In his splendid memoir of Washington public life in the 1950s and 1960s, Harry McPherson, an aide to Lyndon Johnson in the Senate and in the White House, recalls a financial scandal from a less complicated era.
In his book ”A Political Education,” McPherson recounts the 1956 debate over a bill sponsored by Sen. William Fulbright (D., Ark.) that would have eased the impact of a Supreme Court decision allowing the Federal Power Commission to regulate natural gas prices.
The debate had broken down along party and regional lines, until Sen. Francis Case (D., S.D.) revealed in a speech to the full Senate that a gas-industry lobbyist had made an unsolicited $2,500 contribution to his re-election campaign.
The Senate in 1956 was no more or less money-conscious or venal than it is today. Still, Case`s revelation sent a tremor through the chamber. The unvarnished nature of the gift offended many members, including Sen. Case. The word ”bribe” was tossed about.
In the end, President Dwight Eisenhower vetoed the bill and, since it lacked ardent support, the Democratic-controlled Senate let the issue die. The thrust of the debate, as it turned out, hinged on whether good law should be supported even in the face of unseemly maneuvering.
The story offers an interesting counterpoint to reports on congressional campaign financing issued last week by Common Cause, the public interest lobby, and by the Federal Election Commission. The reports turn up some staggering dollar figures. And they raise, though hardly for the first time, the notion that Congress is for sale.
From January, 1987, through December, 1988, 408 incumbent members of the House of Representatives received $82.2 million in contributions from political action committees. During the same period, 328 challengers for those congressional seats got about $9 million.
It is easy enough to connect those numbers with these: Of the 408 incumbents who sought re-election last year, 402 held on to their seats. That`s a re-election rate of more than 98 percent, hardly what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they decided that House members, who now number 435, ought to face the electorate every two years.
The fact is, about the only way an incumbent House member could lose in 1988 was to be under indictment, as was the case with one Georgia Republican, or mired in a scandal, as happened with one Florida Democrat.
Despite that pleasing reality for incumbents, the Federal Election Commission reports that $256.5 million was spent by House incumbents and their challengers in the 1987-88 election cycle.
According to Common Cause, nearly half the members elected in 1988 received 50 percent or more of their campaign funds from political action committees.
PACs, a phenomenon that emerged in the 1970s, are a legal and well-organized means by which groups as contrary as corporations and labor unions, or environmental lobbyists and the forest products industry, can funnel money to candidates.
The exponential growth of the PACs has altered the nature of congressional campaigning, making the late Sen. Case`s dilemma seem altogether charming by comparison.
In 1972, PAC money to House campaigns totaled $8.5 million. That figure jumped to $55 million by 1980 and to more than $91 million the last time around.
The impending furor over the House`s yearlong ethics investigation of House Speaker Jim Wright (D., Tex.) hangs over Congress as the Easter recess ends. Whatever Wright`s fate, the bill of particulars spelled out against him is certain to contain damaging financial links to savings and loan moguls, insurance industry titans and other moneyed constituents.
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According to the Federal Election Commission, PAC donations from savings and loans and their trade associations in the last congressional campaign totaled $1.8 million.
Naturally, members of the 101st Congress, including Wright, are insisting loudly on reform of the process that serves them so well. Indeed, there is a bill in the House, sponsored by 79 members from both parties, that would establish certain limits on PAC contributions.
And, naturally, as many members of Congress clamor for reform, they argue that mountains of PAC money has little or no influence on the way they conduct business.
That facile untruth reveals what the Congress may have lost between the time of Francis Case and the present: a capacity for shame.