Morphing Campaign Finance, Governance, and Personal Aggrandizement an A Tangled Web

MORPHING CAMPAIGN FINANCE, GOVERNANCE, AND PERSONAL AGGRANDIZEMENT IN A TANGLED WEB -- (House of Representatives - January 22, 2008)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, while the U.S. economy retrenches, the front page of the Wall Street Journal today reports that former President Bill Clinton could ``get a $20 million payout from a politically sensitive partnership tie to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, made possible by his high profile business relationship with the investment firm of billionaire friend Ron Burkle.

The last time I looked, Dubai is not part of the United States and it is not a democracy.

As I read this article by John Emshwiller, I thought to myself, has any President in modern history, but for Jimmy Carter, not used the White House to cash in upon retirement? Further, has any modern President not used their White House connections to build themselves pyramid monuments upon leaving office in the form of presidential libraries where they milk their presidential contacts for millions and millions of dollars? How sad is it that former President George Bush and former President Bill Clinton took huge sums of money from foreign interests like Saudi Arabia to build their presidential libraries? Contrast this to our Nation's Founders, who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors to the cause of freedom. Now it appears all is for sale.

Today's story is but another example of where our Nation's highest elected officials are morphing campaign finance, governance, and their own personal aggrandizement in a tangled web. It raises to the highest levels the issue of influence peddling and what was done during those White House years to yield such super human rewards.

I lament the condition in which we find our national politics. Until the American people hear and understand what is happening, nothing will change. It will only worsen. Look at the disgraceful sums of money being raised by presidential candidates in both political parties and, of course, waiting in the wings the latest batch of billionaire contenders who are just ready to put their oars in the water too.

One of America's greatest President's was John Quincy Adams. After John Quincy Adams left the presidency, he did not immediately head out onto the lecture circuit. He did not sell his services to a rich foreign power. He did not set out to enrich himself on the fame that he had acquired by virtue of his service to the Nation. No, it was a different day and time. John Quincy Adams, after leaving the presidency, came back to Washington as a Member of this U.S. House of Representatives. To this day, he is the only President who did. He finished his life here, dying on the second floor of this Capitol. John Quincy Adams, instead of lining his own pockets, started his vaunted ``second political career'' by fighting against slave power. He made it the cause of his lifetime.

Just as money power dominates the national political preoccupation today, so slave power dominated political life in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. It was as deeply entrenched as the neoliberal model of international trade is today.

When Adams was President, Members from the Deep South had enacted a ``gag rule'' here in the People's House so that anti-slavery petitions would be summarily rejected, as if this parliamentary maneuvering could stop the discussion about slavery and the slow march to justice.

Professor William Lee Miller has written about John Quincy Adams's commitment to fighting slave power here in Congress, a battle that some historians have described as the ``Pearl Harbor of the slave controversy.'' John Quincy Adams refused to give up the fight until at last the Nation had heard the message of the petitioners: that slavery was inimical to the American ideal, an assault on the Constitution, and a stain on the Nation's conscience.

America must cleanse our political system today of the stains that even Presidents of the United States create as they enrich themselves. The Wall Street Journal article describes how Mr. Clinton is a partner of the Yucaipa Global Partnership Fund, which raised several hundred billion dollars from a range of investors. Who were these investors? How did any of them relate to the policies of the Clinton administration? These private funds do not have to disclose their activities as a normal business; so how do the American people know?

The director of this fund is Mr. Ron Burkle, a major fundraiser and backer of the Clintons. To mix fundraising, undisclosed business interests, and the presidency is a combustible mix. The American people have a right to know.

The article goes on to relate how Rudy Giuliani's consulting firm has interests in the government of Qatar. What are those interests? And how does he seek to personally benefit if elected President?

Mr. Speaker, the American people want Washington to clean up its act. As the presidential races proceed this year, isn't it high time that the campaign finance reform question be a top one in all the debates? John Quincy Adams would not recognize the Republic as it stands today.

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