Mr. Hastert Goes to Alaska

I called for his resignation over this
House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) made the news recently for combining his lavish tastes in sport fishing with cozy chats with energy executives. National Public Radio (NPR) aired a story on Marketplace highlighting a yearly trip to an exclusive fishing lodge in Alaska taken by lawmakers, including Speaker Hastert, who are wined and dined by “high-ranking executives from British Petroleum, Amoco, Marathon Oil and dozens of other firms.” According to the report, Hastert is one of several elected federal officials who regularly attend the annual fishing trip to the $1,000-a-night resort which is billed as an event benefiting a charity. The charity in this case is The Waterfall Committee, which raises money for breast cancer prevention and treatment programs, and is supported by Alaska’s Governor (and former U.S. Senator) Frank Murkowski and his wife.

Speaker Hastert has attended the trip almost every year since 1999, according to resort staff. While it is unclear how his previous trips were paid for, last year he used $25,000 from his leadership PAC (Keep Our Majority PAC or KOMPAC) to pay for the trip -- a trip which appears to be designed primarily to provide high-quality, prolonged access to Members of Congress for oil industry executives in a vacation setting.

The Hastert story reveals how leadership PACs, which first surfaced in the 1990s, are the new political slush funds in Washington. Today, there are more than 240 leadership PACs, almost all connected with incumbent Members of Congress (a few former Members and presidential hopefuls also have them). Not only do they underwrite high living by elected public servants, they have also become the currency of power in Congress, and an easy means to circumvent existing campaign contribution limits. Leadership PACs have fed the growing culture of corruption on Capitol Hill and should be banned. Unfortunately, there are efforts by the Congressional leadership to move in just the opposite direction and expand the uses of leadership PAC funds, thus opening them up to further abuse.
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and this

Here’s a graphic timeline explaining how House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) used a federal earmark to turn a $1.5 million profit:
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