Rep. Mo Brooks details explicit political corruption in Washington, D.C.
"Now you understand how the public policy debate is corrupted when to be in a position of power, you have to do what the special interest groups require, which undermines the public policy debate."
By DOUGLAS J HARDING
Congressman Mo Brooks, a Republican U.S. representative of Alabama, detailed during an apparent town hall earlier this year the ins and outs of rampant political corruption present in Washington, D.C.
A video of Brooks’ nearly 5-minute explanation was posted to Twitter Friday by Lauren Windsor of The Undercurrent and has since garnered nearly half-a-million views.
“I’m sure that y’all are very concerned about why our Congress is so unresponsive to the regular needs of American citizens, why some of these policies that come out are so bizarre, so unfair, so skewered against regular Jane and Joe Citizen,” Brooks says as the video begins. “The reason is simple. Special interest groups run Washington, and I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean literally.”
Brooks then goes into great detail—providing several examples—explaining how special interest groups and lobbyists convince American congresspersons to enter “quid pro quo” agreements to do their bidding instead of representing average voters and constituents.
“Now, here is how it happens: In the House of Representatives—I use that as an example because that’s where I work—if you want to be chairman of a major committee, you have to purchase it,” Brooks says. “And the purchase price for a major committee, say like Ways and Means, the minimum bid is a million dollars.”
Brooks continues to say that representatives divide congressional committees into one of three groups: Group A comprises the most expensive committees, Group B the “middling” committees, and Group C the “cheapest.”
“[Group A] is the most expensive because those are the committees that the special interest groups care most about,” he explains.
Attempting to win a seat on any of these congressional committees, Brooks says, entails representatives engaging with lobbyists in explicit political corruption.
“So, where does a congressman come up with $1 million to be chairman of one of these eight committees?” Brooks asks. “You can’t get it from Joe and Jane Citizen because Joe and Jane Citizen back home are not going to be contributing that kind of money. They don’t have it. They need that money for their own families. And so, you have to get it from the special interest groups. And with the special interest groups, there is a quid pro quo: If you don’t do what they tell you to do, they won’t give you the money that finances your chairmanship.”
Brooks then relays the experiences of an acquaintance who he says ran for chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The NRCC is the Republican parallel to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which describes itself as “the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House of Representatives,” and where individuals may donate money with hopes of supporting candidates on a partisan basis.
“[The NRCC] is where the Republicans pay their money for these committee assignments and chairmanships, just as the Democrats pay theirs to the DCCC,” Brooks says. “And this guy who wanted to be chair of the NRCC actually had a brochure, and that brochure had price listings written on it. His argument for getting elected was, ‘Elect me. I will charge you less.’”
Brooks provides another example of such political corruption through a story relayed to him by Congressman Thomas Massie, the Republican of Kentucky. According to Brooks, Massie was approached by a lobbyist who offered to pay $500,000 for the congressman to purchase his place on the House Committee on Ways and Means, the only stipulation being that Massie support a certain bill relating to patents. Massie allegedly declined the offer because the patent bill would “hurt the small investor.”
“The people with the power and the money are going to use that power and money to steal the patent rights from the person who actually had the idea who should be reaping the rewards of that idea,” Brooks says. “So, Thomas went back to that lobbyist and said, ‘No, I’m not going to do it.’ The lobbyist said, ‘OK, I’m not going to pay that $500,000.’”
Brooks says Massie took his story to USA Today, who subsequently published it on the front page.
In the USA Today story Brooks appears to be referencing, from 2016, Massie is quoted saying:
“[The lobbyist] pulled me and my chief of staff into a meeting. He offered to raise the money that would be required to get me on Ways and Means. This is a lobbyist telling me he can get me on Ways and Means. It was one of the scummiest meetings I’ve ever been in. I left just reeling, thinking about the implications for how this place works, when you realize that the lobbyists pick who goes on which committee.”
Below is a link to the USA Today story Brooks appears to be referencing:
“And I saw this, and I’m going, ‘Finally, somebody else in the House of Representatives who is honorable, who is ethical and sees the corruption associated with this process,’” Brooks says. “I went to Thomas and said, ‘Thank you for doing that.’ And Thomas responded, ‘Well, I made one big mistake: I talked about it in terms of buying committee assignments when really it’s a rental agreement. You have to pay it every two years.’”
Brooks says this sort of explicit political corruption is no secret in Washington, D.C., especially to the major players in both political parties as well as in Beltway media circles.
“Now you understand how the public policy debate is corrupted when to be in a position of power, you have to do what the special interest groups require, which undermines the public policy debate. The money now is triumph,” Brooks says. “And the national media knows about this. Both political parties do it, so neither party rises to the occasion and makes this a major public policy issue that would increase exposure about what’s getting done. But if you want to know why our government is not properly facing the challenges that are in front of the United States of America, that more than anything else is the reason.”
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