Outrageous! Pension Plan for Cons

Believe it or not, Congressmen convicted of crimes still get their tax-funded retirement.

Sordid Revelations

Randy "Duke" Cunningham is one of the slimiest guys to come through Congress in recent memory. You might recall the sordid revelations about him. For years, the California representative used his power to line up multimillion-dollar military contracts for businessman Mitchell Wade. In return, Wade gave him antique furniture, Persian rugs, a Rolls-Royce -- even bought Cunningham's house for hundreds of thousands above its market value. Cunningham was so shameless that he gave Wade a written "bribe menu" offering him $16 million in government contracts for the title to Wade's yacht.

You may also know that Cunningham pleaded guilty to corruption charges in November 2005, and is now serving a prison sentence of more than eight years.

But here's a part of the story I bet will be news to you. Even as he sits in jail, Cunningham receives an annual Congressional pension worth as much as $64,000. That's right -- he's a convicted felon doing time, and taxpayers are coughing up big bucks for his retirement. The exact payouts are not public record, but the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) provides estimates based on the plan options that most legislators choose.

Of all the crazy ways the government wastes your money, this might be the most infuriating. It turns out that a Congressman can be guilty of bribery, extortion -- even molesting a Congressional page -- and still draw a sweet federal pension for the rest of his life. What does it take to get that entitlement yanked away? The legislator would have to have engaged in treason, sabotage, espionage or some other assault against our national security.

And it's not just Cunningham who's living off our tax dollars. So are more than 20 convicted members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats. All told, it might be costing us around $1 million every year, according to Pete Sepp, an executive officer at NTU.

The list of lawbreakers enjoying your tax dollars includes former Minnesota Sen. David Durenberger, who pleaded guilty to using his Senate expense account for personal profit; former New York Rep. John Murphy, who spent three years in prison after accepting cash bribes in a federal sting operation; former Kentucky Rep. Carroll Hubbard, who pleaded guilty to three felonies, including misusing government employees and obstructing justice; former New York Rep. Mario Biaggi, convicted of accepting free vacations in return for political favors. The list goes on.

Maybe the worst culprit is Dan Rostenkowski, the former Congressman from Illinois. In the 1980s Rostenkowski was chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. But in 1994 he was indicted on a slew of corruption charges -- from keeping phantom employees on his payroll to using Congressional dollars to buy gifts for friends. He wound up pleading guilty to mail fraud and served 15 months in prison. Yet that hasn't stopped him from collecting a pension that NTU estimates to be around $126,000 a year.

Public Outrage

It's infuriating that we have to pay for the retirement of these crooks, but it's just as scandalous that lawmakers aren't doing anything about it. Quite the opposite. Congress has offered lip service since as far back as 1996, when a bill to strip pensions made some progress before dying quietly. After Ohio Rep. James Traficant was convicted of taking bribes and kickbacks in 2002 and began to draw his $40,000-a-year pension, there was a bipartisan push to change things. But again, it didn't happen. "There has been little political will," says Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Why? "I think many senior members [of Congress] are afraid they might be next," says Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who has been pushing for a tougher line on convict freeloaders. Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute explains that legislators worry about a slippery slope that could add more common offenses to the list. And of course, the clubby atmosphere on Capitol Hill keeps legislators from wanting to throw the book at friends and colleagues.

The lesson here is that Congress can't be trusted to police itself. Need one more bit of proof? In 2005 an attempt at reform never made it out of the House committee that would oversee a change in pension rules. The committee's chair that year: Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio. The same Bob Ney who pleaded guilty last fall to doing illegal favors for a lobbyist in return for things like a lavish golf junket to Scotland. And even though Ney sold his influence, he'll still be eligible for a $29,000-a-year pension when he turns 62.

The new Democratic-controlled Congress swept into power with much fanfare about cleaning up Washington. But when it comes to cracking down on these pension payments, it looks like our representatives might wimp out again.

True, the House has passed a bill to strip pensions from lawmakers convicted of any of five felonies, including perjury and bribery. Sounds good, right? Not according to Rep. Kirk. He says the Justice Department gave him a list of 21 felonies related to public office, and he wrote a bill covering them all. But the legislation was never brought to a vote. Instead, the "reform" plan now moving through Congress doesn't even cover crimes like evading taxes or attempting to buy votes.

Kirk is appalled that Congress can't manage to do what the state of Illinois did years ago and just say public officials convicted of crimes can lose their benefits. (An oversight board stripped former Illinois Gov. George Ryan of $197,000 in benefits last year after his racketeering conviction -- although Ryan had the gall to sue for them.)

Probably the only thing that will get Congress to act is public outrage. A good first step: Go to congress.org to send an e-mail to your representatives. Tell them it's time they passed a new crime bill -- one that takes Congressional convicts off the dole.