Jeff Bingaman, the five-term Democratic senator from New Mexico, entered “legacy time” Tuesday. That’s the traditional home stretch when conniving politicians magically morph into noble statesmen just before they retire. Bingaman was sly about it. While chairing his Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and introducing a panel of experts in a hearing supposedly about new oil and gas technology, he incongruously resurrected two of his old drilling bills with nice names and nasty restrictions — both of which fizzled in the last congressional session — and asked for fast action on them. It smelled like legacy time, but why two oil bills?
When Bingaman announced in February that he would not seek re-election, he had achieved much that was notable in the Senate. He was the darling of Big Green, master of disastrous legislation that sounded good on the evening news, and bearer of much pork back home — during 2008-2010, he sponsored 47 solo earmarks worth $36 million and supported 442 co-sponsored earmarks worth $973 million, and that doesn’t count earmarks requested by President Obama.
He still wields real power in plum committee assignments — chairman of Energy and Natural Resources, member of the Finance Committee; the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; and the Joint Committee on the Economy.
What more could he want? Well, to be blunt — money.
And that could be why he dug up the corpses of two dead oil drilling bills last Tuesday. It’s not that he might be selling his influence to Big Oil or Big Green bagmen, it’s that he might be buying stock in companies that could benefit if those bills passed this year.
That should come as no surprise to anyone who’s read Bingaman’s financial disclosure reports. They show a man who entered the Senate in 1983 considerably less than a millionaire, inherited a Texaco oil and gas well in Gregg County, Texas, worth all of $15,000, and yet is retiring with investments worth $7 million to $20 million, and possibly as much as $50 million.
The range is so wide because federal disclosure law frustratingly requires reporting investments only in nearly meaningless categories, like $6 million to $25 million, hiding even the approximate value of any asset or debt.
Last year, Roll Call ranked Bingaman 40th richest of the 535 members of Congress and remarked that the investment portfolio of the senator and his wife, Anne, was unusually active, “racking up nearly 600 separate purchases and sales of stock in 2009, worth a combined total of more than $20 million” — not counting their book of untraded stocks.
Anne Kovacovich Bingaman is a power unto herself. She was the Justice Department’s anti-trust division chief under President Clinton (1993-96), and the government’s lead counsel in the Microsoft anti-trust case. She’s now chief executive officer of a teleconferencing firm.
But why does the chairman of Energy and Natural Resources own substantial stock in General Electric, Arch Coal, and oil companies like Occidental, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Concho Resources, among others? And mining giants Freeport McMoran, and Barrick Gold?
And why does a Finance Committee member own stock in Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and many more?
And why does a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee own stock in pharmaceuticals like Merck, Abbott Laboratories, startup research labs and many more?
It makes you rich and noble. Study his investment plan. Not bad for a statesman.
One of those legacy bills Bingaman reintroduced Tuesday would boost chances for the long-delayed Alaska Gas Pipeline with $30 billion tax dollars.
Think of all the publicly traded pipeline companies it would take to spend that.
The real Bingaman legacy that posterity will cherish for decades? His financial disclosures.
Examiner Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
