The indictments of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay are the denouement of a revolution in American government that began with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. With their control of Congress, conservative Republicans began shifting government away from preserving individual liberty and privacy, easing the unequal distribution of income and wealth, and meeting the needs of working- and middle-class Americans. Instead, they fundamentally changed how business was done in Washington to serve the private and partisan interests of legislators and the profits of their corporate clients.
Igniting the Revolution
The Republican Revolution of 1994 began not with New Gingrich’s Contract With America, but the Republican’s cynical destruction of health care reform in the Clinton Administration. In a previously undisclosed memo, entitled “The Moral Equivalent of War,” GOP Representative Dick Armey wrote in 1993:
The failure of the Clinton plan will radically alter the political and policy landscapes. It will leave the President’s agenda weakened, his plan’s supporters demoralized, and the opposition emboldened. Our market-oriented ideas will suddenly become thinkable, not just on health care, but on a host of issues.
Thus, to advance their political prospects Republicans deliberately killed any hope of reforming American health care, leaving the less affluent at the mercy of the market. Today some 45 million Americans still lack health care insurance and tens of millions more are inadequately covered.
The New Think Tanks
A new client and server relationship between corporations and rightwing organizations matured in the 1990s. Corporate donors began expecting and receiving value returned for contributions to right-wing, not just the elevation of conservative principles as in the past, but direct action to boost profits. The flagship Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), for example, served corporate donors as combination think tank, lobbyist, advertiser, and grassroots agitator. With C. Boyden Gray, formerly Ronald Reagan’s White House Counsel, monitoring its work, CSE produced and marketed studies tailored to corporate priorities. CSE joined with donors from the oil, gas, and coal industries in 1994 to kill a proposed energy tax. CSE opposed a multi-billion dollar federal project to restore the Everglades that threatened cane-growing land, netting it $700,000 from Florida sugar cane companies. CSE received $175,000 from Exxon after it derided theories of global warming as “junk science” and it received $75,000 from the Florida auto rental industry to back legislation that limited renter’s liability from lawsuits. Scores of kindred groups followed the CSE model nationally, regionally, and locally
The New Lobbyists
The tightening relationship between wealthy corporations and conservative advocates in the 1990’s produced a new breed of lobbyists different from the operatives who sold inside connections and expertise to the highest bidder. The new lobbyists instead orchestrated the triangular flow of big money from wealthy clients to the lobbyist and then to conservative organizations that dispensed travel and perks to journalists, intellectuals, and policy-makers that lobbyists could not legally provide. The intermediary organizations lobbied directly for client interests and rebated contributions back to the lobbyist. Money from the lobbyist’s earnings and his clients also flowed to the campaign coffers of targeted officeholders and candidates.
Jack Abramoff was the poster boy for the new lobbying. He cultivated a wealthy client base and a special relationship with the National Center for Public Policy Research, and with Representative Tom DeLay. Abramoff’s clients poured millions of dollars into the Center, which funded luxury travel for legislators and opinion makers and rebated more than $2 million to public relations firms and foundations controlled by Abramoff and his business partner, Michael Scanlon, formerly DeLay’s press secretary. Abramoff also donated generously to political action committees that DeLay controlled, hired the congressman’s former aides, and included DeLay in trips financed by his clients and Ridenour’s Center.
The K Street Project
Another undisclosed Republican Party memo written after the 1998 elections documents the so-called “K Street Project,” named after Washington D.C.’s strip mall for lobbyists. The GOP would pressure lobbying groups “to hire more Republicans; Republican leadership refuses to meet with Dems; make Fortune 500 firms aware of whom they are hiring to represent them in Washington.” They sought to redirect K Street’s non-partisan culture to partiality for the GOP. Republican leaders offered companies the inducement of pro-corporate policies, while threatening to deny access to firms that lagged in the hiring of Republican lobbyists. They constructed a shadow political machine of lawyers, lobbyists, and public relations specialists with access to hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign cash and the power to shape policy without the checks and balances of public review. DeLay first led the K Street project, which prospered after the election of George W. Bush in 2000 and the participation of Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
Defunding the Left
The memo further outlined strategy for “defunding the left” by cutting off “sources of hard currency for the Democratic Party,” applying the “model” Ronald Reagan used “for cutting off the flow of hard currency to the Soviet Union.” To block funding from unions, Republicans would push for free trade initiatives and repeal of the Davis Bacon Act requiring the payment of prevailing wages on federally funded projects, among other anti-union measures. To cripple funding from trial lawyers, the GOP Congress would enact “tort reform” and limits on product liability. To weaken the National Education Association, Congress would adopt “school choice.” It would also seek to kill off the legal services corporation and the Public Broadcasting System, while restricting the incentive for contributions to “liberal foundations” by repealing the estate tax.
Ultimately the Revolution that began in 1994 united corporate leaders with Christian moralists to resurrect a conservative consensus that reached fruition when Republicans gained unified control over national government during the administration of George W. Bush. It gave the Right programs and policies to fight for, with fervor unmatched by a Democratic Party still uncertain of its identity. The indictments of DeLay and Abramoff are but one of many signs that the corruption of government is finally catching up with the GOP. The question remains whether Democrats will have the understanding to figure this out and the principles, backbone, and determination to return government to the interests of the people.
I am a professor at American University and a candidate for Senate in Maryland in the model of Paul Wellstone. Please visit my home page: www.allanlichtman.com.