Dedicated To Serving Themselves

Lengthy appropriations bills offer the opportunity to tuck away tricky little amendments that can’t stand up to the light of public debate. Congress is skilled at such skullduggery.

The House has hidden a troubling elitist provision in its 1998 appropriations bill that finances the departments of Commerce, Justice and State, and the judiciary.

Wyoming’s renowned criminal defense attorney Gerry Spence calls the provision “arrogant and haughty beyond belief.”

The House Commerce-Justice appropriations bill (H.R. 2267) creates a special legal services program only for members of Congress and their staffs.

Under the provision, if the Department of Justice prosecutes a case against a member of Congress or a congressional staff member and loses, the department must reimburse the person “for any legal expenses and other legitimate expenses incurred” in connection with the prosecution. No such reimbursement exists for ordinary citizens.

The reimbursement giveaway is concealed in a section innocuously titled, “General Provisions,” section 616, at the very end of the 117-page bill.

It passed unanimously in the House Appropriations Committee, as did the entire appropriations bill. H.R. 2267 will now go before the full House for debate when Congress reconvenes in September.

Call it welfare for the wealthy - members of Congress already earn $133,600 a year.

Section 616 treats members of Congress as a special class of citizen. “Some animals are obviously more equal than others,” to paraphrase George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” Middle class citizens caught in a criminal indictment must hock their homes to defend themselves - and even if they win, they swallow the economic loss.

Under this legislation, the middle class will also be required to pay the legal bills for members of Congress - or for keeping them in prison. Taxpayers pick up the tab - guilty or not.

Spence, who defended Randy Weaver against federal prosecution after the excesses of federal law enforcement officers on Ruby Ridge in Idaho, was blunt in his assessment of the reimbursement provision: “So we are to believe that members of the House and Senate are super-citizens, that is to say, they have rights not ordinarily enjoyed by the species.

“The poor cannot have lawyers. The forgotten in the projects can have only public defenders with limited experience and severely truncated budgets. But the new super-citizens, namely, the House and Senate members who have been charged unjustly and acquitted are, by this bill, to get super dispensation commensurate with their super status. They get their attorneys’ fees and their expenses paid if they win an acquittal.

“We should be encouraging, not discouraging, the Department of Justice to keep an eagle eye on the mother-womb of crime - namely, the Congress of the United States, where criminal activity is exceeded only by that secreted by the Department of Justice itself.

“As between the Department of Justice and the Congress, I don’t know which deserves the most scrutiny. But if these two entities could keep each other fully occupied, what a break for the ordinary citizen.”

Under this provision, there is no cap on the amount of money a member of Congress can spend on his or her legal defense. Successful D.C.-area attorneys could take congressional cases on a contingency basis, upping their hourly fees to outlandish proportions - for which the taxpayer could be charged.

Members of Congress are already authorized to set up legal defense funds that accept donations in such prosecutions. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., recently established a legal defense fund. Donations don’t rob the taxpayer.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., introduced this amendment in the House Appropriations Committee in late July.

Murtha bases his rationale for the reimbursement plan on the four-year ordeal that Rep. Joseph McDade, R-Pa., suffered before being acquitted in 1996 of federal bribery and racketeering charges. Murtha considered the lengthy prosecution unfair.

McDade spent more than $1.25 million defending himself. However, almost all of that money was paid by a legal defense fund established for him.

“This provision could deter prosecutions by the Justice Department,” noted Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, a nonprofit congressional watchdog organization.

He explained that reimbursements would reduce the department’s budget and would eventually diminish investigations in other areas.

“There are other weird incentives that are set up here. If you’re a defense attorney for a member or staffer, you want your client to be indicted under this provision. … It monkeys with the process in ways that are just not good,” Ruskin said.

Ruskin pointed out that if a member of Congress can’t afford to hire a lawyer, he or she can get a public defender, just like anyone else.

Ironically, in the same bill in which Congress establishes its very own big-bucks legal defense service, it drastically slashes funds to legal services for the poor. The appropriation for the Legal Services Corp. was cut nearly in half - from $278 million in 1996 to $141 million in H.R. 2267.

Legal Services finances hundreds of local programs around the nation to provide civil legal assistance to those who cannot afford it. It helps families in divorce settlements, in job discrimination and child custody cases, wage and disability claims, filing bankruptcy, housing disputes, Social Security claims, and helps solve numerous other important legal problems.

Apparently, our $100,000-plus a year Congress folk would rather provide legal aid for themselves. To hell with the poor, to hell with the taxpayers.

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