There is some irony that getting jobs for people might be the Achilles’ heel of a politician who can help create huge public employment programs, or by adapting tax policy encourage an uptick in private sector employment.
For a man who apparently puts little emphasis on “means” but great emphasis on “ends,” creating a few positions here and there is part of a process that doesn’t involve much thought, and little, if any, agonizing.
And after all, as everyone familiar with the Chicago Jobs-for-Mopes Program has understood forever, for some people in politics, showing up for work is a lot more damaging to the public good than staying home. The jobs have never been the point.
It is what they lead to that has always mattered.
“He is more interested in results than in process,” says Bill Daley, whose credentials in Democratic politics are so strong that he can recall visiting John F. Kennedy’s White House with Rostenkowski. “Your new politician, at least in the last 15 years or so, is into television and into process. They are the process Democrats. Rostenkowski wants to get to the end result.
“If that is good for the public, then he will get there. He is a throwback. That is the best description of the difference between the old politicians and the new ones . . . The old ones are concerned with results.”
Almost everything Rostenkowski does has been colored by this “results” approach.
He is still criticized for being “the king of pork.” His methods, displayed much to the anger of reformers in the 1986 tax rewriting in which some $5 billion to $10 billion in “transition rules” were used to encourage support, seem almost stunningly raw.
Transition rules are individual tax breaks for the chagrined, truly wronged or very well-connected, who argue through their representatives in Congress that they have been unfairly touched by changes in tax law. Sometimes, a Ways and Means chairman will trade them to win support for a bill from reluctant members of Congress.
“We have to certainly take the heat from voting constituents, but that is kind of what our job is,” he says of the tax act. “We get a lot of the exposes on that, but those things are done in the long-term interest of getting more money in the code or eliminating loopholes. But that isn’t exciting reading.”
What is exciting reading, however, is the way Rostenkowski has been able to use his chairmanship to become one of the most successful fundraisers in the Congress. Once the post-Watergate reform of campaign finance legalized just about everything but outright bribery (provided all contributions were disclosed), he discovered the mother lode of political finance.
It sometimes seems that almost any special interest with business before Ways and Means, and that generally means all the business special interests, leaps at the chance to contribute to Rostenkowski’s vast store of campaign funds. He is not alone at this in Congress.
These days, the standard response to criticism of this kind of finance is that “I can’t be bought by a campaign contribution.” But the practice has become so blatant that it has spawned its own broad push for finance reform. Rostenkowski is almost always the target when reformers talk about the abuse of the system.
Rostenkowski’s political action contributions during the last election cycle filled page after page in the Center for Responsive Politics’ 1991-1992 survey and added up to nearly $1 million.
Broken down by interest groups, the chairman got $53,500 from agriculture, $54,500 from communications and electronics, $22,000 from defense, $34,800 from energy and natural resources, $298,198 from finance, insurance and real estate, $91,850 from the health industry, $13,023 from single-interest groups, $93,500 from labor, $24,250 from lawyers and lobbyists, $148,000 from miscellaneous businesses and $88,000 from transportation.
There is nothing illegal about that, and his supporters say his prowess at getting money is only another sign that Rostenkowski never does anything halfway. But there is another side to the money issue-how it is spent-that could cause problems for the chairman.
House rules on political spending are so loosely written that a member might drive a Brinks truck through them without scraping a wall. Essentially, the theory is that political funds are not to be used for personal expenses.
Rostenkowski has not been very meticulous about this kind of spending. One element of the grand jury investigation, for example, focuses on the congressional and political money he used, totaling in the tens of thousands of dollars, to rent space in his own Chicago buildings or those owned by his relatives.
Cars are getting attention too. It is not unusual for a member of Congress to use political funds to lease cars for his home district. But there are questions whether an apparent purchase of three vehicles for more than $70,000 were for Rostenkowski’s political or personal use.
There is also the matter of expenses totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, all taken from political accounts. Rostenkowski has always argued that, as chairman of Ways and Means, everything he does is political and, by extension, all expenses are political expenses.
But if investigators conclude that kind of spending is personal, not political, the chairman faces income tax liabilities. There is also a double billing question that centers on the issue of how many meals even a Ways and Means chairman can eat a week and at whose expense.
The first indication of grand jury trouble for Rostenkowski came not from those avenues, but in an investigation much closer to home, the House Post Office. About $22,000 in Rostenkowski spending on stamps is in question. Did he really buy stamps, or did he use stamp vouchers to get cash from the post office over the years?
In the face of the stories and reports about grand jury testimony, Rostenkowski has always said he believes he did nothing wrong, then notes that his legal counsel has told him not to answer specific questions about anything. So far, he has spent $750,000 in legal expenses for himself and his staff. He has a special fund to collect contributions to pay those costs.
Still, there have been some curious developments.
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Last week, it was disclosed that Rostenkowski had recently repaid more than $82,000 to the government that had originally been spent on office supplies and gifts. No one intended to cheat the government, said his attorney.
What is curious about the long investigation of Rostenkowski is not the nature of what charges might come from the grand jury so much as the way they Seem to place him in two distinctly different worlds and times: Chicago’s wards in the 1950s and the corridors of Washington power today.
It is a reminder of how far he has traveled, and the altitude from which he will tumble should he fall.
He seems genuinely gleeful when he talks about his relationship with Clinton, the first president he has worked with who is younger than he. Clinton knows this too, according to one of his political consultants, and plays Rostenkowski like an orchestra.
But it wasn’t the White House Rostenkowski who showed up at an O’Hare International Airport meeting a few weeks ago to address the Health Insurance Association of America, even though he was carrying the White House message.
It was very much the Daniel of Congress, the character from the 32nd Ward, ready to deal and not at all shy about visiting a lobbyist’s lion’s den in the battle over national health insurance.
“The legislative boat is about to pull away from the pier,” he said. “So it is time for you to decide whether you want to book passage and help us chart our course, acknowledging that you won’t win 100 percent of what you want. . . .”
“It’s time to make a deal. But making a deal implies a willingness to compromise and support the product that ultimately emerges. It requires you to abandon the high-profile outside game you’ve become so good at and instead embrace an intense, but private inside game.”
Then he told them their ad campaign against national health care was terrible, comparing it to the “Willie Horton” racial ads of the 1988 presidential campaign. The message was very clear and very old Chicago: Get on this train or get under it. I’m open for dealing.
It would be bluster from almost anyone else, even the president.
But from the Ways and Means chairman, whose committee will shape the health-care package before it reaches the House floor, it was a critical offer, with a good dose of “or else” attached.
That is the way he likes to be viewed, as the youngster from Chicago who made the long climb to power, knows how to use it, and has won skill and respect in the process.
He has struggled mightily to shake the old image, succeeding to great degree and becoming prideful in the process. And so there is a tint of hubris to the investigation he faces, perhaps because it implies he hasn’t quite made the break.
A moving assessment came from one of his supporters, not always an admirer, but thoughtful on the question of Danny Rosty and his fate:
“You know, for decades he has worked hard in Congress to escape the idea that he was just a slug who crawled in from the wards of Chicago, and the great tragedy of Dan Rostenkowski might be that that is exactly the way some people are going to see him in the end.”