CONGRESSIONAL CRIME MAY PAY LESS

It has rankled me and it has rankled a lot of other taxpayers that even congressmen who have been convicted of using their offices to criminally enrich themselves are still entitled to fat 6-figure pensions. Randy "Duke" Cunningham comes immediately to mind. But there are over a dozen-- closer to 2 dozen-- congressmen convicted of crimes who are receiving these pensions. The National Taxpayers Union has been pushing Congress to do something about this. Last year the Republicans in the Congress were able to derail attempts to push through legislation to put a stop to this. Now the Democrats are in control.

This morning the Senate unanimously (87-0) voted to rescind the retirement benefits from convicted future felons. John Kerry wrote the amendment. "There's something that really grates in the notion that you can put the public's trust and the public's business up for sale and then walk away and have the people that you betrayed turn around and pay for you to be able to have a fat pension." It adds things like bribery, perjury and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. to treason as a reason to deny crooks legislators' retirement benefits. It's part of the ethics bill the Senate is thrashing out and a lot needs to happen before this becomes law. The House is expected to follow suit, especially since Nancy Pelosi has offered similar legislation, beaten back by Republicans, in the past.

Besides Cunningham, other crooked lawmakers this would not impact-- since it isn't retroactive-- are Dave Durenberger (R-MN), Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL), and James Traficant (D-OH). Once the legislation passes, it would presumably impact people like Jerry Lewis, John Doolittle, Tom DeLay, Katherine Harris, Virgil Goode and other crooks who haven't been convicted yet.

I'll try to find out the names of the 12 senators who abstained on this one.