LeftOut

The Enron Debacle
A case study in the need for campaign finance reform
by Daryl Moore

Since the collapse of Enron, the White House has been circling the wagons. Vice President Dick Cheney remains in a secure, undisclosed location, refusing to surface and answer questions about the six meetings he held with Enron executives while drafting Bush’s energy policy.

President George Bush has invoked Clintonian comparisons by conservatives like George Will for parsing the truth and lamely offering that he "inherited" his buddy Ken Lay from former Texas Governor Ann Richards. Bush cabinet members appear regularly on Sunday talk shows to explain that their refusal to act on Enron’s behalf proves that Enron’s money did not buy influence with the Bush White House.

Congress, the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and three other governmental entities have begun investigations, promising to get to the bottom of the corporate scandal that led to the loss of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in retirement funds.

In the meantime, Democrats are busily trying to figure out how to turn the Enron debacle into a political issue without looking like they’re turning it into a political issue.

The problem is that nearly everyone who promises to get to the bottom of the Enron scandal has taken money from Enron. More than half of the current members of Congress have received contributions. Attorney General John Ashcroft had to recuse himself because he received $50,000 in his election bid for the U.S. Senate (which he lost to a dead man). Indeed, during the past 10 years, Enron–who managed not to pay taxes in four of the last five years–contributed almost $6 million to politicians of both parties.

Whether Bush or anyone in the White House acted improperly with regard to Enron is irrelevant when it comes to campaign-finance reform. What is relevant is that Enron executives could pick up the phone on any given day and speak with the secretary of commerce or the secretary of the treasury. They could command an audience with the vice president–six times–while he was drafting a national energy policy designed to benefit Enron.

Because of this type of political access, Senator John McCain has been fighting his own party–and many Democrats–for years to get meaningful campaign-finance reform passed. After finally prevailing in the Senate, his Republican counterparts in the House killed the issue by refusing to bring it to the floor for a debate.

Now, since the Enron debacle has finally revealed exactly how much access money buys in Washington, members of Congress who previously blocked campaign-finance reform have agreed to bring up the issue. In Congress, 216 members have signed a "discharge petition" to bring the issue to the floor; 218 signatures are needed.

It will take two brave Republicans to become numbers 217 and 218. After all, they don’t call the House Republican majority whip Tom DeLay "the Hammer" for nothing. They call him "the Hammer" because he is unabashed about his willingness to punish those within his own party who oppose him.

DeLay recently called those who are pushing for a debate on campaign-finance reform "political opportunists" who are using the Enron debacle to push their political agenda. Hopefully, there are two more political opportunists in Congress who will risk the wrath of the Hammer and become numbers 217 and 218, sign the petition, and put campaign-finance reform on the front burner. The American public has been hammered long enough.

In time, we will learn what the White House knew and when it knew it with regard to the collapse of Enron. But we do not need to wait for that answer to know that Washington is corrupt. That money buys access, if not always influence. And that the time to curb "soft-money" contributions from entities like Enron is now.