Two Congressmen with One Problem

17 Apr 2009 // For years two of our local congressional districts have been quietly occupied by representatives who have gone about their jobs and despite their influence have managed to fly below the radar of public scrutiny.

Well, those days are gone.

In Illinois, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Chicago, has been best known for getting federal funds to improve impoverished areas of his district in both Chicago and the south suburbs and for his push to develop a third Chicago-area airport near Peotone.

In Indiana, U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., has worked long and hard on behalf of the steel industry, the major economic engine in his Northwest Indiana district.

But within the past few months, both men now find themselves better known as being under the microscope of federal investigations into whether they have crossed an ethical and perhaps legal line.

This week, it was revealed Jackson is under review by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent government panel that investigates members of Congress for possible violations of standards of ethical governmental behavior.

Believe it or not, there are such things.

Although Jackson has denied wrongdoing, he has admitted to being "Senate Candidate A" in the December criminal complaint filed against now-indicted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

And it was "Senate Candidate A" whose supporters are alleged to have offered Blagojevich $1.5 million if he picked the congressman to fill the U.S. Senate vacancy left by the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, the complaint said.

Jackson is not charged with any wrongdoing, but he has been uncharacteristically silent about this issue.

Across the state line, Visclosky's name has popped up in a federal investigation of The PMA Group, a Virginia-based lobbying firm whose offices were raided by the FBI in November.

Visclosky sits on the House Defense appropriations subcommittee and has considerable say as to where that money goes, and a lot of it has been going to clients of PMA -- some of whom are in Visclosky's district but many of whom are not.

In return, a river of money flowed into Visclosky's campaign war chest despite the fact that during his 25 years in Congress he has rarely, if ever, faced a serious chance of defeat either in primary or general elections. He has received some $270,000 from PMA clients since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which is more than any other legislator.

Like Jackson, Visclosky has denied any wrongdoing and voted with Republicans to open a House ethics committee investigation into PMA's activities. The measure went down to defeat, but Visclosky said he would return $18,000 in PMA client contributions and The New York Times reports he has dropped all PMA clients from his list of requests for so-called "earmarks."

Is either congressman in any danger? At this point, probably not.

But there is nothing like a little federal investigation to make you mind your P's and Q's.