What are the short-term prospects of the GOP effectively cleaning up its public image and blunting the charges that they have cultivated a culture of corruption?
If their replacement for Tom DeLay is any measure, the chances are not good.
House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio), who rose to power in the wake of a congressional lobbying scandal, spent the equivalent of nearly six months on privately funded trips over the past six years, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group.
The Center for Public Integrity said that Boehner accepted 42 privately sponsored trips from January 2000 to December 2005. That put him on the road to other countries and “golfing hotspots,” often with his wife, Debbie, for about half a year, “only nine days of which he listed as being ‘at personal expense,’ ” the center said.
Boehner also flew at least 45 times on corporate jets owned by companies “with a financial stake in congressional affairs” from June 2001 through September 2005, the center reported.
Boehner won the majority leader spot in a surprise upset over Roy Blunt. Back when the GOP was having an internal debate over whom to pick, it was noted that neither Blunt nor Boehner was very clean:
In 1995, Boehner handed out campaign checks from the tobacco industry to members on the House floor at a time when lawmakers were considering eliminating a tobacco subsidy.
Representative Chris Shays, a Connecticut Republican, said he believes that Boehner is even closer to lobbyists than Blunt. “The problem John faces is that he’s so close to K Street; that’s the challenge he’s got,” said Shays, who’s backing Blunt.
Boehner’s tobacco check faux pas nearly ended his political career, but he doesn’t appear to have learned his lesson.
The corporations on whose planes Boehner flew included tobacco companies such as R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (15 times), UST Inc. (seven times) and Swisher International Inc. (seven times).
He is still in the pocket of Big Tobacco, and that is only the tip of the iceberg.
Among the places Boehner traveled on privately financed trips were Edinburgh, Scotland; Venice; Brussels; and Barcelona, the center said. Two of his domestic destinations, which the center pointed out are famous for their golf courses, were Boca Raton, Fla., and Scottsdale, Ariz.
The report said Boehner received more than $160,000 in food, lodging, transportation and other expenditures on his privately paid journeys. His benefactors included the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CSX Corp. and the Sallie Mae Foundation.
The congressman also “hosted many high-end fundraisers to wine and dine potential donors and Republican colleagues,” the center said. Boehner’s Freedom Project political action committee, which he used to help fellow Republicans get elected to Congress, paid more than $119,000 for golf-outing fundraisers from March 2003 through the end of 2005, the center said. It also paid $25,000 to Duck Soup, the “unofficial band of the PGA Tour.”
The same leadership PAC spent more than $87,000 on food, beverages and fund-raising costs at Sam & Harry’s, a D.C. steakhouse popular with lobbyists, from 2001 through August 2005. It also paid more than $40,000 over two nights at Washington’s Hard Rock Cafe, the center reported…
…Boehner’s staff has benefited from corporate-paid travel. The congressman approved trips taken by dozens of his aides from his personal office and the staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which he chaired starting in 2001. Over the past five years, the center said, his staff aides took more than 150 privately paid trips worth more than $200,000 to locations as far-flung as Japan and Europe.
This country has been at war for four years. Congress has not paid for a cent of the expense for our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather, they have borrowed all the money to pay for those wars while giving their corporate friends tax breaks and looser regulations. While our sons and daughters bravely dodge IED’s and RPG’s in Asia, Boehner and his crony pals are busy jet-setting around the world and country to find the most excellent golfing opportunities. I don’t wan’t to question their patriotism or their common sense or their leadership, but this behavior is nothing less than appalling.
Come November, the Republicans are going to have a serious reckoning.