Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington earlier this week released an analysis of the misuse of power by the chairmen and ranking members of all House of Representative committees and subcommittees, as well as top leadership positions, to financially benefit their family members. The new report, Family Affair, names 96 members from 33 states: 41 Democrats and 55 Republicans.
Highlights of the report include:
* 64 paid family members through their campaign committees or PACs (26 Democrats and 38 Republicans);
* 24 have relatives who lobby Congress (10 Democrats and 14 Republicans);
* 19 used their campaign committees or PACs to pay a family business or a business that employs a family member (9 Democrats and 10 Republicans);
* 17 used their campaign funds to make campaign contributions to relatives (11 Democrats and 6 Republicans);
* 15 used their positions to benefit a family member or a family member's client (3 Democrats and 12 Republicans);
* At least 7 paid offspring who ranged from school-age to college-age (all Republicans)
Among the more laughable on the list? “Libertarian” patron saint of limited government Ron Paul; I guess it just shows that past or present third-party officials aren't immune from hypocrisy, either.
None of his relatives worked for the government, 'tis true; just for his campaign committee. It's still a form of benefiting your own family through running for office.
Paul has his daughter on his campaign committee, to the tune of about $49,000 in the 2002 election cycle, and $56,000 in both 2004 and 2006 cycles. A second daughter, and her mother-in-law and father-in-law, got smaller payouts.
The CREW page about the story, including a state-by-state look-up of the “dirty 96,” is here. (PDFs of info on each of the violators.)
5 comments:
This entire report is nonsensical. If a candidate was making large payments to his spouse, that at least would mean that the payments were in practical terms going to himself. But does anyone seriously think that Paul is somehow getting some kind of kickback on a staffer's salary paid to an adult daughter?
Frankly, Paul returns more than this amount in actual taxpayer funds to the Treasury every year when he refunds the unspent portion of his Congressional office budget. If he wanted to siphon money to his family and has unspent office budget funds sitting around, he could just hire them to work in his House office.
That's not to mention the amortized dollar value of the Congressional pension benefits he refuses to accept every year.
CREW does important work, but sometimes they veer off into "Let's try to find a completely legal practice but see if we can smear people with it". That works with stupid people, unfortunately.
There is nothing hypocritical here. This is not only legal, it is ethical and practical. It is prudent to run an efficient campaign.
His daughters were paid from money people donated to his campaign to get him elected. He was elected those years so I would say that is money well spent. Now I want to see article on the misuse of taxpayer money to the tun of over 2 trillion a year.
Ron Paul has a huge family that is the product of a 48 year marriage. The fact that he has several family members who spend their time helping his campaign makes perfect sense. Those individuals should be paid for their time and it seems to me that he is getting them at a steal.
As long as the family member actually performed the work (and I see no reason to assume they didn't), there's nothing unethical or illegal about a family member getting paid out of campaign contributions to work on a person's campaign. That is how campaign workers are paid.
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