By now, you’ve probably heard that Tom DeLay’s wife and daughter have been on his campaign reelection payroll for several years. What you may not have heard is that this is common practice in Congress, practiced by both parties, and perfectly legal.
When the New York Times splashed its front-page with a story chronicling the campaign employment history of DeLay’s family it alluded to other members with similar staffing, but left out any significant names or numbers. Through selective word exclusion the Times left the strong impression that this practice is somehow illegal or at least unethical.
While it’s true that over the past five years DeLay’s wife and daughter received approximately $500,000 in fees for their campaign labor contributions, the number was portrayed in a manner as to obscure the reality. Split between the two over the stated time period, DeLay’s wife and daughter received roughly $4,000 per month, or $50,000 per year, for their professional services, including management of his reelection campaign. In the world of political consulting that number is akin to a minimum wage. If anything, it shows that when it comes to paying their own families, most members of Congress are nothing if not frugal.
If paying families for campaign work is illegal, than prominent Democrats including Howard Dean, Barbara Boxer, Joe Lieberman, Jon Corzine, and Jesse Jackson Jr. should all be doing a Joe Wilson inspired "frog-march" from the halls of Congress.
Rush Limbaugh adds a socialist:
Looky here, folks. The nation's only elected socialist -- well, I take that back. There's a whole bunch of elected socialists, but they don't call themselves that, they call themselves Democrats. The only self-proclaimed elected socialist in the US House of Representatives, Bernie Sanders, guess what he did? He used campaign donations to pay his wife and stepdaughter more than $150,000 for campaign-related work since 2000, according to records filed with the federal elections committee. "Jane O'Meara Sanders, his wife, received $91,020 between 2002 and 2004 for 'consultation' and for negotiating the purchase of television and radio time-slots for [socialist] Sanders' advertisements. Approximately $61,000 of that was 'pass through' money that was used to pay media outlets for advertising time, Jane O'Meara Sanders said in an interview. The rest, about $30,000, she kept as payment for her services, she said."
Rush then busts Pelosi:
From Roll Call, "A controversial fundraising committee run by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was slapped with a $21,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission for enabling Pelosi to funnel more than $100,000 in illegal contributions to Democratic candidates in late 2002 as she was vying to become Democratic leader."
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