ARISTOCRATS OF PRIVILEGE
Morgan, Edward P.
Aristocrats of Privilege by EDWARD P. MORGAN THE simultaneous indictment of two Congressmen—Democrats they happen to be—on Federal charges of conspiracy in connection with savings and loan...
...With a calculating self-righteousness matching the moralizing of the most pompous preacher, it has consistently brushed aside all meaningful attempts to expose the commercial or other extracurricular connections of legislators in either House...
...This exercise will not hurt the fine men and women in Congress who know what public responsibility means, but it ought to remind the rest of the pack there is such a thing, and high time...
...This is a fundamental of representative government...
...One of the most vicious aspects of this situation is the closed-corporation attitude of Congressional committees and their chairmen...
...Whether these two men are guilty or innocent is, of course, a matter to be decided after fair trial in court...
...The problem is not to eliminate pressure groups...
...The question is, who is willing to demand a change or at least a ventilation of the system...
...But this is only one phase of the murky kaleidoscope of conflict of interest in Congress...
...Many of them have direct financial interest in broadcasting stations...
...But it is not, partly because it doesn't realize how malodorously bad the situation is, partly because it doesn't care, and partly because it is caught up in the mess itself since the public is, after all, a collection of pressure groups which are perfectly willing to banish special privilege except where their own selfish interests are concerned...
...aid, are available to Congressional junketeers through our embassies abroad, no questions asked and, better yet, no published expense accounts required when they get home...
...In one instance a Congressman made a big pitch for a profitable contact for some business with the aid program...
...But there is no good reason why the Washington press corps cannot dig them out...
...The answer is that the public should be fighting mad enough to demand it...
...These stacks of local currencies, stockpiled in foreign capitals as partial repayment for U.S...
...Aristocrats of Privilege by EDWARD P. MORGAN THE simultaneous indictment of two Congressmen—Democrats they happen to be—on Federal charges of conspiracy in connection with savings and loan company scandals in the state of Maryland hoists to the surface once more the whole messy but critical issue of conflict of interest on Capitol Hill...
...But a big part of the problem is to identify the representative with the interests...
...The body politic is a composite of pressure groups...
...Congress is never voluntarily going to require its members to disclose their interests...
...And as a sometimes harshly extracted guarantee of this, it demands that the appointee, whether big business tycoon, labor leader, professional figure, or whatever, divest himself of all holdings or contacts that might conceivably influence the custody of his share of the public trust...
...A lovely little racket in this connection is the almost unlimited use of counterpart funds by any member of Congress demonstrating the thinnest proof that his trip involves "official business...
...When in 1959 Senator Stephen Young of Ohio unprecedentedly divulged his entire financial portfolio and liquidated his stocks in two sugar companies and one air line because of possible conflicts of interest with his duties on Senate committees, he exhorted his colleagues to do the same...
...This felonious outrage to the broad public interest is compounded by the fact that it operates, openly, arrogantly, and cynically, on a double standard...
...Congress operates at a shockingly low level of political morality...
...No wonder so many Congressmen follow like bird dogs the activities of the Federal Communications Commission...
...A lot of them are already known...
...It demands that almost any appointee of the executive branch, big fish or little fish, swim in the clear waters of public interest without conflict...
...The Kennedy Adminstration has failed to make good its promise to curb the bulging and often bumbling bureaucracy of its foreign aid machinery and start the whole program off with a clean slate and a new look...
...There is not a regulatory agency of government that doesn't get a, call or a flood of calls from some Congressional office every day and often the constituent the legislator is calling on behalf of is, one way or another, himself...
...But Congress demands no such purge of its own members, Senators or Representatives...
...Many of them EDWARD P. MORGAN is ABC Washington commentator whose nightly newscasts have won many awards...
...They did nothing of the sort and instead reacted as if Young had betrayed his class—the elected aristocrats, that is, of special political privilege...
...A wealthy Senator has a right to work against a tax reform bill but the public has the right to know that he has extensive oil and gas interests that will be vividly affected by closing tax loopholes...
...A large number of legislators are lawyers...
...But one cause of its failure has been Congressional pressure to put or keep hacks on the job...
...Let one particularly irresponsible committee chairman take off on a flamboyant tour of Europe accompanied by two female assistants also on the public payroll and nobody, or almost nobody, calls him to account because this might inhibit similar trips other colleagues planned to take...
...enjoy handsome incomes, directly or indirectly, from their law firms' activities with contracts or other legal business involving government...
...The problem is not to deny representation to special interests, either...
...But the pressurized system of politics of which they and too many other elected officials are a part already stands condemned...
...It turned out the Congressman owned the business...
...Disclosure is what Congress needs...
Vol. 26 • November 1962 • No. 11
