Tag: paul broun
Five House Members Will Leave Congress With Open Ethics Review

Five House Members Will Leave Congress With Open Ethics Review

By Hannah Hess, CQ Roll Call (MCT)

WASHINGTON — One often-repeated sound bite of state Sen. Lee Zeldin’s successful campaign to unseat Rep. Timothy H. Bishop in New York’s 1st District was, “Just call me the … mailman” — a line that came straight from the pages of an Office of Congressional Ethics report on the Democrat.

Republicans said Bishop was bragging in the email, included in an OCE report that revealed the congressman helped a constituent get government clearance for a bar mitzvah fireworks display. According to the OCE, Bishop then asked for “5 large” in campaign contributions.

The House Ethics Committee has not launched a formal investigation into the matter, but it appears the allegations still helped sink Bishop’s bid for a seventh term.

In accordance with rules requiring disclosure,the Ethics Committee publicly released the OCE’s report and findings on Sept. 11, 2013. The panel announced it would continue a fact-finding pursuant to Rule 18A, putting the Bishop probe in limbo with no requirement that any result be made public. One year later, the National Republican Congressional Committee hit the airwaves with a 30-second ad reminding voters that congressional ethics investigators and the FBI had both looked into the incumbent’s actions.

Because the Ethics Committee only investigates sitting members of Congress, Bishop’s election night defeat means the case is effectively closed on Capitol Hill.Four other House lawmakers are in the same boat in the wake of the midterms, set to sail away from Washington with no rebuke from the bipartisan group of lawmakers who sit on the panel charged with policing their own.In some cases, merely sharing the investigation with the public was penalizing enough for the member.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announced her retirement from Congress on May 29, 2013, amid multiple probes into her 2012 presidential bid. Two days later, the OCE board voted to refer its report on alleged improper campaign spending to the Ethics Committee. It outlined the OCE’s evidence that Bachmann may have used campaign funds to promote her book and may have used funds from her leadership political action committee to supplement the salary of political campaign staff.

Like Bishop’s case, the panel announced a few months after the referral that it would continue to review Bachmann’s possible ethics violations. Republican Tom Emmer has been elected to succeed her.

Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI) also leaves office with no rebuke from the House, weeks after an OCE report presenting evidence that suggests he used his position to help certain companies in which he was financially invested. After news reports about an investigation into Petri’s relationship with a defense contractor headquartered in his district, the 17-term lawmaker in February asked the Ethics Committee for a review in an attempt “to end any questions.” The OCE was simultaneously looking into his actions. Petri announced his retirement in April. Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman will fill the seat in next Congress.

House rules are designed to prevent OCE investigations from being used to score political points during an election year. The nonpartisan fact-finding board is barred from transmitting any referrals to the Ethics Committee within 60 days before a federal, state or local election in which the subject of the probe is a candidate. If an ongoing review ends during the suspension period, the board completes its referral and transmits the report on the first business day following the election.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) faced an ethics probe during his final months in Congress for paying GOP communications consultant Brett O’Donnell, the so-called Tea Party whisperer, more than $43,000 in taxpayer dollars. Broun allegedly paid out in exchange for advice on communications during his failed bid for a Senate seat. Those revelations came from an OCE report released on Oct. 29, shortly before Republican Jody Hice won the three-term congressman’s seat.

The case will also be closed on Rep. Steve Stockman, who told the Houston Chronicle he was the target of an ethics probe a few days before the panel went public with the news. According to a scathing report by the OCE, the Texas Republican accepted contributions to his own congressional campaign committee from two employees. Stockman refutes the report as inaccurate and biased, but he will not be around to see the results of the ongoing review of the matter. He took himself out of commission after losing a primary challenge to Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and congratulated Republican Brian Babin on winning his seat.

Stockman escaped rebuke from what appeared to be a violation of House rules in September. He tweeted a photo of Broun from the House floor, breaching a clause on “comportment.”

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Tea Party Has Succeeded In Moving GOP Further Right

Tea Party Has Succeeded In Moving GOP Further Right

Last week, primary elections in several states killed off a few ultraconservative candidates whose views flirted with nuttiness. In Georgia, for example, U.S. Rep. Paul Broun — a physician who has called evolution and the big-bang theory “lies straight from the pit of hell” — drew only 9.8 percent of the vote in a crowded race to become the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate.

In the same Georgia primary contest, U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, an obstetrician-gynecologist, pulled down just 10 percent of the vote. Last year, the gaffe-prone Gingrey drew national ridicule for defending former Missouri congressman Todd Akin, who had said that natural processes protect a woman from pregnancy after rape.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell easily dispatched a Republican challenger, Matt Bevin, who had suggested that legalizing gay marriage could lead to parents marrying their children.

Those results, among others, cheered the Republican establishment, which has grown tired of fielding weird candidates who cannot win general elections, and led to a round of obituaries for the Tea Party movement, which had backed several of the losers. According to the chattering classes, the election results prove that the Tea Party is on life support, a dying force in conservative politics. That goes double for the doyenne of the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin, whose chosen candidate in the Georgia Senate primary, Karen Handel, also lost.

But that view is just wrong. Tea Partiers have already accomplished what they set out to do: move the Republican Party much further to the right. While the foot-in-mouth, reality-challenged candidates may have been swept from the stage, the Tea Party has grafted its DNA onto the GOP. The Republican Party is now a small tent of hard-right absolutists who deny science, worship the rich and detest compromise.

Ronald Reagan wouldn’t recognize his party — and wouldn’t be welcome there either, as former Florida governor Jeb Bush noted two years ago. “Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican Party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground,” he said.

Georgia’s Republican primary for an open U.S. Senate seat (as Senator Saxby Chambliss retires) was instructive. It was a frenzy of Obama-bashing, an unedifying contest among candidates who repeated far-right orthodoxy like a mantra. They pledged to fight Obamacare, to resist tax increases, to cut spending on social programs, to defend every citizen’s right to own a shoulder-fired rocket launcher. Each of them pledged to fight abortion, though they all want to cut the programs that help keep poor babies healthy.

When the leading candidate, millionaire businessman David Perdue, said something rational, it was denounced as a gaffe and used as fodder by his opponents. Asked by a Macon Telegraph editorial writer whether he would chose spending cuts or increased revenue to improve the economy, Perdue said “both.” His opponents jumped on the remark quickly, claiming he had given notice that he would raise taxes.

The peculiar aversion to compromise runs counter to the example set by Reagan, the patron saint of the modern conservative movement. He famously bartered with Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill to arrive at a 1983 agreement to cut spending and raise taxes, which firmed up Social Security for a generation.

Yet, the Tea Party takeover of the GOP is holding strong, producing an adherence to far-right dogma. That’s what voters are likely to see in the runoff for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat, in which frontrunner Perdue will face U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston on July 22. Both candidates will feel pressure to prove themselves to the Tea Party supporters who voted for Gingrey, Broun and Handel, so they’ll engage in even more ultraconservative rhetoric and indulge even more right-wing impulses.

The Republican establishment thought that it was going to use the energy of far-right activists to win elections while remaining firmly in control. If any members of the GOP establishment — including old-line institutions such as the Chamber of Commerce — still believe that’s what happened, they are only fooling themselves.

(Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

Photo: Hyosub/Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/MCT

Georgia Republicans Take Another Step Towards Blowing A Senate Seat

Georgia Republicans Take Another Step Towards Blowing A Senate Seat

The Tea Party one-upmanship that has defined Georgia’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate reached its logical conclusion on Wednesday, when support for Paul Ryan’s ultra-right-wing budget became the mark of a RINO.

For months, the primary — which is essentially a tossup between U.S. Representatives Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey, and Jack Kingston, former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel, and former Reebok CEO David Perdue — has taken the shape of a mad dash to the right, with each candidate trying to prove that he or she is the “true” conservative in the race. This has led to some startling moments, and convinced Democrats that their candidate, former Points of Light Foundation leader Michelle Nunn, could steal the seat currently held by retiring Republican senator Saxby Chambliss.

The three candidates who currently serve in Congress will get their latest chance to prove their right-wing bona fides on Thursday, when the House votes on Ryan’s latest “Path to Prosperity.” It appears that all three will take it; The Hillreports that Broun and Gingrey plan to vote “no” on the budget because it does not cut enough from the budget, while Kingston is a “definitely lean no” because the plan does not cut discretionary spending to at least sequester levels.

Broun — who infamously trashed Ryan’s previous budget for “nibbling around the edges” — has already released a web ad trumpeting his opposition to “a budget that spends billions we don’t have,” in typically over-the-top fashion:

That spirited opposition could very well make a difference in the crowded Republican primary. But by insisting that Ryan’s budget does not cut enough, the three congressmen are essentially writing Nunn’s next campaign ad for her. The Ryan plan is genuinely extreme: 69 percent of its $4.8 trillion in non-defense budget cuts would come from programs that benefit Americans with low or moderate incomes, such as Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, the Social Services Block Grant, and Supplemental Security Income for the elderly and disabled. It would end Medicare as we know it by converting it to a premium-support voucher. And while the poor are asked to pay through the nose, it would give millionaires an average tax cut of $200,000.

Even in reliably red Georgia, this is well outside of the mainstream. But in the Republican primary, it’s now the liberal position.

Thus far, Nunn has ridden her carefully constructed moderate image to a virtual tie in the polls. If her Republican rivals go through with their austere suicide pact, she could find herself in the lead before long. And Republicans could find themselves wondering why they once again let their right flank ruin a golden chance at a Senate majority.

Screenshot: YouTube

Taxpayers Foot The Bill For Tea Party Candidate’s Debate Coach

Taxpayers Foot The Bill For Tea Party Candidate’s Debate Coach

You should not be shocked to learn that gaffe-prone congressman and Senate candidate Paul Broun (R-GA) has spent tens of thousands of dollars on a rhetoric coach. But you may be surprised to discover that you are footing the bill for it.

According to a report by WSB-TV’s Justin Gray, Rep. Broun has spent $33,000 of his congressional office budget over the past two years to pay rhetorical specialist and debate coach Brett O’Donnell. When Gray noticed the curious expenditure of taxpayer money, he paid a visit to Broun’s D.C. office — only to have the door slammed in his face.

“Can we ask you why you’re spending all this money on a debate coach?” Gray asked the third-term congressman.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have time to talk,” Broun replied.

“Can’t we talk to you for just one minute please, sir?” Gray asked. Broun then shut his office door on the reporter.

Broun’s press secretary later provided a statement to WSB-TV, explaining that O’Donnell “provides training with public speaking, on-camera interviews, and media appearances so that Dr. Broun can best communicate his legislative priorities, issues, and message with his constituents.”

As Ed Kilgore notes at Washington Monthly, Broun appears to be toeing an ethical line by using taxpayer money to pay O’Donnell. If O’Donnell is doing any campaign work — which certainly seems likely for a debate coach — then he would have to be paid at least partially through campaign funds.

Even if the arrangement is legally sound, asking taxpayers to foot the bill for his rhetoric coach should tarnish Broun’s self-styled image as an extreme fiscal conservative (the congressman even criticized Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget for not cutting enough spending).

Voters may also wonder what, exactly, Broun was getting for their money. After all, even with a coach, Broun can’t seem to stop saying things like evolution and the Big Bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of Hell,” or that “the only Constitution that Barack Obama upholds is the Soviet constitution,” among many other curious claims.

(If you’re wondering how O’Donnell hasn’t been fired yet, perhaps the answer lies in a story from 2012. A former campaign aide to Rep. Michele Bachmann accused O’Donnell of developing an “unnatural,” “Rasputin-like” control over the congresswoman while working on her 2012 presidential run, leaving Bachmann “fearful of O’Donnell” and “broken emotionally” by the end of her campaign. O’Donnell strongly denied the claim.)

Ultimately, the incident is just the latest reason that Democrat Michelle Nunn is likely rooting for Broun to emerge from Georgia’s crowded Republican primary (in which Broun is not the only candidate to spend taxpayer money controversially).

According to The Huffington Post’spolling average, Broun currently holds an 11-point lead in the primary.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr