Gloom Under the Dome

By Richard Lacayo

Americans seem to be divided into two camps on the subject of the Congress of the United States: those who consider it an ethical swamp and those who regard that comparison as unfair to swamps. As the members return to work this week, they have an even worse public image to contemplate: not only sleazier but more paralyzed as well. Last week's indictment and demotion of Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was a double whammy. In a short time he has come to symbolize both Congress's lingering tawdriness and its desperate need for a dealmaker to keep the place functioning. "Most people think members of Congress -- all members of | Congress -- have their hands in the till," worries Indiana Democrat Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "This simply confirms it for them."

The Rostenkowski case is especially painful because it joins a roll call of recent roguery. The Keating Five, the congressional post office, the House bank, the dubious book scheme of House Speaker Jim Wright -- that litany is at least partly the result of new regulations that Congress has imposed on itself. Even so, will voters care that tighter rules and closer scrutiny are part of the reason? Probably not.

Which is why, as they head toward this year's midterm elections, incumbents worry about fallout from the Rostenkowski indictment. Former Illinois Senator Alan Dixon remembers how, just weeks before his unsuccessful 1992 primary bid against Carol Moseley-Braun, the House banking scandal erupted onto Chicago's front pages. "My polls dropped 7 points in one day, and we didn't even have a bank in the Senate."

Lost seats on Election Day aren't the only reason for the gloom in Washington. With voters also complaining about a do-nothing Congress -- a criticism that is not entirely deserved after the adoption of NAFTA and significant deficit-reduction measures -- much of Washington was concerned last week that Rostenkowski's plight would deprive Congress of a rare power broker who helped push through the 1986 tax-reform bill and NAFTA. "No capital ever has a surplus of politicians with those qualities," the columnist David Broder lamented last week in the Washington Post. "Seeing him brought down . . . is a citywide sorrow."

And the dealmakers are dwindling. Former House Speaker Wright was famously willing to force House members into line on important votes. His courtly successor, Tom Foley, is more apt simply to gauge their wishes over and over again. The rising generation of younger lawmakers seems even less inclined toward Rostenkowski-style leadership, part back slapping, part arm twisting. The new crowd tends to be more attuned to polls and job preservation. "Dealmakers are willing to take risks, willing to be tough," says Tony Coelho, the former House Democratic whip who resigned in 1989 after reports about misuse of campaign funds. "They're not coming to Congress anymore."

Rostenkowski, 66, the son of a Chicago alderman, always knew how to do favors and collect them, two priceless gifts when it comes to getting legislation passed. The 18-term Congressman is one of the last Preston Sturges / characters in the House, a man with the face of a football coach and the guttural laugh of a guy who knows and enjoys the ways of an old pol. Since becoming chairman in 1981 of Ways and Means, which writes most tax legislation, he has seen the word powerful appear before his name so often it must seem like part of the spelling. But he used the power to take on tough issues, as when he insisted in one recent speech that general tax increases would be needed for health-care reform.

His ability to sort out the conflicting needs of his colleagues is legendary. Ten years ago, when Connecticut Representative Barbara Kennelly was a new member of Rostenkowski's committee, she went to him for help in getting legislative changes that would allow the city of Hartford to issue bonds needed to pay for a new waste-treatment plant. Rostenkowski instructed his staff to draw up the necessary amendment. Just a day or two later, he came back to her with a request: to co-sponsor a controversial measure affecting Medicaid fee assignments for physicians. Though it would open her to political fire, Kennelly calculated that the damage would be sustainable and knew that she owed one to Rosty. "One of the reasons he was such a great chairman," she explains, "is that he found out what you absolutely had to have and what you absolutely could not support. He balanced that out."

Clinton is hoping that Rostenkowski was not as crucial to the passage of health-care reform as he once supposed. Though he can regain his chairmanship if acquitted, Rostenkowski was compelled by Democratic caucus rules to hand over the post to the committee's ranking Democrat, Florida Representative Sam Gibbons, who has shown no special gift for horse trading. So the Administration is expecting its health-care point man to be majority leader Richard Gephardt. But like the rest of the House leadership, Gephardt is also more liberal than the crucial centrists whose support Clinton needs on health care.

One deal Rostenkowski could not see brokered to his satisfaction was the plea bargain that his lawyer Robert Bennett struck with the prosecution team headed by U.S. Attorney Eric Holder Jr. Rostenkowski would have got off with a fine and a six-month prison term in exchange for resigning from the House and pleading guilty to a single felony count. After two days of discussion with family and close associates, Rostenkowski decided to turn down the plea. Says former Illinois Representative Marty Russo, a close friend: "He just sat down one night and said, 'Wait a minute. I didn't do this.' "

While Rostenkowski may have known the extent of the potential indictment against him, for most other people it came as a shock when Holder finally unveiled it last week. In addition to a charge that was already familiar -- that from 1978 to 1991 Rostenkowski took at least $50,000 in cash disguised as office purchases of stamps from the House post office -- the 17-count indictment outlined a collection of schemes that allegedly cost taxpayers more than $500,000. In the most damning part, it accused Rostenkowski of a kickback scam in which he put 14 people on his payroll for no-show jobs and such tasks as taking pictures at the weddings of his daughters and mowing the lawn at his summer home.

Holder also accused Rostenkowski of having used office funds to buy from the House stationery store about $40,000 in gifts for family and friends, including hand-painted chairs and crystal models of the Capitol, and of spending $100,000 in House funds and $73,500 in political-campaign funds to lease cars for his personal use. In the most serious charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, he was accused of witness tampering for allegedly asking an engraver to say nothing to a federal grand jury about 50 brass plates he had engraved for the gift crystal.

After the indictment was issued, Rostenkowski ignored his lawyer's advice to stay quiet. "I strongly believe that I am not guilty of these charges," he insisted, "and will fight to regain my reputation." Soon after, lawyer and client parted ways. Whomever he chooses as a replacement, Rostenkowski may benefit from the testimony of several of the "ghost employees," who reportedly will challenge the prosecution's version of events.

Despite the string of congressional scandals, longtime observers of the Legislative Branch insist it is far cleaner now than in the 1950s and '60s, when special interests fished for congressional votes with envelopes of cash. "It was a common practice in those days for a lobbyist to come to a member of Congress and hand him an envelope and say, 'Here, this is for your campaign,' says former Representative Rod Chandler, a Washington Republican. "It was a nod-and-a-wink thing. 'If you use it on your campaign, fine. If not, that's up to you.' Nothing even approaching that happens anymore."

After Watergate and Abscam, the FBI sting operation that sent seven members of Congress to prison by 1981 for taking bribes to obtain various favors, Congress acted several times to clean up its practices. But each reform opened up fresh avenues of opportunity. New limits on political contributions from individuals led to the rise of political-action committees, which flooded Congress with money on behalf of organized special interests. "The system itself has become a form of legalized corruption," complains Fred Wertheimer, president of the public-interest lobbying group Common Cause.

Restraints placed five years ago on the amount of outside income lawmakers could earn from speechmaking and other pursuits also made surplus campaign contributions a more important source of extra cash. Congress tried to regulate those in 1991 but without complete success. For much of the past year the Federal Election Commission has tried to define such matters as what is official use for a car and what is personal. The Senate version of a campaign- finance-re form bill now awaiting action seeks to regulate such spending more tightly. The House version does not.

In Congress, as in most other places, the real secret to enforcing the rules is not so much a matter of policing as self-policing. "I really always had the feeling that there was no one there ((on Rostenkowski's staff)) who really had a good moral compass," says a former House staff member. "Or maybe, to be fair, he never had anyone courageous enough working for him who'd come up to him and say, 'Boss, you can't do that anymore.' " Former Oklahoma Congressman Wes Watkins, who retired four years ago, says a friend once offered him a useful epigram about Washington: "There are some that go to the Capitol and grow, and some that go there and swell." He adds, "Some get power hungry and arrogant, and that leads to corruption." Which kind Rostenkowski will turn out to be is now up to a court to decide.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 600 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on June 1 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 4 % Not Sures omitted

CAPTION: Do you approve of the job that the U.S. Congress is doing?

Is Congress doing a good job of maintaining high ethical standards among its members?

Should Congressman Rostenkowski have influence over legislation on health care and other issues while charges against him are being heard?

Should he resign from his seat in Congress?

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett and Julie Johnson/Washington and Jon D. Hull/Chicago