Report: Dozens of House members scrutinized
WASHINGTON – Dozens of lawmakers have drawn scrutiny from their ethics monitor this year for everything from financial dealings to travel and campaign donations, according to a leaked account showing an active House panel secretly at work.
Seven of the lawmakers – four not previously known – serve on a defense appropriations subcommittee that divvies up money for Pentagon contractors.
Most of the names and investigative subjects, mentioned in a summary of the ethics committee’s work last July, were known. But the summary – obtained by The Washington Post – shows the widespread scope of preliminary reviews and investigations the panel can have before it at any one time.
If anything, the document rebuts arguments of some watchdog groups that members of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct – the ethics committee – do little to investigate their colleagues.
The document shows the scrutiny involved some 30 members last summer, but it lumps together lawmakers who are subjects of a complete investigation with subpoena powers with those who simply might have asked for a ruling on a proposed trip to be financed by a private sponsor. Full investigations by an investigative subcommittee are announced publicly.
Committee Chairman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and ranking Republican Jo Bonner of Alabama went further than usual June 11 by announcing they were examining the conduct of some lawmakers on the defense panel even though no investigative panel was formed.
Members of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee had steered targeted appropriations called earmarks to clients of a now-defunct lobbying firm – PMA – and received contributions from the firm and its clients.
The names of defense subcommittee chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., and Democratic members Jim Moran of Virginia and Peter Visclosky of Indiana had surfaced in connection with the inquiry.
The document adds the names of Norm Dicks, D-Wash.; Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio; ranking subcommittee Republican C.W. Bill Young of Florida and Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan.
All four have received campaign contributions from PMA’s political action committee and employees. Donation figures compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics show that:
• PMA’s PAC and employees together were the single biggest source of political money to Dicks in each election cycle from 2003 through 2008 when donations are analyzed by the givers’ employers. Dicks received roughly $89,500 from them during that period.
• The lobbying firm’s PAC and staff also were Kaptur’s top single source of donations by an employer during the 2008 election cycle. Collectively, they gave her about $28,500 for the last election and $12,500 for the 2006 election, a total of about $41,000. They gave her nothing in 2003-04.
• Tiahrt raised about $19,750 from PMA’s PAC and employees from 2003 through 2008.
• Young collected about $9,250 from the 2003-04 election cycle through last year.
The Pentagon budget panel had such an allure for Kaptur – who represents a Toledo-anchored Rust Belt district – that in 2005 she gave up her party’s top seat on the agriculture subcommittee to claim a rare open seat on Murtha’s subcommittee. She would have become one of a dozen Appropriations subcommittee chairmen had she stayed put.
A spokesman for Kaptur, Steve Fought, said she expected to be cleared.
“The congresswoman has always emphasized openness and transparency, and it almost goes without saying she will continue to cooperate,” he said. “She’s saying there was no quid pro quo.”
Dicks said, “I can assure you that I have always conducted myself appropriately and in accordance with all applicable House rules and statutes.”
