Congress: America's Criminal Class: Part I
America, Mark Twain once said, is a nation without a distinct criminal class "with the possible exception of Congress."
If anything, the Congress of today is even worse than it was in Twain's time more than a century ago.
The 535 men and women who make up the House and Senate of the United States include, at best, a collection of rogues, con artists, scofflaws and bad check artists. At worst, they comprise, as Twain once observed, a distinct criminal class.
Over the past several months, researchers for Capitol Hill Blue have checked public records, past newspaper articles, civil court cases and criminal records of both current and recent members of the United States Congress (since 1992). We have talked with former associates and business partners who have been left out in the cold by people they thought were friends.
Using a scoring system developed by American Express, we ran credit checks on members and applied the financial and criminal record scoring procedures used by the Department of Defense to determine eligibility for a Top Secret security clearance.
All checks were made through public records. Our researchers were not allowed to break any laws or misrepresent themselves to obtain this information.
What emerges from this examination is a disturbing portrait of a group of elected officials who routinely avoid payment of debts, write bad checks, abuse their spouses, assault people and openly violate the law.
They include current Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla), whose trail of bad debts, lies to Congress and misstatements to the Internal Revenue Service have spawned a number of investigations. Then there is Rep. James Moran (D-Va) whose wife has charged him with abuse, who has assaulted other members of Congress on the floor of the House and is a former stockbroker whose judgment in trades is so bad he is broke from poor investments. The list also includes Joe Waldholtz, a con man and husband of former Rep. Enid Greene Waldholtz (R-UT) who kited more than a million dollars in bad checks and ended up in prison.
Others, like former Ohio Senator John Glenn, have driven creditors into bankruptcy because of unpaid debts left over from aborted Presidential campaigns. Even millionaire Senator Ted Kennedy has left a trail of unpaid debts from past campaigns.
In recent years, members of Congress have gone to jail for child molestation, fraud and other charges.
Our research found 117 current and recent members of the House and Senate who have run at least two businesses each that went bankrupt, often leaving business partners and creditors holding the bag. Seventy-one of them have credit reports so bad they can't get an American Express card on their own (but as members of Congress, they get a government-issued Amex card without a credit check).
Fifty-three have personal and financial problems so serious they would be denied security clearances by the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy if they had to apply through normal channels (but, again, as members of Congress they get such clearances simply because they fooled enough people to get elected).
Twenty-nine members of current and recent Congresses have been accused of spousal abuse in either criminal or civil proceedings. Twenty-seven have driving while intoxicated arrests on their driving records. Twenty-one are current defendants in various lawsuits, ranging from bad debts, disputes with business partners or other civil matters.
Nineteen members of current and recent Congresses have been accused of writing bad checks, even after the scandal several years ago, which resulted in closure of the informal House bank that routinely allowed members to overdraw their accounts without penalty. Fourteen have drug-related arrests in their background, eight were arrested for shoplifting, seven for fraud, four for theft, three for assault and one for criminal trespass.
A long tradition of corruption and ambivalence
Does the heady atmosphere of Congress turn honest men and women into a criminal class? Or is elected office simply a magnet for those who lie, cheat and steal for a living?
It could be a little bit of both, say political scientists and Constitutional scholars.
Congress has always had its share of rogues and scoundrels:
· Adam Clayton Powell, the fast-talking Harlem Congressman who was re-elected even after Congress expelled him in 1967. Powell had survived charges of income-tax evasion (with a hung jury) even before his first election to Congress.
· Wes Cooley, the Oregon Congressman who lied about serving in the Korean War, quit Congress under a cloud in 1996, and was later convicted of falsifying VA loan applications.
· California Congressman Walter Tucker, who quit Congress in 1996 just before his conviction for accepting $30,000 in bribes and sentenced to 27 months in the federal pen.
Congressmen have gone to jail for child molestation, bribery, fraud, misuse of public funds and various crimes and misdemeanors. Some have resigned in disgrace: Wayne Hayes because he put his mistress on his payroll as a secretary (she couldn't type) or Wilbur Mills because he messed around with a stripper.
As Winston Churchill once said: "Democracy is the worst form of government imaginable - except for all other forms."
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