New Rules Still Allow Congress Many Perks

Rules that have been in force in the House and Senate for years say that members of Congress cannot promise an official act for a gift and must avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. But when those rules apply can be murky, and the new ethics rules do not make it any clearer.

Around the time Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was selected in November to be the new GOP whip, he flew with a company lobbyist aboard BellSouth's corporate jet from Washington to Jackson, Miss. The senator and lobbyist got to know each other better, discussed religion and talked generally about BellSouth's merger with AT&T that was pending at the Federal Communications Commission, company spokesman Bill McCloskey said. The next Sunday, Lott accepted the lobbyist's invitation to go to church together, McCloskey said.

A few weeks later, Lott was the highest-ranking lawmaker to sign a Dec. 8 letter in which 14 senators demanded that the FCC approve the BellSouth-AT&T merger before the end of the holidays. Regulators approved the deal on the eve of New Year's weekend.

McCloskey said there was no connection between the flight and the letter, noting Lott was a longtime supporter of BellSouth, had flown nearly a dozen times aboard its jet since 2001 and had written a letter last fall supporting the merger. That letter came six weeks after another flight Lott took courtesy of BellSouth.

"Lott has supported the merger as good for Mississippi for some time," McCloskey said.

Lott's office did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

For Lott's Nov. 13 trip, he had to pay $1,335, the equivalent of a first-class ticket. The money came from his campaign.

Under their new ethics rules, senators can continue to take corporate jets, but the cost to their campaign will be much higher because the new rules require reimbursement at full charter rates. House members, however, are essentially banned from using corporate jets.

Fact-finding trips paid for by special interests are another practice covered by the new rules, and although they will become less extravagant and less frequent, there will still be plenty of permissible opportunities to take them.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) took his wife, Victoria, with him when he gave a speech in Florence at an event sponsored by New York University, and they were driven around Florence in a car paid for by the school. Kennedy reported that the school paid $1,560 for car service and $257 for a hotel.

Half a dozen House Democrats did not travel quite as far as Kennedy but still took a free post-election trip to Panama City courtesy of the CaribNews Foundation.

The listed purpose of the travel was to attend a business conference, and some lawmakers brought relatives, whose expenses were also paid by the foundation. For instance, new House ethics committee chairwoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) took her sister along, and Reps. David Scott (D-Ga.) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) took their wives.

The new ethics rules will continue to allow for trips such as these that are paid by universities or nonprofit organizations that do not have registered Washington lobbyists. The length and costs of trips, however, could be trimmed, said Gross, who thinks that such trips can be valuable to members of congress. "The new rules," he said, "strike a balance, although on the edges, there can be some abuse still."

One area that was not addressed in the new rules was the use of campaign funds that can directly or indirectly benefit lawmakers or their families. Those practices were illustrated most recently by Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) and Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.).

Doolittle drew the scrutiny of federal investigators during the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal when it came out that the congressman's wife was getting paid both by Abramoff and by Doolittle's political action committee for fundraising work around the same time the congressman took actions favorable to Abramoff's clients.

Reports Doolittle filed with the Federal Election Commission through this month show his Superior California Federal Leadership PAC paid his wife's firm nearly $100,000 during the 2006 election cycle, including $4,000 in the weeks after the November election. Doolittle has said he will no longer pay his wife that way.

Likewise, Mollohan reported that in the last two months of 2006 his campaign spent $140,000 on lawyers he had hired to deal with his legal problems. Mollohan was forced to step down from the House ethics committee last year over a federal probe into taxpayer money he steered to a network of nonprofit foundations connected to himself or other insiders.