Ill Winds Over Washington
Babbin, Jed
ILL WINDS OVER WAS H l N GTO N A former lobbyist remembers--and instructs. Term limits, anyone? BY JED BABBIN 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2006 ORRUPTION IS TO POLITICS AS RUST IS TO...
...If senators were limited to two terms and congressmen to six, we'd have it about right...
...The laws on the books were, he said, more than enough to punish this behavior...
...Hudson's answer--characteristically enthusiastic-boiled down to, "not only no, but hell no...
...One time he shouted something like, "Damn it, Babbin, I thought I told you never to darken my door again...
...Greed turned the Duke into just another bag man...
...Abramoff, as part of the plea deal, is required to provide evidence to Justice Department investigators about at least a half-dozen members of Congress, staffers, Interior Department officials, and other lobbyists...
...For the cost of the airfare, hotels, and the honorarium, the company, union, or trade group could get one of the Old Bulls to meet the people who wanted to deal with him, and schmooze him on an issue or two...
...The House and Senate are now tossing "reform" proposals to the media as a Mardi Gras crewe throws necklaces of beads and coins to the crowd...
...Honoraria--speaking fees paid directly to a member of Congress--were the means other groups used to entertain members of Congress in plush resorts around the world...
...That's all there was...
...I ran the PAC for a while, and quickly grew tired of having to tell members of Congress who called me directly that we didn't have enough money to buy a place at a $1,O00-a-plate dinner...
...But just as you can't use touch-up paint to repair a train wreck, big scandals that reveal big problems can't be fixed by tinkering with small solutions...
...In the mid-to-late 1980s lobbying was, at least in relative terms, a mild game...
...It would be quite a while, I told him, because there were a number of others in line we needed to get to know before anyone could repeat...
...But it will not deal with the only idea that can have an effect on the corruption that always shadows congressional power...
...Although he wasn't a cigar smoker, he never failed to insist I take a handful of Cubans from a humidor in his office that some constituent refilled often...
...And the term limits should, by extension, apply as well to their staffs...
...But we worked together on several issues just because he thought we were right...
...We're incorruptible, we should be able to stay forever...
...AVietnam war hero--a naval fighter ace--Cunningham came to office with a spotless reputation...
...At the core of his plea is the admission that he conspired to pay $50,000 to the wife of an unnamed congressional staffer in return for help in killing a measure dealing with Internet gambling...
...Security in office is Few, if any, of the Founding Fathers were career politicians...
...I didn't know whether to laugh in his face or call the FBI...
...MARCH 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 29 A POST-ABRAMOFF MEMOIR The longer they stay in office, the more power accretes to them and the more complacent they become about its corrupting side-effects...
...Political campaign contributions were the currency of access...
...Even 20 years ago, Kennedy was one of the Old Bulls, a separate class with which one couldn't trifle...
...Without saying a word, I turned and walked away...
...BY JED BABBIN 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2006 ORRUPTION IS TO POLITICS AS RUST IS TO METAL: a ~ natural reaction to the atmosphere...
...People whose lives are not centered in Washington, citizen-legislators, were the congressmen and senators of the late 18th century...
...What was obvious at the time was that the laws already on the books outlawed this conduct and that more laws wouldn't prevent its recurrence...
...Henrywent on to prove that point, obtaining more than 100 convictions in the course of the investigation...
...Jed Babbin, an American Spectator contributing editor, is the author o f Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think (Regnery...
...Term limits are no guarantee against corruption...
...Inviting a member to give a speech, they'd pay his way (and his wife's) to a weekend of golf or sun tanning or whatever, and pay a few thousand dollars for him to speak at a dinner...
...The Shipbuilders Council's executive committee, my boss, and I would try to get to know key senators and congressmen with whom we had little or no relations before...
...M ONEY MEANT ACCESS, and access meant influence...
...So it is with the Abramoff lobbying scandal that now transfixes Congress...
...A bribe is a bribe, no matter how many blue ribbons you tie around it...
...Congress will have its leaders, staffers will be expert and energetic, battles will be fought, and the people's business will still fall prey to polities...
...Few, if any, of the Founding Fathers were career politicians...
...They were for the other guys, not us...
...And, he added, you can't entirely deter this sort of crime...
...With every re-election, a congressman or senator gains power among his peers, the press, and the lobbying community...
...But those not used to power, whose inner compasses haven't been turned by too many years in office, are more likely to resist its temptations...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2006...
...Yes, Congress has its code of ethics which is observed, mostly...
...T HE CAMPAIGN FOR TERM LIMITS, a conservative idea that established its validity more than a decade ago, is a fascinating study in political science...
...I invited Henry over for a cup of coffee...
...Their objective was to get information that gave their clients an unfair advantage in competing for large defense contracts...
...They designed our national legislature with themselves in mind...
...He took bribes from a defense contractor, and repaid his benefactor by working hard to get it preferences it couldn't have otherwise received...
...People whose lives are not centered in Washington, citizen-legislators, were the congressmen and senators of the late 18th century...
...We had our well-established friends on the Hill, those congressmen and senators in whose districts and states the large and small shipyards were located...
...He asked me when we could do another honorarium dinner for his boss, and I demurred...
...In a final service to his country, former California congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham is the example that proves the point...
...And, within five minutes, Brooks was offering the good stogies...
...Because the Shipbuilders were a small operation, we didn't have a big staff...
...As usual, the dinner was uneventful and the senator smiled and nodded at all the right moments...
...Abramoff has pled guilty to tax evasion, fraud, and conspiracy to bribe public officials...
...We didn't have the budget to pay for resort trips (fancy or otherwise), but we did-quarterly or at least semi-annually--cough up an honorarium of about two grand and the cost of a fancy dinner at a private dining room in Washington...
...The persistence I employed-showing up at their offices day after day to talk to the staff--was one means...
...We looked and looked, and after consulting with several legal eagles we found a way we could buy access, at least for an evening, without breaking any laws or ethical rules...
...Democrat Jack Brooks--an irascible Texan, and then chairman of the House Government Operations Committeealways offered them, sometimes after a colorful welcome to his office...
...It was expensive, and mostly worth it...
...Though term limits won't end corruption, they will at least remove one of its root causes...
...But the root of the corruption was not the act of lobbying, nor the solution more laws to punish or regulate it...
...And lobbyists, going back to at least the late 1940s, have been governed by lobbying laws...
...The late Ed Zorinsky was then a senator from Nebraska, a state without much connection to ships...
...When Democrats controlled Congress, Republicans thought term limits were the way to cleanse the Augean legislative stable (actually, more a means to dent the seemingly permanent Democratic dominance on the Hill...
...Getting a meeting with a member of Congress was easy if you knew him or his staff well...
...not just prestige...
...My w~)rds, not his...
...Congress will reduce, again, the value of gifts that can be given to members or staff, cut the amount that can be spent on entertaining them from the value of a Big Mac to that of a chocolate chip cookie...
...Some members are corrupted easily and quickly...
...I was not only the chief lobbyist, but the only one...
...I saw how the system worked, how it was broken, and--in one small incident--brushed up against the corruption that was JackAbramoff's lifeblood...
...The other was 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2006 JED BABBIN political contributions...
...You can only detect it, investigate it, and work hard to punish the guilty...
...Cigars were much in use on the Hill...
...And we had my personal credibility...
...I stood in the hallway of the Russell Senate Office Building one day, talking to that senator's chief staffer...
...It's part of the First Amendment which, in addition to protecting the press and religious freedom, protects the citizens' right to petition the government for redress of grievances...
...I was its chief lobbyist and spent an enormous part of In 1990, while serving as a deputy undersecretary of defense, I saw the "111 Wind" scandal unfold around the defense industry...
...Geography didn't matter that much...
...Henry Hudson, whom I knew from his days as Arlington County's Commonwealth's Attorney, and who by then had been appointed U.S...
...While Democrats gloat over Abramoff's apparent connections to former Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney, both sides--including Republicans seeking leadership positions in the House--are competing with each other to see who can propose the most draconian "reforms" of the lobbying industry...
...I never spoke to him-or his senator-again...
...The support of a ten-term congressman means infinitely more than that of a freshman because his influence over other members is that much greater...
...It will take a constitutional amendment to do it, but if we want to reduce the opportunity for corruption to infect the future Duke Cunninghams and reward the next generation of Jack Abramoffs, we have to reduce the time members can serve...
...And therein lay the rub...
...That was the only way I knew to deal with the solicitation of a bribe...
...Several defense "consultants" were buying and selling contractors' proposals and bribing Defense Department contracting officials with money and jobs...
...And we had our opponents, mostly Democrats whose constituencies included large labor unions and who took the unions' side on issues even if a big shipyard was also a constituent...
...B EFORE I WENT TO THE PENTAGON, I was a lobbyist...
...Lobbying is the means by which members of Congress and their staffs hear not only from interest groups but from constituents...
...T HAT THE BRIBE WAS SOLICITED SO brazenly was probably a commonplace, and-if Abramoff's modus operandi is any gauge--still is...
...Lobbyists understood, as did the members and their staffs, that to offer or ask for donations as a condition of action on legislation (to pass or to kill) was illegal, and should be...
...So it is in the lobbying biz...
...He insisted, saying that we needed to do one soon because "you need his vote...
...Almost any barrier could be overcome with credibility and persistence...
...When Orrin Hatch was chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, Ted Kennedy would come into the hearing room puffing a big one...
...And so, as it has in reaction to past scandals, Congress will fix what isn't broken...
...We had no large political action committee to raise money for campaign contributions...
...my time talking to members of Congress and their staffs...
...Those you didn't know well, you were able to get to know two ways...
...One Old Bull, who today would carry the "RINO" label, was our guest at a dinner some years before he was run out of office in a minor scandal...
...No staffer should be employed longer than the maximum term we establish for members...
...But a month or so later, my relationship with him and his staff ended abruptly...
...To seriously reduce the opportunity for corruption to reach members of Congress, it is necessary to return, as closely as we can, to that model...
...It is power, and with each passing election, the Old;Bulls' horns grow longer...
...When challenged on that point by my boss, I called in the expert...
...Just ask Duke Cunningham...
...Are Republicans up to following through this time...
...That idea is term limits...
...Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was the lead prosecutor on the "Ill Wind" cases...
...We had our member compaMARCH 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 27 A POST-ABRAMOFF MEMOIR hies and their lobbyists (who sometimes helped but often wouldn't spend their company's political chips on an industry issue...
...But as his security in office grew, so did his complacence about power...
...My boss, SCA president M. Lee Rice, was a great lobbyist but wasn't walking the halls of Congress every day as I was...
...They were the committee chairmen and ranking members, those who had decades of service and around whom had grown a hard shell of power and influence...
...And a minute later, Hatch would look like the character Joe Bltzflk from the Lil' Abner cartoon, a cloud of blue smoke surrounding his head...
...If the Old Bulls can be turned out to pasture, their influence among their peers will be reduced...
...Having pled guilty to an assortment of chargessome of which have nothing to do with his activities on Capitol Hill--former lobbyist Jack Abramoff may soon be joined by members of the Senate and House who joined Abramoff on the wrong side of the line between lobbying and bribery...
...For four years I served as the vice president and general counsel of a small trade association, the Shipbuilders' Council (SCA), that represented all the major (and some of the minor) shipyards in America...
...Twenty years ago, there was the "honorarium" system...
...The problem stems from congressional members' length of service...
...Thinking of Zorinsky always reminds me of cigars...
...Cigars were even seen in committee hearings...
...Then the oddest thing happened: Republicans took Congress in 1994 and by 1997 term limits were as dead as Julius Caesar...
...They designed our national legislature with themselves in mind...
...Sitting in the boss's Pentagon office, I asked one question: Do you need more laws to prevent and prosecute this kind of corruption...
...And money...
...In 1990, while serving as a deputy undersecretary of defense, I saw the "Ill Wind" scandal unfold around the defense industry...
...And for the Old Bulls, persistence rarely was enough...
...Because they apparently succeeded, Congress launched into one of its periodic paroxysms of "procurement reform...
...It will increase the information that lobbyists have to disclose about their clients, their fees, and the projects on which they work...
...A six-term senator's word carries more weight, proportionate to his time in Washington, than a newcomer's...
Vol. 39 • March 2006 • No. 2
