Guest Blogger: Doriangrey
How do you define corruption, is it mere mendacious malfeasance, or is it something more tangible?
Exclusive–Documents: Congress Charges Secret Fee to Land Top Committee SpotsMembers of Congress must pay secret fees known as “party dues” to the Democratic and Republican parties to secure and maintain top committee chairmanships and assignments, newly uncovered internal documents reveal.
The never-before-published lists are reprinted inside the new book Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets, written by Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer.
Senior congressional staffers say the committee price lists have long been rumored to exist but that few people on Capitol Hill have seen them, giving them an almost “mythical” quality.
The book contains copies of the Democratic and Republican price lists detailing how much money lawmakers must raise to obtain and keep their seats on congressional committees. The so-called “party dues” lawmakers must contribute for committee assignments are separate and apart from the fundraising they conduct for their own campaigns. If lawmakers fail to make their tribute payment to their party, they can lose their place on a powerful committee.
“These party dues are not voluntary,” writes Schweizer. “Members are not asked to pay—they are required to pay.”
In the 2013-2014 election cycle, the going rate for a Democratic assignment as the ranking member on a top committee like the House Ways and Means or Financial Services Committees is $500,000. Schweizer reports that Democrats also use a “members points system” that rewards its members for attending party fundraisers.
Prices on the Republican House committee list are higher due to the GOP’s House majority—a fact that creates even greater opportunities for lawmakers to extract donations from the industries a committee oversees. According to Schweizer, the GOP price sheet is actually posted on the wall of the Republican Congressional Committee and contains red marks beside the names of lawmakers who fall behind on their party dues.
GOP prices for committee posts vary widely. For example, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who is the chairman of the influential Energy and Commerce Committee, is expected to extract $990,000 from donors for the GOP. The chairman of the less powerful House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith, is required to bag just $405,000.
When a woman (or a man) sells their sexual favors, society pretty much as a whole calls them whores. It’s not a pretty word, and it carries a very ugly stigma. But what both the Democrats and the Republicans are doing is so vile it makes being called a whore seem downright respectable.
These committees that various members of Congress are buying their way unto are the very same committees that decide which laws get passed, what taxes get levied, and how much spending the United States Federal Government engages in. More importantly, these are the exact same committees that decide that members of Congress shall be exempted from the very laws that they saddle the entire rest of the nation with. Like exempting themselves from Obamanationcare, or from Insider Trading Laws.
These committees include the utterly and totally corrupt House Ethics Committee which is tasked with ensuring that members of Congress obey the nations laws.
Let be honest here and face reality, nobody pays millions dollars to get a job that pays $150,000 a year if they don’t think they are going to get those millions back. Look at how many Congressmen and Senators are straight up multimillionaires. Harry Reid made millions by buying land cheap, that he knew was going to be purchased by the Federal Government. Dianne Fienstien illegally funneled hundreds of BILLIONS of federal dollars to her husbands company.
Through the use of Continuing Resolutions Congress has made in excess of 7 TRILLION DOLLARS vanish into thin air. No one in the entire Federal Government can account for where that money went. This is corruption and pure outright theft on a scale so massive even people who KNOW that it is taking place can’t believe that it is just that, corruption and theft.
The Department of Injustice has been bought off and compromised, even the SCOTUS, the Highest Court in the Land does not have clean hands in this. This is corruption beyond anything ever seen anywhere or when in human history. This is a genuine case of not just the Foxes guarding the Hen-house, but the Foxes Mother writing them a note asserting that the Foxes had nothing to do with the Chickens disappearance, and the Courts accepting her note as factual evidence.
Congress has the lowest approval rating in the entire history of Congress, yet these crooks continue to get reelected, and they keep getting reelected because despite their abysmal approval rating, nearly everyone insists on believing the painfully obvious lie, that their Congressperson or senator is the one good Congressperson or Senator. when the truth is, that the only ones who are complete and total crooks, liars and thieves, are the ones who haven’t been in Congress long enough to buy important positions of power and authority yet.
The system is literally designed to ensure that every person elected to office becomes a criminal. More importantly, the ones tasked with ensuring that this does not happen, are the very ones that guarantee that not only does it happen, but that nothing is ever done to reform the system.
