In case you missed it, the Washington Post reported on Saturday about a House Republican who appears to be trying to buy his way into a key committee chairmanship.
Do I hear $16 million?
Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), seeking the powerful post of House Appropriations Committee chairman, wrote to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert this month pledging to shrink the deficit, impose discipline on congressional appropriators and, oh, by the way, raise $15 million every two years from committee Republicans for GOP campaigns.
“I believe appropriators must help maintain our Republican majority through aggressive fundraising,” Rogers said in his two-page letter to Hastert (R-Ill.). “On my watch, members of the committee will raise, at a minimum, $15 million per [election] cycle towards that goal. As I’ve proven — raising and giving over $5 million to our candidates — I am ready to lead by example.” Rogers’s office declined to comment on the letter, first reported in Congress Daily, but a source clarified that the $15 million would be a cumulative sum from the committee’s three dozen Republicans, not a per-person goal.
Just when it seemed the House Republicans couldn’t get much sleazier, they start auctioning off committee posts to the fundraisers who can pull together $15 million.
Yes, there’s always been pressure on would-be chairpersons to raise money for the party, on both sides of the aisle. But Rogers’ letter to Hastert sounds more like a pledge drive message than a request for consideration.
The letter “makes it look like the job is for sale,” said Scott Lilly, top Democratic aide on the Appropriations Committee the past decade and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Just another example of the House leadership’s routine corruption that hardly raises an eyebrow anymore.