Corporate Money Aids Centers Linked to Lawmakers
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON — Nearly a dozen current or former lawmakers have been honored by university endowments financed in part by corporations with business before Congress, posing some potential conflicts like that attributed to Representative Charles B. Rangel in an House ethics complaint.
The donations from businesses to the endowments ranged from modest amounts to millions of dollars, federal records show. And the lawmakers, who include powerful committee chairmen or party leaders, often pushed legislation or special appropriations sought by the corporations.
An endowed chair at the University of Hawaii honoring Senator Daniel K. Inouye, the Hawaii Democrat and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was financed in part by $100,000 from a cruise ship line that the senator helped with legislation allowing it to expand its American ports of call.
A program at South Carolina State University named for Representative James E. Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat and a key backer of legislation to promote new nuclear power plants, stands to benefit from donations by Fluor and Duke Energy, which want to build plants.
And an endowment at the University of Louisville intended as a tribute to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a military contractor that later got a $12 million earmark sponsored by the senator.
Companies and lawmakers defend the donations as simply contributions to a good cause, but critics charge that they are a way for businesses to influence lawmakers in addition to campaign contributions, and without the limits or required disclosures.
“It is another way to curry favor — and a less visible one,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “But it can perhaps be even more effective, because the sums can be much vaster, and it really feeds the members’ vanity as these centers are something that will last in perpetuity.”
Mr. McConnell and other lawmakers reject any similarity to Mr. Rangel’s activities, and say the donations have no bearing on their conduct.
“Any efforts to draw comparisons with Mr. Rangel are absurd,” said Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman, who added that the senator’s support for any earmarks was unrelated to donations. “It is without similarity whatsoever.”
None of the dozen lawmakers appear to have linked their office to the endowments as closely as Mr. Rangel, the New York Democrat, is accused of doing by a House ethics panel. Mr. Rangel, who has been forced to step down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, used Congressional letterhead to send out solicitation letters urging companies with business before his panel to donate to a program honoring him at the City University of New York. He even discussed the legislative matters at meetings where he was soliciting donations, according to the House ethics complaint. In at least one case, he helped a donor get a requested tax break.
Mr. McConnell, though, like Mr. Rangel, met with business leaders to solicit contributions to his center, an aide said, adding that the fund-raising effort ended before he became Senate minority leader in 2007. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, while in office, also personally hosted a fund-raising dinner, soliciting contributions for an oral-history program that will be part of his institute.
Several of the university programs — including those honoring Mr. Clyburn and former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois — are intended to include the lawmakers’ archives, which the House ethics committee in the Rangel case has called a personal benefit to the congressman.
There is no comprehensive list of these programs, since members of Congress are not required to disclose them. Several lawmakers and universities declined requests by The New York Times and other newspapers to reveal a full list of donors or fund-raising events that the members of Congress participated in. The Times survey focused on endowments or educational programs established while the lawmakers were still in office. There are no limits on such memorials being created after a member of Congress retires or dies.
Education officials involved in creating these centers said they had been amazed at how quickly they had been able to raise money for programs named for a sitting member of Congress. At the University of Hawaii, $1.6 million was donated in the first month of fund-raising for the endowed chair honoring Mr. Inouye and his wife, a record for the university. More than 25 of the donors — government contractors, banks, insurance and telecommunications companies — gave at least $25,000, far more than would be permitted in a single year of campaign contributions. An aide to Mr. Inouye said the donations had no influence on his legislative positions.
Some gifts have come in extremely large chunks — like the $1 million donated in 2005 by Northrop Grumman, the miltary contractor, to help establish the Trent Lott National Center at the University of Southern Mississippi. Mr. Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, served in the Senate until 2007.
The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate drew a $5 million donation from Amgen, the drug company, as Mr. Kennedy was pushing legislation in 2009 granting biotech companies like Amgen greater market protections from generic drugs. The institute has raised $55 million in private money, much of it donated after Mr. Kennedy’s death last year.
Many donors have specific agendas for which they are seeking lawmakers’ help. For example, FMC Corporation, a chemical company based in Philadelphia, has made at least three contributions to an endowment created at a Minnesota law school in honor of Representative James L. Oberstar, Democrat of Minnesota, chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
Separately, the company’s lobbyist in Washington has met with Mr. Oberstar’s staff in the last year seeking his support for changes in federal highway legislation that would result in more widespread use of an FMC product, lithium nitrate, in road projects to prevent cracking.
An FMC spokesman said in a statement that the donations are unrelated to the company’s lobbying pitch, and they were not requested by Mr. Oberstar. Still, the lobbyist, Lizanne Davis, said she was pleased with his office’s response.
“They were interested in hearing what we had to say,” she said.
Unlike Mr. Rangel, Mr. Oberstar and most of the lawmakers being honored with university centers avoid requesting donations themselves, instead leaving such pleas up to staff from the universities or charities involved, aides said in interviews this week.
But spokesmen for six of the members — Mr. Oberstar; Mr. Clyburn; Mr. Hastert; Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi; former Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania; and the former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi — said each of them attended events while in office to announce the creation of the programs or to thank donors.
Some, including Mr. Oberstar and Mr. McConnell, asked Congressional ethics officials for “advice letters” to authorize their participation in the endowment programs, their aides said in interviews.
Ethics experts in Washington argue that if lawmakers play even a modest role in such programs — like authorizing the use of their name and appearing at events celebrating the endowment — it still creates an appearance of a conflict.
“The simple fact is these things should not be named after people when they are in office.” said Norman J. Ornstein, an expert in campaign finance at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, a conservative-leaning research group. “We all know what is going on here: the donors are trying to influence the lawmakers.”
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