Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
America’s Most Expensive Tollbooth
Protection: for a Price
The Underground Washington Economy
The Double-Milker
Slush Funds
Trust Me
Protection for a Price
It’s a Family Affair
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
Sample Chapter from THROW THEM ALL OUT
Buy the Book
About the Author
Copyright © 2013 by Peter Schweizer
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhco.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Schweizer, Peter, date.
Extortion : how politicians extract your money, buy votes, and line their own pockets / Peter Schweizer.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-544-10334-4
1. Political corruption—United States. I. Title.
JK2249.S34 2013
320.973—dc23
2013026342
eISBN 978-0-544-10330-6
v1.1013
To
Bernadette Casey Smith and Owen Smith
with humble thanks for their friendship, support, encouragement,
and wisdom over the years
1
Introduction
“Throw Fear”
You’re only as good as your last envelope.
—SILVIO DANTE, The Sopranos, 1999
THE POTOMAC RIVER that snakes by Washington, D.C., was given its name by the local native Americans centuries ago. Potomac was the name of a local tribe. According to some accounts, the word means “the place where goods are off-loaded,” or “the place where tribute is paid.” As journalists say, that latter meaning is a fact too good to check.
It is often said that “money is corrupting politics.” And as ever, this is true. Outside interests, from labor unions to large corporations, are influencing and distorting our government in the search for favorable policies. And these interests are well prepared to push money and special favors into Washington, D.C., in order to get them.
But a deeper, more sinister problem that has been overlooked better explains the dismal state of our national government: politics is corrupting money. While we have focused on the power that contributors have over officials, we have largely ignored the power that officials have over contributors. We have focused on the buyers of influence (those outside special interests), but paid little heed to the sellers of influence—bureaucrats and politicians.
In short, we have come to believe the problem in Washington is a sort of legalized bribery. If outside interests can only be held at bay, we can and will get better leadership.
But what if we are wrong? What if the problem is not bribery . . . but extortion? What if the Permanent Political Class in Washington, made up of individuals from both political parties, is using its coercive public power to not only stay in office but to threaten others and to extract wealth, and in the bargain pick up private benefits for themselves, their friends, and their families?
What we often think of as the bribery of our national leaders by powerful special interests in Washington may actually make more sense understood as extortion by government officials—elected and unelected. Far from being passive recipients of money and favors, they make it happen. They leverage their positions to shake the money tree for themselves and their political allies. And as we will see, they do so using a variety of methods, many of which you probably have never heard of before.
The assumption is that we need to protect politicians from outside influences. But how about protecting ourselves from the politicians?
Journalists and academics look at politics through a mythical lens that harkens back to Aristotle and Plato: politics is the business of producing correct policies. We may dispute what is correct, but in the traditional view, that is the goal of the process. Media reports on government actions, whether debates, legislation, or regulation, almost always present them in terms of pure policy. New laws are for a specific purpose, perhaps even a noble one.
But what if that isn’t the real point of the exercise? What if politics is really largely about fund-raising and making money? The commercial motives of the Permanent Political Class in acting or not acting are rarely questioned and virtually never fully understood.
Popular culture takes the same naive approach. We all love the image of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—the idealistic new senator seduced and targeted by powerful outside interests. “Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for,” Stewart’s character says as he fights the lobbyists and the political machine. Virtually every new candidate for office runs as an outsider, vowing to take on special interests. If only he can resist those outside forces, everything will be okay. When bad things happen in Washington, we assume the problem is that our national leaders have given in to seductive outside forces, the “special interests.” From time to time we erect laws and rules to protect politicians from these temptations.
But what if we have it backwards? What if the greater culprits are inside the halls of power in Washington rather than on the outside?
Some at the heart of Washington power have hinted at this cold, hard reality. As Edward Kangas, former global chairman of Deloitte Touche, put it: “What has been called legalized bribery looks like extortion to us. . . . I know from personal experience and from other executives that it’s not easy saying no to appeals for cash from powerful members of Congress or their operatives. Congress can have a major impact on business. . . . The threat may be veiled, but the message is clear: failing to donate could hurt your company.”1
Former Microsoft chief operating officer Robert Herbold told me, “You’re crazy if you don’t play along. They will go after you.” Ray Plank, the founder and former chairman of Apache Corporation, has seen his company cough up to both parties for fifty years.2 He told me that campaign money and lobbying contracts are “protection money. It’s what you expect from the mafia.”3
Former politicians who once played the game now admit the same thing. As former senator David Boren puts it, “Donors . . . feel victimized. Now that I’ve left office, I sometimes hear from large donors that they feel ‘shaken down.’”4 Former senator Russ Feingold admits, “It’s not like businesses and business leaders call up politicians and beg them, could I please give you some money? It goes the other way, which is that people are called constantly by politicians when you have a system like this, or their representatives, or their allegedly independent agents. And it’s more like extortion than it’s like bribery.”5 One survey of corporate executives conducted by the Committee for Economic Development found that half gave to political candidates because they “fear adverse consequences for themselves or their industry if they turn down requests.”6
Politics in modern America has become a lucrative business, an industry that has less to do with policy and a lot more to do with accessing money and favors. As we will see, bills and regulations are often introduced not to effect policy change, but as veh
icles for shaking down people for those money and favors. Indeed, the motive on both sides often has nothing to do with creating a “correct” policy, but instead is often about maximizing profits.
Raising campaign money is not just about winning elections and staying in power. As we will see, the Permanent Political Class has come up with all sorts of creative ways to transfer those funds into other pockets, which can be accessed to enhance their own wealth and lifestyle. And they have carved out convenient loopholes in the law that allow lawmakers to legally convert votes into cash.
The same goes for lobbying. Hiring a lobbyist aligned with a powerful politician is more important than hiring a lobbyist with a certain expertise or experience. Hiring a former staff member or family member is better still. It’s the favor that matters. Sometimes such favors are requested by politicians. Other times they don’t need to ask out loud. Several powerful politicians have multiple members of their immediate family (spouses and children) who make big money from lobbying.7
Over the course of American history there have been repeated attempts to restrict the flow of money going into political parties and campaigns. Contrary to what you might have been told in school or by the media, the advocates of these efforts have not just been good-government, public-spirited citizens. They have also been corporations and individuals tired of being shaken down.
At the turn of the twentieth century, extortion was a widespread problem in Washington. The method was perfected by Mark Hanna, who served as President William McKinley’s chief fund-raiser. (Hanna once famously said, “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”) Issuing a blunt warning to large businesses, Hanna gave them an “assessment,” an “invoice” of sorts, that they were expected to give to the Republican Party. If they failed to pay it, they would face big trouble. Standard Oil was assessed a $250,000 fee. Banks were expected to pay a fee of 1 percent of their capital.8 By 1900, when McKinley was up for reelection, the White House was able to shake down the business community for $2.5 million (over $67 million in 2012 dollars). It sounds relatively small by today’s hyperbloated standards, but at the time it was huge.
By 1904, the problem had become exponentially worse after the political class systematized the extortion technique: Teddy Roosevelt appointed George Cortelyou, who was the U.S. secretary of commerce and labor, to head up the Republican National Committee. In his cabinet capacity, Cortelyou had oversight of the Bureau of Corporations, which was responsible for investigating any corporations whose business crosses state lines. As the New York Times put it at the time, “the chief of the Department which has become the custodian of corporation secrets [was] put at the head of the partisan committee whose principal function [was] to collect campaign contributions which come chiefly from great corporations.”9 In one instance, several Chicago packing companies under investigation by the government’s Bureau of Corporations were hit up for $50,000 in campaign donations.10
Cortelyou’s demands became so great that companies decided to do something about it, in the form of the Tillman Act of 1907 (named for its champion, Senator Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, now mostly remembered for his racist, segregationist beliefs). The Tillman Act made it illegal for businesses to give campaign contributions to federal candidates. Many corporations were tired of being extorted, and they enthusiastically supported the bill. As one Republican official noted after the law passed, corporate leaders were “entranced with happiness. . . . [T]hey are now in a position to throw us unceremoniously out of the door if we ask them for a penny. . . . They mean to take advantage of the laws forbidding them to give money for political purposes.” (In the 1940s, the act was amended to apply to unions.11) A New York Times editorial entitled “Happy Corporations” at the time quoted a “great financial authority”: “‘[We] welcome . . . this legislation with very much the same emotions with which a serf would his liberation from a tyrannous autocrat.’” The Times went on: “[The act] will lessen a very mean and sordid practice of blackmail. The beneficiaries of [regulation] will still find methods of furnishing the sinews of war to the party that controls their favors, but the great number of corporations that have suffered extortion through weakness and cowardice will have their backbones stiffened, and parties will be put to it to fill their coffers by really voluntary contributions.”12
More recently, reforms that ended the practice of “soft money” contributions came as a result of increasingly extortive demands by both parties for large donations from outside companies. (Ray Plank was one of those who fought successfully to shut off the soft money spigot.) For the Republicans, the master of this sort of fund-raising was House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas. DeLay created a corporate enemies list, telling companies that if they failed to make large enough donations, there would be legislative repercussions. For the Democrats, the equally heavy hand was Terry McAuliffe, who organized elaborate fund-raisers for President Bill Clinton, including barbecues where corporations were expected to cough up $500,000 to “honor” the president. Charles Kolb, president of the Committee of Economic Development, expressed the attitude of many corporate leaders pushing for a ban on soft money donations when he said, “We’re tired of being hit up and shaken down.”13
Washington, D.C., is beset by gridlock and partisan fighting. Few substantive issues seem to get settled. Popular explanations for the gridlock focus on the increased polarization of congressional districts, and therefore of members of the House, with too few deal-making moderates in the middle. This explanation is accurate—but not the whole story.
Reams of legislation are introduced every year that have little to do with the politician’s constituents. Why are our representatives spending so much time on bills that have very little to do with their own voters?
In recent years, despite thousands of bills introduced into Congress every year, only a small percentage (approximately 5 percent) become law.14
Of course, what matters for laws is quality, not quantity. But why would legislators bother to introduce so many hopeless bills? What if they are not even designed to pass? What if they are instead designed to make money? The cold harsh reality in Washington is this: the very conditions that are so maddening for most Americans—gridlock, problems being ignored, hyperpartisanship—are the very conditions that are most lucrative for the Permanent Political Class.
Washington may not be working for citizens, but it’s working quite well for members of the Permanent Political Class who profit handsomely.
While the rest of the country looks on in frustration and anger, gridlock and a handful of massively complex laws are actually evidence that Washington is working, at least for those in power. The system is functioning precisely how they want it to function. Gridlock, complex laws, highly technical bills, and regulations that target specific groups have a commercial purpose for the Permanent Political Class.
Ray Plank, whose company has given to both parties over the decades, believes that gridlock exists because that’s where the money is.15 “There’s no money to be made by fixing problems,” Plank told me. “So why are they going to fix them?”16 In many cases “gridlock” really means “lobbyist-lock” or “donor-lock,” which pits several sides against each other. It’s an arms race between two or more sides, and the Permanent Political Class is the ultimate winner.
What goes on in Washington’s halls of power has less to do with lawmaking than with moneymaking. Far from being about policy, much of what happens in Washington is about extorting money. This isn’t to say there are not people in leadership positions with deeply held convictions. But from a commercial standpoint, there is money to be made by passing, or threatening to pass, certain laws. And the two political parties, far from being mortal enemies, as often depicted, desperately need each other for these same commercial reasons. Indeed, party and ideological differences matter less than you think.
Politics in Washington is a lot like professional wre
stling. What seems like vicious combat to the uninitiated is actually choreographed acting. Professional wrestlers face off in the ring, shouting and pointing fingers and appearing to hate each other. But in fact, they are partners in a commercial enterprise to entertain and extract money from an audience. No matter who wins the match, everyone gets paid.
John Hofmeister, who served as the president of Shell Oil Company, recounted for me how it works. In his appearance before a congressional committee in 2008, politicians from both parties grilled him about the oil industry and high oil prices. Congresswoman Maxine Waters even threatened to nationalize the oil industry.17 Ignore for a minute the question of who is responsible for high oil prices and consider what happened after those lively hearings according to Hofmeister. “After the hearings, a lot of those who had been attacking Shell asked me to donate to their campaigns or help to organize a fund-raiser for them.”18
From a commercial standpoint, conflict, division, and calamity are good for business in Washington too. To be sure, both sides have their true believers, but the Permanent Political Class is also filled with entrepreneurs looking to maximize the opportunity to make money and increase their power base. It’s not uncommon for the same lobbying firm to be advising both sides in a political race or both sides on an important bill.
Microsoft’s Bob Herbold put it simply: “They are only interested in themselves.” Herbold has done considerable business in Asia, which has a reputation for payoffs and bribes. “There is corruption everywhere,” he told me. “But we are masters over those countries at legalizing corruption.”19
Consider, for example, one particular highly confrontational bill. Democrats have threatened to impose a tax on Internet sales in the form of a bill that would allow states to tax online purchases, whether or not the retailer has a physical presence in the state. Each time it comes up, there are financial opportunities for both Democrats and Republicans. Democratic lobbyists could be hired by large firms that want to “talk down” the bill’s sponsors from proceeding. Those Democrats who sponsor the bill can solicit campaign donations from Internet retailers who hope their donation might convince the sponsors to kill the bill. Republicans, on the other side, might denounce the bill as a terrible idea that is destructive to the economy, but the threat of its passage is a moneymaking opportunity for them too. Stopping the tax comes with a price: campaign donations and lobbying arrangements for their friends. After all, they are the only thing standing between the retailers and financial Armageddon. John Hofmeister calls this practice “legalized corruption where the corrupters (elected members) have assumed the legal authority to set in motion the policies and practices that manipulate the corruptees (vulnerable donors).”20