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  • Former Speaker Gets Pricey Perks

    FORMER SPEAKER GETS PRICEY PERKS
    Jake Sherman & John Bresnahan

    Asbarez
    12/21/09 3:53 AM EST

    The federal government pays $6,300 per month to rent an office for
    Hastert and his staff in Yorkville, Ill.

    U.S. taxpayers are spending more than $40,000 per month on office
    space, staff, cell phones and a leased SUV for former House Speaker
    Dennis Hastert, even as he works as a lobbyist for private corporations
    and foreign governments.

    The payments are perfectly legal under a federal law that provides
    five years of benefits for former speakers - but only if Hastert never
    makes use of his government-funded perks in the course of his lobbying
    work. Ethics experts say that sort of separation is hard to maintain.

    Hastert "has to be meticulous in his schedule to make sure there
    is no bleed from his publicly subsidized office into his private
    practice," said Kenneth Gross, a former Federal Election Commission
    general counsel and congressional ethics authority. Steve Ellis,
    vice president of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense,
    called the arrangement "really concerning."

    "It is specifically prohibited - federal dollars can't be spent on
    lobbying operations," Ellis said. "We are paying for his staff [and]
    for a car, and we need to be very sure that he isn't spending a dime of
    that money on lobbying operations. "That all needs to be above board,
    in the clear and transparent. And it's not."

    Hastert declined to discuss the situation with POLITICO.

    But his spokesman, Brad Hahn, said the former 11-term congressman
    is in full compliance with rules covering how the federal funds are
    spent. Hahn said Hastert's lobbying work "is completely separate
    [from the office of the former speaker], and he keeps them completely
    separate."

    The federal government pays $6,300 per month to rent an office for
    Hastert and his staff in Yorkville, Ill. Hahn conceded that Hastert
    has no other office set aside for lobbying work in Illinois but said
    that the former speaker travels to Washington frequently for work.

    In addition to the office, the government pays the salaries of three
    of Hastert's assistants in his Illinois office - each more than
    $100,000 in 2008. Bryan Hardin, Hastert's administrative assistant
    (the title often used by a chief of staff in a congressional office)
    earned $138,000.

    "The office of the former speaker has specific functions that are
    tied to Denny being the former speaker, but he does not receive any
    compensation and is not an employee," Hahn said. "There are three
    staffers that carry out the functions - archiving, correspondence,
    speaking engagements - and working with the Hastert Center" at
    Wheaton College.

    House disbursement records show that the office is spending an
    additional $2,000 per month in taxpayer money on a consulting firm,
    Burnham Strategies, that is run by several of Hastert's former
    staffers, including Hahn. Altogether, the firm was paid $30,000
    through Sept. 30 of this year, records show.

    Taxpayers also make the lease payments on a 2008 GMC Yukon and pay for
    a satellite TV subscription, cell phones, laptops and other expenses.

    Since Hastert opened the Illinois office in early 2008, records show,
    the government has paid for five computer monitors at a total cost of
    $1,125, spent almost $1,300 for desks and shelled out an additional
    $4,460 for Hewlett-Packard laptops. Other expenditures include $745
    for a printer and about $620 to transport a clock.

    Hastert, who served in the House for almost 21 years, signed on with
    Dickstein Shapiro in 2008. He is now a registered foreign agent,
    representing in Washington the interests of the governments of Turkey
    and Luxembourg. He also lobbies on behalf of three U.S. corporations.

    Democrats enacted new lobbying restrictions in 2007 in a bid to curb
    the influence of registered lobbyists after Hastert's Republican
    colleagues were entangled in a slew of ethical and legal scandals.

    These restrictions curbed gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers and
    lawmaker travel paid for by federally registered lobbyists, and
    they instituted a period during which former members could not lobby
    Congress. But those measures do not prohibit what Hastert is doing now.

    Under a federal statute enacted in 1974, former House speakers are
    entitled to an allowance to set up and run an office, a payment that
    includes salaries for several aides. In 1995, then newly empowered
    Republicans - who had seized control of the House for the first
    time in four decades - put a five-year deadline on this allowance,
    a move aimed at former Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.), who had lost his
    reelection bid the previous November.

    The formula for calculating the allowance given to former speakers
    is based on that used by current lawmakers. Former speakers are
    prohibited from taking the funds only if they take some other
    "appointive or elected office or position" in the federal or D.C.

    government, according to a 2007 Congressional Research Service report.

    Hahn said Hastert is authorized to spend as much as $840,000 annually
    to run his office but has not used all the money made available to
    him by Congress. "He's worked on a nonpaid basis, but as a former
    speaker, [Hastert] helped out with the Chicago Olympic bid, Advance
    Illinois [an education program] and Illinois Works," a jobs program,
    Hahn added. "These are nonlobbying and nonpaid. These are duties he
    was asked to help [on as] official causes - because he was a former
    speaker and to add his expertise."

    Hastert is not the first former speaker to become a lobbyist. Foley
    worked as a lobbyist for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld after
    serving as U.S. ambassador to Japan, representing clients such as
    AT&T, Walt Disney Co., CSX Corp. and the State University of New
    York. Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat who was speaker from 1987 to 1989,
    was a consultant for Arch Petroleum Co., although it is unclear if he
    was ever a registered lobbyist, said the Office of the Historian of
    the House. Other former speakers, including Georgia Republican Newt
    Gingrich, never registered as lobbyists.

    When he retired from Congress two years ago, Hastert told an Illinois
    newspaper he would go back home and unwind from nearly three decades
    in public office. Hastert predicted, "I don't really see myself as
    a lobbyist and would probably not do that at all."
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