Outrageous! Pension Plan for Cons

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

• Politicians
• Michael Crowley
• Your Tax Dollars
• 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.

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