. On many issues, the parties—by taking open, divergent, and (seemingly) principled positions—offer voters a real choice between competing alternatives. But the parties can also function as a cartel. By taking the same position, or by refusing to discuss an issue openly, they can effectively foreclose the public from having a say on the matter. Congressional ethics are one such area of cartel-like behavior—members of both parties engage in the same dubious activities, and neither party ever tries to raise a ruckus over it.
Voters, of course, are capable of disentangling these threads, even if the parties are not aiding them. But this requires more work than most citizens are willing to put into civics. People everywhere love to complain about the rot at the heart of the American body politic, but hardly anybody does the research to see if his own representative is complicit in the corruption. Thus, the same problems persist, year after year.
Corrupt as it may often be, our government is still premised on the republican principle of majority rule—meaning that we get the kinds of leaders we deserve, for better or for worse.
Jay Cost is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
