Burris and Ensign were not the only new people selected for this year's 15-member list, issued by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Joining the two senators were Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) and Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.). Burris and Jackson have been caught up in a wide-ranging scandal surrounding the alleged selling of President Barack Obama's Senate seat by former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), who has since been charged by federal prosecutors. Burris has offered conflicting statements on how he came to be appointed to the seat by the disgraced governor, while fundraisers close to Jackson may have tried to buy off Blagojevich for his appointment to Obama's Senate seat.
Along with Burris and Jackson, at least 10 other lawmakers on the list are under investigation, either by the Justice Department, congressional ethics committees or the Federal Election Commission. The list is almost split down the middle between the two parties, with seven Republicans and eight Democrats.
Ensign finds himself on the list due to his affair with a former aide and payments made to her and her husband by the senator's parents. A longtime list resident, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), is joined by Visclosky due to their ties to the PMA Group, a lobby firm that was raided by the FBI and has since closed down.
The other new addition, Deal, was included because he and aides are alleged to have intervened improperly to keep a no-bid contract with Georgia’s state government in the hands of a business the lawmaker co-owns.
CREW slammed the lawmakers in a statement.
“With the economy in a free-fall, unemployment rates at record highs and healthcare solutions still nowhere in sight, members should be spending their time looking for answers to the nation’s problems, not finding new ways to enrich themselves,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director. “The members of Congress profiled in CREW’s Most Corrupt report have betrayed those who voted them into office.”
The economy is tanking, unemployment is at 8.1 percent and most workers — even some in the White House — are enduring wage freezes this year. But Congress? When it comes to lawmakers’ paychecks, watch the legislative tangos on the Senate floor this week. Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana is slated to get a vote — most likely on Tuesday — on a proposal that would force lawmakers to affirmatively vote themselves an annual pay raise, repealing a provision of current law that automatically increases congressional pay each year. Last week, Vitter maneuvered to have his amendment included among a dozen additional GOP proposals to the $410 billion fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill (
The catch-all legislation contains nine leftover spending bills from last year. The upcoming vote on Vitter’s amendment is problematic for supporters of the underlying spending measure. A vote against the amendment could put a senator in the politically perilous position of defending automatic pay increases for lawmakers at a difficult economic time for nearly all Americans. If the amendment is adopted, it could prove to be a poison pill, eroding support in both chambers for the yearlong spending measure, and forcing a House-Senate conference.
Additionally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., last week threatened to scuttle the omnibus and replace it with a less generous stopgap spending measure for the rest of the year if the Senate makes any changes in the bill. So on March 6, Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., introduced a nearly identical stand-alone bill (
“We can’t afford to make any changes to this bill because we want to be able to send it to the president,” said a Democratic leadership aide. Democratic leaders planned to discuss the proposal Tuesday at their weekly policy lunch in a effort to try to assure members that they would be able to endorse the stand-alone bill at a later date. Vitter said Reid’s approach was “just a diversionary tactic to try to defeat” his amendment. “He’s going to be pointing to this bill to try to give members cover, knowing that the way to really enact this into law is to pass it as an amendment to a bill that needs to be signed into law,” Vitter said.
Vitter pointed out that Reid agreed to allow a vote on his proposal March 5 only after Vitter threatened to block Reid from canceling a procedural vote on the omnibus. Reid canceled the vote after it became apparent Democrats didn’t have the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on that proposal. Vitter also has introduced stand-alone legislation (
President Obama called attention to pay raises for government employees in the early days of his administration, when — as one of his first moves in office — he froze pay for about 100 White House staff members earning more than $100,000 a year.
