New Rules Still Allow Congress Many Perks
Policies on Lobbying Are Selectively Strict

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 20, 2007

On the Monday that was supposed to start the new Congress's first five-day workweek, Minority Leader John A. Boehner helped persuade his Democratic colleagues to give House members the day off.

The Ohio Republican had his reasons. He was going to see Ohio State compete in the national championship football game in Arizona. Boehner had tickets for the stadium's nosebleed section. Then, Boehner's office said, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. offered him a bird's-eye seat in one of the company's skyboxes.

In the skybox, Boehner mingled with lobbyists for the media giant, whose vast interests in Congress include broadcast-decency legislation and possible restrictions on its hugely popular MySpace Web site.

The perk for Boehner and the lobbying access for News Corp. are entirely permissible under the new ethics rules Congress imposed on itself this month -- provided Boehner personally reimburses the cost of the skybox ticket, which Boehner's office said he plans to do once the company sends him the bill. The lawmaker can use campaign funds, instead of personal money, to pay his airfare.

"He was there to support his home-state school," Boehner spokesman Brian Kennedy explained.

Voters in the last election demanded a change in Washington's ethics climate. The new Democratic congressional leadership responded with sweeping new prohibitions on gifts and travel from lobbyists, tough new limits on once-cheap corporate jet flights for lawmakers, and new requirements that lawmakers disclose the pet projects they earmark.

But the new rules, the toughest changes since Watergate, still leave lots of room for special interests to curry favor and lawmakers to raise big dollars.

The rules, which differ between the Senate and House, are aimed at some of the most attention-grabbing practices involving special interests. Experts such as Kenneth A. Gross, a lawyer who specializes in ethics and campaign issues, said they are designed to "significantly turn the volume down in terms of extravagance and in terms of what can be done." At the same time, they preserve, with some modification, some traditional practices.

For instance, lawmakers can still go to widely attended events or campaign events and accept freebies such as meals. Nonprofit organizations and universities can still provide lawmakers free travel in many cases. And lawmakers can still offer creative opportunities for special interests to meet with them -- for a price.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the new chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, is offering special interests a chance next month to go skiing and snowmobiling in Big Sky country. All it takes is a $2,000 donation per person or a $5,000 donation from a political action committee, according to a "Save the Date" solicitation his Glacier PAC sent out to lobbyists.

If lobbyists miss the first outing, they can still catch Baucus this summer for fly-fishing or horseback riding at "Camp Baucus," the invitation promises.

"It makes one pause when members of Congress raise one hand to vote on an ethics proposal to limit special interests and with the other hand outstretched behind their back ask for campaign contributions or perks from special interests," said Kent Cooper, a former federal election regulator who studies ethics and political money.

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.