Who Picks Up the $1 Million Tab So Congressmen Can Get the Luxury Treatment?
Jump to full article: ABC News, 2000-07-31
Author: Brian Ross
Intro: It was a multimillionaire’s traffic jam as private jets brought America’s corporate elite and their politician friends to what will be the most unabashedly lavish political convention ever.
“There is no sense of shame,” says Scott Harshbarger of Common Cause, a citizen watchdog group that opposes special interest politics. “No sense of outrage.”
Behind it all are millions of dollars in mostly secret, but entirely legal, corporate money to pay for the wining and dining of a privileged and powerful few.
“We don’t want the press anywhere near us,” says one GOP official. . .
It’s all about access and influence and no one is more adept at brokering it than House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, one of the three most powerful leaders in the House, who has collected more than $1 million from willing corporations to give members of Congress the royal treatment at this convention.
“I’ve been going to Republican conventions since 1984,” says Sen. John McCain. “I’ve never heard of such lavish treatment for members of Congress before.” . .
DeLay’s office says they will never reveal those names because they don’t have to.
This royal treatment is possible because members of Congress voted themselves a special exemption for the conventions.
At all other times, the wining and dining and luxury gifts from secret corporate money would be absolutely illegal.
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