House banking scandal involved crimes with taxpayer funds
The bank scandal highlights the arrogance & condescension of members of Congress. It’s an outrage when members of Congress set up a system whereby they can spend money they don’t have. There are lots of people serving time in jails for what some members
of Congress did with their House checking accounts.
The solution is to prosecute the ones in Congress who are guilty of serious crimes. [A prosecutor] told me that some members will probably face charges under the same statute that was used to convict
people in the Iran-Contra scandal. It’s called “Conspiracy to Defraud the US Government.”
Now I know some of you believe the stories about how no taxpayer money was at risk in the House Bank. But that simply won’t wash. It was all taxpayer
money. We pay them. And taxpayer money was used to operate the bank. So it is inaccurate to say that taxpayer money was not used to enable these members of Congress to accord themselves advantages unavailable to other citizens. It clearly was.
The biggest scandal on Capitol Hill is the list of laws that Congress routinely exempts itself from. Every other American has to obey them, but not Congress. They include:
The Social Security Act of 1935
The National Labor Relations Act of 193
The Equal Pay Act of 1963
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Freedom of Information Act of 1966
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970
The Privacy Act of 1974
The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (no surprise there).
And the list goes on and on. If any person running a business were to run afoul of any of the above laws you can bet he would be hauled into court pronto. But the authors of those laws have nothing to worry about. There is nothing anyone can do about a
congressional violation of those laws, save for taking it to the lapdog Ethics Committee. This only breeds contempt for Congress among the public. It says to the average person that Congress considers itself above the law.
