Record Bears Wright Praise for Video Tied to Wife’s Job

House Speaker Jim Wright inserted into the Congressional Record a glowing endorsement of a privately produced home video program at a time when his wife was drawing a $36,000 salary from the company that was marketing the video.

The praise for the Pacific Institute’s family video series was inserted into the record on Dec. 9, 1985, and was later used in promotional material for the company’s sales force. Wright’s statement does not mention his wife’s employment at the Seattle firm that sells motivational tapes and programs, primarily to corporate clients.

In the endorsement, Wright calls the marketing of the video “a heartening development indeed” and notes that the series is “available at a nominal price within the range of most American families.”

The existence of the Congressional Record endorsement was first disclosed in today’s editions of The Wall Street Journal.

Any member of Congress is free to insert material into the Congressional Record. But the rules generally bar any member from receiving benefits “which would occur by virtue of influence improperly exerted from his position in the Congress.”

The guidelines also caution lawmakers not to become “too closely affiliated with a particular enterprise” to prevent the appearance that the rule is being broken.

The latest revelation comes at a time when Wright is battling a series of ethics charges brought by the House Ethics Committee.