Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Study Shows House Members Profit

WASHINGTON — One accusation long directed at Congress is that lawmakers come to this capital city not just to serve the American people but also to enrich themselves and their families.

For the House of Representatives, at least, there is now an encyclopedia of sorts that reinforces this suspicion.

A nonprofit ethics group here spent the last nine months examining every member of the House — for campaign spending, budget earmarks, office accounts and lobbying by any relatives — and found that the families of more than half of all the House lawmakers have received payments or otherwise benefited financially from their affiliation with a lawmaker in the two previous election cycles.

The 346-page report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, is an extraordinary compendium of creative accounting, self-interested budgeting and generous expense reimbursements. It highlights common practices that translate into tens of millions of dollars in payments to relatives or the lawmakers themselves.

There are hundreds of examples to choose from, but here are just a few:

Campaign accounts of Representative Ron Paul, a Republican of Texas who is running for the party’s presidential nomination, paid salaries or fees to his daughter, brother, grandson, daughter’s mother-in-law, granddaughter and grandson-in-law, totaling more than $300,000, according to the report.

Mr. Paul did not dispute the findings, though Jesse Benton, a spokesman, said, “Any implication that there is anything inappropriate is wildly off base.”

Representative Rubén Hinojosa, Democrat of Texas, who paid two grandnieces and a son-in-law with his re-election campaign funds, also contributed money from his campaign account to his daughter’s election bid for county clerk in Texas, and he helped secure a federal budget appropriation for a hospital where his wife serves on the board, according to the report.

Representative Jo Ann Emerson, Republican of Missouri, has two daughters who have worked in Washington as lobbyists, one for General Motors, the other for the chemical giant Monsanto, one of 44 House lawmakers who have a relative that is registered to lobby or at least works in government affairs, the report says.

Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, has paid nearly $600,000 over the last two election cycles to himself or his family in reimbursements, salaries, consulting contracts and other payments, with some of the largest amounts going to his niece, Veronica Cintron, who served as a campaign fund-raiser. He even reimbursed thousands of dollars in charitable contributions that Ms. Cintron made over the last several years, the records show.

Image
Ron Paul of Texas, congressman and candidate, with his wife, Carol, and granddaughter Linda.Credit...Cheryl Senter for The New York Times

Most of these practices do not appear to violate any laws or House ethics rules. And it is extremely common for lawmakers to use campaign funds to reimburse themselves for expenses related to a re-election bid. Lawmakers asked for response uniformly defended their spending or other family ties.

But Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said that some of the payments at least raise questions. One such example is the use by Representative Michael Burges, Republican of Texas, of his campaign funds to renew his membership in a professional medical society — which at least appears to be a personal expense. (Mr. Burges did not respond to a request for comment.)

“Some things that aren’t illegal may still raise serious ethical questions,” Ms. Sloan said. “If donors really understood where their money is going, I think they would be aghast.”

Lawmakers who use campaign funds to pay relatives should be required to disclose that the payment is going to a family member, Ms. Sloan said, and there should be more detailed accounting of reimbursements paid to lawmakers or their family members for campaign expenses.

In all, the “Family Affair” report — featuring a cartoon-style cover with lawmakers being served lobster and caviar and plates overflowing at a big dinner table — includes 248 House members, representing 105 Democrats and 143 Republicans, about equal to their parties’ proportional makeup in the House.

Lawmakers earned a mention if the researchers were able to document any relative who served as a lobbyist, if the lawmaker or a relative had been paid a salary or consulting fee by the lawmaker’s campaign or official government accounts, or received a campaign contribution from the House member’s campaign fund.

Lawmakers were also included if they had helped direct federal spending — an “earmark” in Washington lingo — toward an organization affiliated with a relative, or if the lawmaker or relatives collected more than $10,000 in reimbursements from campaign accounts during the two election cycles.

The report — which involved examining detailed campaign finance documents that list individual campaign expenditures — turns up some odd reimbursements for individual lawmakers or their families, like baby-sitting bills paid on behalf of Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, or his wife, or the reimbursements to Representative Aaron Shock, Republican of Illinois, for hotel bills in Miami and Athens and a seaplane in the Caribbean.

A spokesman for Mr. Shock said that the Grand Bretagne Hotel Athens bill for $1,136 in 2009 was a personal expense and paid in error. Mr. Shock will refund his campaign for the bill.

The examination of these accounts also turned up records of loans granted by the lawmakers to their own campaigns, which often are repaid with interest. Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, for example, loaned his campaign $100,000 about a decade ago but then used campaign funds to pay back not only the principal but an additional $25,000 in interest on the loan, which he gave to his own campaign at a 6 percent interest rate.

“We have been in 100 percent compliance with the rules,” said Colin Strother, a campaign spokesman, noting that the interest rate reflected the market rate at the time that the loan was given.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Study Shows House Members Profit. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT