Money Under the Mattress: WHAT CONGRESSMEN DON'T SPEND
CHAFFEE, KEVIN
Money Under the Mattress: WHAT CONGRESSMEN DON'T SPEND BY KEVIN CHAFFEE Former Rep. John Burton makes no excuses for having taken $18,000 in leftover campaign funds and converted it to...
...In the tradition of Chicago politics, moreover, he spread out the boodle to local aldermen for their reelection drives as well...
...Since then the only payments shown in the FEC reports are $6,500 on food and beverages, mostly from Ridgewell's, an exclusive Washington catering firm...
...Members of Congress usually deny that contributions from interest-group PACs affect their votes, for understandable reasons...
...I didn't even hear about it until a couple of days afterwards," he said...
...Fowler and Matsui won with 81 percent and 90 percent of the vote, respectively...
...In 1982 only Howard Metzenbaum, a Democrat from Ohio, finished with a comparatively large surplus—$1 million...
...We already have a very generous one...
...It's not just how much they raise...
...Leonard's Church in Boston, $100 to Catholic Charities in Cambridge, and $250 to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (along with $2,000-worth of Waterford crystal he gave as Christmas gifts to his staff...
...With so much left over that I didn't need I wouldn't have the chutzpah to ask for myself again," Solarz says...
...I decided that $50 would be the maximum I would accept from any source almost as soon as I got my seat on the committee," Conable explains...
...I am not a wealthy person," he stated, "I needed it after leaving office...
...Sala Burton (Philip Burton's widow and replacement in Congress), members of the Waxman "machine" may eventually include California representatives Esteban Torres, Julian Dixon, Douglas Bosco, and Barbara Boxer, all of whom received money from Waxman or his PAC during the last election and agree with his general legislative agenda...
...This congressman suspects that a number of his older colleagues are really building up big retirement slush funds (see sidebar page 36...
...with Waxman, it's clean air, the environment in general, and Israel ." "Let's face it," said Rep...
...Waxman is not the only House member distributing excess campaign funds to his colleagues...
...Rostenkowski gave away about $25,000 in this fashion— counting the local politicians—or less than 5 percent of his hoard...
...Barber Conable of New York, who will retire from the House in 1985 after ten terms...
...and Archer, 50 percent...
...In 1982, 61 members of the House—almost one out of seven—raised at least $100,000 more than they spent...
...The Democrats are way behind in this respect...
...This was only the beginning...
...Since Burton's committee in turn gave Martinez $2,000, certain conclusions might be drawn by devious minds...
...What develops is an 'I was there when you needed me' sort of relationship which is unspoken but nevertheless unmistakable...
...To demonstrate how prodigious this shutout factor can become, a veteran Democratic campaign expert cites a recent example from Louisiana, a state not known for its puritanism where election money is concerned...
...Before you start to worry about Rep...
...Senate races, by contrast, are so expensive—$2 million is now the average—that even a quarter-million dollar excess is not very significant in most states...
...Rostenkowski should derive additional comfort from the $78,850 he received for giving speeches to interest-group supporters, a gab-for-pay level far above that of any other House member...
...Each had Republican opponents brandishing the threat of their own massive war chests, and each was haunted by the spectre of 1980, when right-wing groups like NCPAC had knocked off a number of seemingly safe incumbents through massive infusions of cash...
...But he figured he'd need $3 million at least to make a go of it against one of the Senate's biggest fundraisers...
...He is thinking of proposing that all such money be returned pro rata to all contributors in the last election...
...When I think of those who have engaged in this sort of practice, only the word `sleazy' comes to mind...
...With the Democrats so far behind the Republicans in money advantage, we feel that anything we can do to supplement the national party efforts is desirable, and we are not concerned at all about what people say...
...Burton is not the only former congressman who has taken into retirement money that citizens and PACs had contributed to his election campaigns...
...it's also how little they give away, and to whom...
...Not all their colleagues, however, find the cashgarnering of House members like Solarz "elegant," even when it's up front...
...It is absolutely deplorable," says Rep...
...drives as well...
...Four years later there are still 285 grandfathered congressmen who can continue salting away campaign funds to spend just about any way they want when they leave office...
...Often overlooked, however, is the extent to which incumbents are raising far more than they need...
...Stockman contributed 54,000—the legal maximum—to his former campaign chiefs unsuccessful bid for Stockman's old seat...
...He can't raise much in New York because they won't buy his pitch that he's the saviour of the Jews anymore there...
...One finds similar resentment in the Senate, some of it directed against Senator Metzenbaum...
...Some of these war chests, his included, have become so large that it is now possible to finance the greater part of a campaign on interest earnings alone...
...Everything was going smoothly when, out of the blue, 200,000 wacko letters arrived a week before the election at every house in the district...
...The lobbyists thought so too...
...Leading Democrats like Morris Udall and Timothy Wirth, for example, had new constituents due to redistricting, including many suburbanites who had voted for Reagan in 1980...
...here are a few others: • Thomas L. Ashley (Democrat, Ohio, 19551981) took $20,000 and later stated it "didn't give me a hell of a lot of trouble...
...With one exception (House Banking Committee chairman Fernand St Germain), all 12 had more money left over from their 1982 races than they had spent...
...In a similar vein is the National Congressional Club, which is the personal PAC of archconservative Senator Jesse Helms...
...Tony Coehlo, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Republican Rep...
...feeling that they have bought a part of you...
...If a wellheeled Republican with $500,000 in the bank can't mount an effective Senate campaign, just think where that leaves someone starting from scratch...
...Democrat John LaFalce of New York, 57 percent...
...Hell," says Bert Hoffman, Waxman's administrative assistant and a veteran observer of Washington politics, "we're just trying to elect more good liberal Democrats...
...In 1982 Archer and three other House members covered over one-half their election costs in this way: Republican William Broomfield of Michigan, 59 percent...
...In 1981-82 Waxman gave more than $20,000 to other congressional candidates who served on his House committee and another $32,750 to state and local Democrats...
...Other members in effect turned their old campaign chests into PACs...
...Robert Matsui, a Sacramento Democrat, also received $250 from Rostenkowski, which he tucked away with the rest of his $163,000 campaign surplus...
...A personal campaign committee like Waxman's can give only $1,000 per candidate, so he set up a 24th District PAC (named after his California district...
...Follow the bouncing ball, and you will gain some idea of how campaign money walks...
...Period...
...It was a good party," Rostenkowski said afterwards...
...Because Waxman is closely allied with fellow California congressmen Howard Berman and Mel Levine, the united contributing power of the triumvirate is multiplied still further...
...He had around $500,000 in the bank and thought he could raise another million easily enough...
...I don't really give a fuck, I took it because I needed it," says Burton, who left office in 1983 after six stormy years, which included a cocaine scandal and other instances of bizarre behavior...
...Jacobs points out that the loophole passed mainly because it was hidden away in a complicated bill and thus never came up separately for a record vote...
...Members of Congress are raising cash hoards that make them virtually invincible to possible challengers...
...In 1980 and 1982, years in which he won with more than 80 percent of the vote, his token Republican opponents had no campaign money to speak of...
...Udall and Wirth went ahead and outspent their opponents 7 to 1 anyway—laying out $840,000 and $750,000 respectively—and won handily...
...He reported more than $50,000 on dinners and parties alone...
...The congressman most responsible for this maneuver was then-House Administration Committee Chairman Frank Thompson, who later used $24,000 in campaign funds for legal fees in his Abscam trial...
...In 1982 his postelection surplus had grown to almost half a million dollars...
...He's one of the few who didn't...
...With almost $4 million in its coffers, it is the second largest in the country (NCPAC is first, with over $7 million...
...Not all the incumbents who vastly outspent their opposition saw themselves as juggernauts hell-bent on higher things...
...He finished the 1978 campaign with $79,134 left...
...Some examples are mentioned in the main text...
...They just sit back and scoop it up, taking it away from the poor bastards who really need the funding to survive, the ones who have to mortgage their houses in order to make a lastditch media buy...
...Others are hoarding their campaign stashes simply for their retirement...
...Many incumbents, however, spend big even when they don't need to...
...He has reported expenditures of $7,443, mostly for charitable contributions, subscriptions, flowers, and graduation gifts...
...Even when these senior members use their cash hoards to help their brethren, too often it's to buy loyalty from colleagues who don't really need the money...
...Jacobs isn't sure he likes the way even newer members can give their excess campaign funds to political races or charities when they leave office, because they still get personal credit for money other people gave them...
...Waxman had state repeatedly that his positions, and not his money, were the factor, but the episode raised troubling possibilities of how PACs controlled by individual representatives might be used...
...In these same circumstances, individual citizens would have been limited to a maximum contribution of $4,000...
...To ward off the demon, both Udall and Wirth frantically raised money between elections and set in motion large-scale campaigns with expensive consultants and media buys...
...Yet, with the exception of one other member, Republican Bill Archer from Texas, all continued to raise substantial sums during the first 18 months of the current election cycle...
...He told US...
...With Rostenkowski it would be a vote on tax legislation...
...that's what his campaign stash was for...
...Representative Henson Moore was thinking of challenging Senator Bennett Johnston this time around...
...Two years later, that had grown to $224,202...
...For example, Ways and Means member Wyche Fowler, a Democrat from Atlanta, received $250 from his committee chairman,-even though he still had $179,000 in the bank after the campaign...
...Howard Baker's Republican Majority Fund had amassed close to $3 million through March of this year, while on the other side of the aisle, Ted Kennedy's Fund for a Democratic Majority had over $1.5 million...
...Super Scoopers Solarz is the latest House member to announce that he, too, will be forming a PAC...
...Congressional incumbents in safe seats are raising cash hoards that make them virtually invincible to challengers...
...Shaking down the PACs to build campaign cash hoards is not without redeeming features...
...Helms' aim is not to be president but to advance his right-wing agenda...
...In other words, some Democratic House members seem to be pulling up the ladder, absorbing funds that could be used to add cohorts to their ranks...
...Former Michigan Congressman David Stockman, for example, established his Free Enterprise Fund with $30,930 from his campaign committee after he left office to become chief of Reagan's Office of Management and Budget...
...It's a great position to be in, enthused an aide to Broomfield, who represents wealthy Detroit suburbs such as Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills...
...I Took At the Office A House member with an indisputable soft spot for safe-seat colleagues is Ways and Means Chairman Rostenkowski...
...Metzenbaum wouldn't even give anything to his own cousin [Harriet Woods, who was running for the Senate in Missouri in 1982] until it was too late," a veteran Senate staff member said...
...Moreover, current members of Congress are building themselves retirement nest eggs that could be even bigger (see sidebar on page 36...
...Some were plain scared...
...Hoffman has a point...
...Yet, contributor-funded golden parachutes seem almost innocent compared to the other uses for which campaign funds are being amassed...
...In other words, these incumbents could have financed almost two campaigns for the amount they raised just to finance one...
...In 1982 he dispersed more than $130,000 to 14 Senate and 55 House candidates, all but one of whom were Republican...
...An example is Rep...
...Steve Solarz of Brooklyn had a tidy $600,000 left over after the '82 elections, due in part to a primary fight that never came about...
...Each won with at least two-thirds of the vote...
...Waxman, moreover, has been a true champion of clean air and other important causes and has distributed his money with this in mind...
...He has to go to Texas and Oklahoma where they'll still believe the story...
...How can any member stand up with a straight face and say that it is wrong to convert funds if elected after a certain date and not before...
...Burton had only two elections, and he received the maximum allowed from the two Waxman funds: $12,000...
...This cash hogging represented a major increase over 1980, when only 24 House members finished with more than $100,000 and three hit the finish line with surpluses in the $250,000-$300,000 range...
...I'm comforted," he told The Wall Street Journal...
...In 1980 Republican challengers were unusually well funded, and so Republicans did unusually well," Jacobsen writes in Money and Politics in the United States, published recently by the American Enterprise Institute...
...This can be a way to discourage future opponents, and to provide nice campaign jobs for relatives and friends to boot...
...Andrew Jacobs is the only "grandfathered" member actively seeking to abolish the House personal-use loophole...
...A study headed by University of Michigan professor Edith Goldberg indicates that money spent early in a campaign—when incumbents have it and challengers often don't— can be more important than the more visible expenditures made as the election day gets closer...
...it's not a bottomless pit ." "The worst thing is that they never have enough," says a liberal Democrat from an eastern state...
...It's hard to convey to you what it's like to work for a congressman who's constantly fighting for survival and is on numerous hit lists," says one administrative assistant to a Democrat from the West...
...Martinez received another $7,000 from the two, for a combined total of $33,000—if the Burton contribution is included...
...It happened in 1978," recalled Cary Caton, Wirth's administrative assistant...
...Ray Roberts (Democrat, Texas, 1962-1981) transferred $13,014 to personal use...
...Waxman's committee-cum-PAC gave him the maximum: $5,000 per election from the PAC and $1,000 per election from the committee, a total of $24,000...
...This enables them to channel their resources as the need arises, shoring up shaky incumbents and boosting challengers with a real chance to win...
...William C. Wampler (Republican, Virginia, 1966-1983) had $35,000 on hand after his defeat...
...Jim Leach of Iowa, a respected Republican moderate and ardent proponent of campaign finance reform...
...This guy is sitting on a mountain of money in one of the safest districts in America, and now he's starting a PAC to rake in even more...
...Not every incumbent with a big campaign stash can scare off opponents, but when they don't, they generally do a pretty good job of winning...
...With no opponent in sight he has collected another $296,729 since the beginning of 1983, mostly from lobbyists and PACs...
...I thought he had at least a million ." To make money you have to spend money, and Rostenkowski is no slouch...
...FEC records for the 1982 election reveal an increasing number of non-leadership House members making substantial contributions to colleagues...
...Rostenkowski explains his cash appetite like a freshman with reelection jitters...
...Riding a steamroller over weak opponents can establish one's credentials for statewide or national office as well...
...Martinez has been quoted saying that he is not "controlled" by Waxman, that he "goes to him for advice...
...The average fund-raising excess was $181,000, or close to 90 percent of the amount a member of Congress spent on an average race...
...Others have taken even more...
...Speaker Tip O'Neill's campaign report shows, among other such contributions, $25 to St...
...Jack Kemp, whose presidential aspirations are no secret, outspent their opponents by 7 to 1 and 66 to 1, respectively, in 1982...
...A few members of Congress actually function as one-man income redistribution programs, taking the money from the PACs and giving it to those in need...
...This may explain why Rep...
...They give away a few thousand dollars, maybe 2 percent of their hoard, and then act as if they are doing everyone a big favor...
...And what's so bad about that...
...Coming on strong were Jack Kemp's Campaign for Prosperity and Senator Bob Dole's Campaign America, both with close to a million dollars to dispense this fall...
...His distributions have raised eyebrows nevertheless, especially when they appeared to help him win the chairmanship of the powerful Health and Environment Subcommittee over a more senior Democrat back in 1978...
...Tip O'Neill donated $25 in surplus campaign funds to St.Leonard's Church in Boston—and gave $2,000 in Waterford crystal as Christmas gifts to his staff...
...Solarz could not be expected to know in advance precisely who realty would need the money and who wouldn't, but it bears noting that 18 of the incumbents to whom he contributed won with more than 55 percent of the vote, the accepted definition of a healthy victory...
...In addition to Martinez and Rep...
...Martinez had four contests within a single year: a primary and general election to fill an unexpired term and then a rerun of the same process for the full 1983-84 term...
...There was even $500 from the American Horse Council, which sought—and won—faster write-offs for the essential equine component of economic recovery...
...There is only an ultimate amount of kitty out there...
...Individual House members have stepped into the breach, acting as sugar daddies on their own...
...The fact is, Rostenkowski and other House members have shown a good deal more charity for each other than they have for the Boys Clubs and Misericordias, In the past such support has taken the form of campaign appearances, joint fundraisers and the like, but the rise of the cashhoarding House members has given the process a whole new dimension...
...Huge cash balances and self-financing campaigns give these incumbents an aura of invincibility...
...The Federal Election Commission reports show that use of this loophole is widespread...
...We'll see just how much he gives to Democrats who need help and how much goes to people on his committees...
...as a man of wisdom...
...The economy turned in the Democrats' favor and the Republican opposition's money never materialized...
...This is not what they were given the money for, and it is not in the party's interest to have its national fundraising efforts undermined this way...
...She was begging him for it...
...Not one of these representatives faces significant opposition, according to a midJuly analysis prepared by Charles Cook, editor of the National Political Review and a former Democratic party official...
...Presidential aspirants have been the leaders in this trend...
...says Conable...
...He calls the PAC a "more up-front, elegant, and consistent way to continue raising money...
...I used it to help tide me over?' • Kenneth L. Holland (Democrat, South Carolina, 1975-1983) refunded S25,435 to contributors and then loaned himself $75,000 out of the remainder...
...Through his personal PAC, Waxman gave out another $73,000...
...Kevin Chaffee "Of course people will be grateful and my presumptive influence will be enhanced," says Solarz, who maintains that a contribution of money is no different from an endorsement or a campaign appearance in a colleague's home district...
...Archer, there's something else to bear in mind...
...Those elected since 1980, however, can use such leftover money only for political or charitable contributions, or, of course, they can give the money back...
...Pickle is the same way and St Germain...
...Research for this article was supported by the Project For Investigative Reporting on Money and Politics...
...He has given himself interest-free loans totaling 514,900 and purchased (from himself) more than $5,000 worth of office furniture...
...Two recipients were specially favored: California Democrats Matthew Martinez and the late John Burton...
...The Wall Street Journal reported, for example, that utility lobbyists and related unions shelled out $16,000 to attend Rostenkowski's party and later received in the tax bill—no connection is implied—a special loophole that will cost the Treasury $1.6 billion that it doesn't have over the next five years...
...Kevin Chaffee wrote the campaign finance sections of the Almanac of American Politics 1984...
...I will be there one day with a floor amendment," Jacobs says...
...Such Robin Hood gestures would be more admirable if they weren't so token...
...Gary Jacobsen of the University of California, an expert on campaign financing, has observed that the Democrats should have picked up twice the number of House seats that they did in 1982, given the state of the economy...
...For one thing, Jacobsen says, Democratic incumbents were raising so much...
...The increasing cost of congressional elections has become a well-publicized scandal...
...I just didn't want to be forced to size up all the lobbyists who came to me in the corridors with fistfuls of hundred dollar bills House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski has been less fastidious, using his position as congressional tax-writer-in-chief to become one of the largest cash maws in Congress...
...These funds are given for a purpose—to get elected—not to provide a civil service retirement fund...
...In 1982 more than 40 incumbents spent more than $200,000 in spite of little or no opposition...
...Since PACs are permitted to give $5,000 to an individual candidate per election, his giving power multiplied five times over...
...with Solarz, Israel...
...YOU CAN TAKE IT WITH YOU If you are fortunate enough to be a congressman elected before January 8, 1980, there is absolutely nothing illegal about converting your excess campaign contributions into an individual retirement account...
...Democrat Mendel Davis of South Carolina pocketed $20,000 and "borrowed" an additional $22,000 to "pay for medical bills ." Peter Peyser, a New York Democrat who is running again this year, kept $12,000 after losing in 1982...
...I can't tell you how disgusted I am," says a Democrat from a neighboring state who faces a tough reelection fight this year...
...Then you look at some committee chairman who's piling it up and doesn't need it...
...He doled out a bit of it to 26 challengers and 23 incumbents—$22,300 in all...
...Among the reasons they missed this opportunity, the underfunding of Democratic challengers loomed large...
...Anyone in a high position like chairman of Ways and Means has to expect a lot of adverse reaction ." Yet he hasn't received less than 75 percent of the vote in over a decade and is unlikely to draw a millionaire opponent in his heavily ethnic district on Chicago's North Side...
...We all read the FEC reports!' Indeed, one victim of the cash hoarding by senior members of Congress is the Democratic party itself...
...Stockman had scored points as a tightfisted administrator by not seeking discretionary funds for OMB office parties and the like...
...It's a new dimension to congressional politics that permits members to enhance their own power within Congress by doling out other people's money...
...Acting through their respective committees, Berman and Levine gave $96,325 to local and state Democratic causes and an additional $24,500 to one Senate and 13 House candidates...
...He had a million he didn't need...
...But when the subject of member-to-member giving arises, the denials soften...
...These included a $23,000 bash that netted him $160,000 from lobbyists, who paid $500 apiece to attend...
...The table on page 34 suggests the magnitude of this syndrome...
...Henry Waxman, a liberal Democrat who represents Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley...
...While Republicans have their share of singlemember PACs, they have also greatly centralized their fundraising through the party...
...Fountain, a Democratic congressman from North Carolina for 30 years, got a brandnew Cadillac with leftover campaign funds, according to his former treasurer...
...he asks...
...With all the specialinterest money pouring into election campaigns, almost any counterweight is welcome...
...Of these, 17 had more than $200,000 left over, and of those, seven had remaining between $300,000 and $600,000...
...In a truly Monumental display of hypocrisy, members of Congress exempted (or "grandfathered") themselves when they passed the 1979 Federal Campaign Act, which prohibited the practice only to House members not yet elected...
...There was just no way he was going to raise that much so he backed off...
...It's different somehow with a colleague I see every day on a collegial basis if I've gotten their money," one congressman said...
...It's tough for junior members on bad committees to raise money...
...Indeed, this is the major criticism that you hear of members such as Rostenkowski and Solarz...
...None of this money will damage either the legislative agendas or career prospects of those who dispense it to fellow members of Congress...
...Donald Mitchell (Republican, New York, 1973-1983) had $57,628 left over when he left the House in 1983...
...While the impulse is at times admirable, the results are not always for the best...
...The getting and giving of money represents implicit contracts on all levels...
...John Burton makes no excuses for having taken $18,000 in leftover campaign funds and converted it to personal use...
...Among these are Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, $26,000, and Republicans Bill Thomas of California, $32,500, and Bill Frenzel of Minnesota, $45,000, in addition to Waxman and Rostenkowski...
...More than half of his contributions went to members of his own committee, and more than half of those were to colleagues who had more than $50,000 left over when the campaign was finished...
...All `Rosty' had was $500,000...
...We can do it...
...As ranking Republican on the tax-law writing House Ways and Means Committee, an assignment many House members lust after for its PAC contribution potential, Conable could have easily gone the cash-hog route...
...After he became committee chairman, in 1981, the money really started pouring in...
...Of the 23 incumbents, ten sit on the same committee as he does and are in a position to return the favor in tangible ways...
...Some congressmen are using their money not only to help members of their own party, but to win influence with their colleagues, much the way lobbyists do...
...Of course they're planning to take it with them," he says...
...In 1982 Democratic challengers were not as well funded as political conditions seemed to warrant, so Democrats did not do as well as they might have!' Why didn't these Democrats have the funds to prevail, the way their Republican counterparts had two years previously...
...Texas Democrat Jake Pickle, 53 percent...
...The administrative assistant to a New York Democrat adds that "it could be any single issue or just a constant...
...Only a few have received less than 70 percent of the vote any time in their careers, and even that was usually for their first election, before they became entrenched...
...The Democratic "alternative" to Reagan's tax bill that Rostenkowski orchestrated that year was a tawdry fugue on the theme of industry contributions...
...Their central fundraising apparatus is still relatively weak...
...He also apparently has kept a S5,735 automobile that his committee bought before he left office...
...In all, Waxman helped finance three Senate races and 30 House races...
...Dan Rostenkowski sprung for $1,500 to the Chicago Boys Clubs, $250 to the PolishAmerican Guardian Society, $300 to something called the "Dan Rostenkowski Youth Council," and $500 to Misericordia, an organization helping Chicago's derelicts (the FEC report does not indicate whether they voted...
...News and World Report that he "wished it had been more...
...Yet the Ways and Means chairman continues to rake it in...
...They are also using the money to build personal fiefdoms within Congress...
...I could look at a list of these big war chests and tell you who will do if...
...For example, L.H...
Vol. 16 • August 1984 • No. 8
