Hunting for a Clever Pay-to-Play Scheme?

I don't usually use examples from Congress, but this one is too good, and instructive. According to yesterday's New York Times, Billy Tauzin, when he was a Louisiana congressional representative, started two hunting clubs, whose memberships included primarily lobbyists and executives of companies with business before the committee he chaired, the energy and commerce committee.

He started the first hunting club, for ducks, on a 22-acre plot of land in Maryland's Eastern Shore, not far from the District of Columbia, back in the early 1990s.

Then, in 2003, Tauzin "made a deal. Though still on a modest Congressional salary, he paid more than $1 million for a 1,500-acre ranch [in south Texas]. And he invited a dozen friends — mostly executives and lobbyists with interests before his committee — to cover its mortgage by paying him dues as members of a new hunting club [for deer]. It did business as Cajun Creek L.L.C., based in the Baton Rouge office of a lobbyist who was a member."

That's one clever Cajun! And he says that the House ethics committee approved of both clubs. Another example of how gift provisions cannot cover every ploy a government official can come up with and why, therefore, ethics provisions are only minimal standards. An ethics committee that would give the green light to such a clear pay-to-play scheme has either little appreciation of government ethics or, as in the case of this self-regulating committee, little interest.

The next year, Tauzin took an even bigger step. After pushing the Medicare drug benefit through Congress (not easy work in a Congress full of people concerned about government spending), he secured himself a lobbyist job with Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry association affectionately or otherwise known as PhRMA. This last year it paid him $2 million. You can buy a lot of ranches with that kind of money.

According to a piece on Tauzin in the New Republic back in 2003, "Tauzin expresses supreme confidence in his own incorruptibility; his stated position on such matters is invariably: If these folks think that giving me money will buy them influence, they are sadly mistaken."

I think he was being truthful. However, he was just covering half the equation of government ethics. One side of the equation is being bought (or looking like you've been bought). The other side of the equation is pay-to-play, demanding benefits in return for supporting a position.

The news in yesterday's Times article is that PhRMA has fired Tauzin because, well, in a world with 41 Republican senators, Tauzin's compromise with the Democrats, whereby the drug companies looked like good guys, now looks like a giveaway. In short, Tauzin's cleverness got him into trouble at last.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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