In a town where influence peddling is an art, Abramoff was Michelangelo. And maybe you wondered: Did any of my legislators have their snouts in his trough?
The answer is yes, yes they did. One, in fact, helped build the trough itself.
Earlier this month, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that since 1999, eight Pennsylvania legislators took money from Abramoff or his clients. Leading the parade was Sen. Rick Santorum, who banked $11,000 from Abramoff’s clients, though none from the man himself.
Now Santorum, who wants to take the lead on ethics reform — more on that in a moment — has vowed to donate the $11,000 to charity.
Sen. Arlen Specter got $6,000. No word on whether he’ll give it back. Rep. Joseph Pitts, who represents Lancaster County, got an $894 in-kind donation of food for a fund-raiser from Abramoff in 2000. “We never got a check from Jack Abramoff,” Pitts’ press secretary, Skip Brown, told the Inquirer. “We don’t have anything to give back.” Six others got anywhere from $5,000 to $1,000; four, including Rep. Tim Holden, the lone Pennsylvania Democrat to get money connected to Abramoff, say they’ll give the money back.
The right has tried to portray the Abramoff scandal as bipartisan, but honest conservatives have admitted, as did Rich Lowery of the National Review, that “this is, in its essence, a Republican scandal, and any attempt to portray it otherwise is a misdirection.”
But that makes sense, doesn’t it? Republicans control Washington, so it stands to reason that where there’s sleaze, they’ll be knee-deep in it. That’s not to say the hip boot wouldn’t be on the other foot if the Democrats ran the show. But the GOP has proven to be particularly adept at surfing the tidal wave of lobbying money, mostly because they’ve been more disciplined about it.
Ever heard of the “K Street Project?” Begun around 1995, it was an effort by Republicans to place good GOP soldiers at lobbying firms, many of them on Washington’s K Street, and reward them with access to top GOP officials. It led to boom times in the lobbying industry: The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has doubled since 2000, and between 1998 and 2004, spending mushroomed from $1.42 billion to $2.1 billion.
Once again, leading the parade has been our own Rick Santorum.
In a 2003 Washington Monthly piece, Nicholas Confessore detailed how, each Tuesday, Santorum convenes a handpicked group of lobbyists. A list of lobbying jobs is passed around; Santorum’s job “is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican. ... After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors.”
The meetings have been a key part of the GOP’s successful effort to undermine the bipartian complexion of K Street and consolidate support “among Washington’s thousands of trade associations and corporate offices, their tens of thousands of employees, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in political money at their disposal.”
It is, Confessore wrote, a new type of political machine, one perhaps destined to emit the likes of Abramoff, and built, in part, by Rick Santorum.
Yet now Santorum, whom the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last week “has received more money from lobbyists than any other congressional candidate so far in the 2006 election cycle,” is to help draft legislation tightening restrictions on lobbyists.
Can the fox really be trusted to beef up security at the henhouse?
For in the wake of the Abramoff scandal, it is clear real reforms are needed.
And unfortunately, when it comes to such things, Santorum, and maybe the GOP establishment as a whole, have already proven that they know Jack.
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817.
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