Apply Corruption Laws to Congress, Meese Aide Says

The Justice Department’s chief criminal law enforcer, decrying a “double standard,” called Tuesday for extending to Congress the strict anti-corruption laws that now apply exclusively to executive branch officials.

Assistant Atty. Gen. William F. Weld said that members of Congress, like executive branch employees, should have to obey conflict-of-interest laws and should be prohibited from accepting fees and honorariums for speeches and other services related to their official duties.

In making the proposals at a National Press Club breakfast, Weld turned aside repeated questions on ethics investigations of his boss, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III. He denied that he was trying to direct the “sleaze” issue away from the Administration and toward the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Weld pointed out that he had worked “with great pride” as a staff member in both the Senate and House and said that he was not advocating the crackdown as “a Hill-basher.”

“I’m not saying that one branch (of government) has a monopoly on sleaze,” said Weld, who was U.S. attorney in Boston before taking command of the Justice Department’s criminal division. But he insisted that the laws governing the executive branch are far stricter than those covering Congress.

“To criminalize behavior by one branch of government while permitting it for another flies in the face of logic and violates the concept of fair play,” he said.

Weld made his proposal in conjunction with publication of a 485-page Justice Department manual on prosecuting public corruption cases.

Weld’s proposal quickly gained the support of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who said that his Judiciary subcommittee on administrative law would prepare legislation to end Congress’ exemption from anti-corruption laws. Fees and honorariums “give both the appearance and in some cases the reality of improper influence,” Frank said.

Present law allows senators to accept fees and honorariums each year of up to 40% of their salaries for speeches and other services; House members are limited to 30%. Executive branch employees, by contrast, may not supplement their salaries with fees and honorariums for job-related activities. Violators face penalties of up to a year in prison.

Urges Higher Salaries

Weld coupled his proposal for banning “the potentially corrupting influence of these fees and honorariums” with a call for hiking congressional salaries from the current $89,500 a year to as much as $175,000.

Increasing the salaries, Weld contended, “would be very, very expensive--and it would be worth every penny.” But he conceded that the tight-fisted Office of Management and Budget might not like it and noted that members of Congress have traditionally been reluctant to take the political heat they generate by raising their own salaries.

Under his plan, Weld said, “there would not be any risk that fees or honorariums would influence a legislator’s sense of how to spend his time, much less how to vote.” If members of Congress “did not have to scramble to support their families and two residences,” he added, “they would have more time to devote to the public’s business.”

Higher salaries “might well attract to the national legislature at least some able women and men who would not otherwise be able to make the sacrifice,” he said.

Lawmakers Got Fees

Soon after joining the Justice Department here, Weld recalled, he read that a group of congressmen had toured the facilities of a commercial enterprise that came under the jurisdiction of the committee on which they served. Each received expenses plus a $2,000 fee for his personal bank account.

Weld said that this struck him as “a prima facie criminal violation,” but the chief of his public integrity section informed him that Congress had exempted itself from the law that makes such activity by executive branch employees a criminal offense.

Members of Congress may take official action on matters in which they have a personal financial interest, Weld pointed out, but executive branch officials may not. Similarly, he said, although former executive branch members are restricted in lobbying former colleagues, former congressmen are not subject to such restrictions and have full access to the House and Senate floors.

Congressional Exemptions

Weld noted that Congress has also exempted itself from the Freedom of Information Act, the conflict-of-interest laws, provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that ban discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, the 1975 Age Discrimination Act and the 1973 law banning discrimination against the handicapped.

Last October, when the House voted a five-year extension of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, which includes conflict-of-interest provisions, a Republican attempt to apply the law to Congress was rejected by a vote of 243 to 169. The bill became law without any new restrictions on members of Congress.