Isn't That Special

How nice. Hiring a family member to work for you. Only this time we're not talking about a mom and pop business, we're talking about a political campaign. We're talking about, as Dick Morris, The Hill, RCP, aptly describes it "converting contributions into his campaign committee into personal income". Morris has more to say:

Hiring family members and paying them with campaign donations is, if anything, more pernicious than doing so with public funds. Where tax money is involved, the sin is against the taxpayer for wasting his funds. But where campaign contributions are involved, the congressman is profiting personally from the largesse of special interest donors. In plain English, that’s a payoff.

And Barack Obama voted against a ban on this abuse. Hillary didn't. Ethics reform was an important issue in last fall's elections, and apparently will remain one in the next election. It is a bipartisan failing. Washington Post story here. Dem Senate leader Harry Reid has countered a Republican reform amendment with one to ban the practice but exempt current spouses:

Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that studies political donations and ethics in Washington, said that if senators decide that a lobbying ban is necessary, it makes no sense to exempt current spouses.

"If there is a problem here, it is that family members can get access to lawmakers that other people don't. And if they exempt the current spouses, then they are making it all the more exclusive. Those family members will seem all the more special."

Sen. Obama himself does not benefit from this practice. But his friend Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. does. And so does his fellow Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, though his wife "limits her lobbying to their home state of Illinois and recuses herself from any federal matters that could affect her husband's work in the Senate." How reassuring.

And isn't that special.

Related posts: Devil in the Details, Durbin Feeds at Trough,Democrat Sanctimony and Spectacle.