{"id":7947,"date":"2006-07-17T09:10:52","date_gmt":"2006-07-17T13:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7947.html"},"modified":"2006-07-17T09:10:52","modified_gmt":"2006-07-17T13:10:52","slug":"meet-the-new-boss-slightly-worse-than-the-old-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/meet-the-new-boss-slightly-worse-than-the-old-boss\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the new boss, slightly worse than the old boss"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a criminal indictment forced Tom DeLay to step aside as House Majority Leader, Rep. [tag]John Boehner[\/tag] (R-Ohio) was, oddly enough, the “reformer” in the race to replace him. Boehner, despite a dubious record<\/a> on congressional ethics, vowed<\/a> to “lead the effort to bring about the kind of reforms the American people are expecting from Congress.”<\/p>\n

Is Boehner following through on those commitments? Not so much<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[F]ar from trying to put the brakes on [tag]lobbyists[\/tag] and the [tag]money[\/tag] they channel into [tag]Republican[\/tag] coffers, Mr. Boehner, who has portrayed his ties to Washington lobbyists as something to be proud of, has stepped on the gas.<\/p>\n

He has been holding fund-raisers at lobbyists’ offices, flying to political events on corporate planes and staying at a golf resort with a business group that has a direct stake in issues before Congress.<\/p>\n

Tapping a rich vein of longstanding relationships with lobbyists and their corporate clients, Mr. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has raised campaign contributions at a rate of about $10,000 a day since February, surpassing the pace set by former Representative [tag]Tom DeLay[\/tag] after he became majority leader in 2002, a review of federal filings shows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the NYT, Boehner’s biggest donors include the political action committees of “lobbying firms, drug and cigarette makers, banks, health insurers, oil companies and military contractors.” Better yet, while most lawmakers have grown weary of ethically-questionable private travel, Boehner keeps racking up the frequent-flier miles, traveling to Boca golf resort in March for a “convention of commodities traders, who have contributed more than $100,000 to his campaigns and are lobbying against a proposed federal tax on futures transactions.” Boehner reportedly assured his hosts that Congress would reject the tax, just as they requested.<\/p>\n

The more things change, the more they get slightly worse when it comes to congressional Republicans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a criminal indictment forced Tom DeLay to step aside as House Majority Leader, Rep. [tag]John Boehner[\/tag] (R-Ohio) was, oddly enough, the “reformer” in the race to replace him. Boehner, despite a dubious record on congressional ethics, vowed to “lead the effort to bring about the kind of reforms the American people are expecting from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}