Ise, Ise baby . . .

Mark Kleiman links to the AP story on John McCain, which has more detail on what, exactly, McCain is supposed to have done wrong.

In late 1999, McCain twice wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Florida-based Paxson Communications — which had paid Iseman as its lobbyist — urging quick consideration of a proposal to buy a television station license in Pittsburgh. At the time, Paxson's chief executive, Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, also was a major contributor to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. McCain did not urge the FCC commissioners to approve the proposal, but he asked for speedy consideration of the deal, which was pending from two years earlier. In an unusual response, then-FCC Chairman William Kennard complained that McCain's request "comes at a sensitive time in the deliberative process" and "could have procedural and substantive impacts on the commission's deliberations and, thus, on the due process rights of the parties." McCain wrote the letters after he received more than $20,000 in contributions from Paxson executives and lobbyists. Paxson also lent McCain his company's jet at least four times during 1999 for campaign travel.

Kleiman asks "Is it routine for a Senator from Arizona to pressure regulatory agencies on behalf of companies based in Florida?"

Fox News has these details, and is making it sound like this is not a big deal, because the senator did not press for an outcome, but only a speedy resolution. But regulatory uncertainty is very costly for firms; just getting your case jumped to the head of the line could be a pretty valuable special favor. It doesn't cost the rest of us much, of course--unless we happen to work for the company whose case was delayed while everyone dropped everything to deal with the senator's request.

That said, I don't have a good sense of how much impact this sort of thing actually has, and I suspect it's (sadly) rather common.

Comments

Every part of the Federal Government which has a queue of work, and which prioritizes that work, includes a category: "Congressionals". That is for items which have acquired a message from a member of Congress. It is also the highest priority. Other things may not get done in the time frames expected, or even in the time frames mandated by regulation or law. But Congressionals get handled ASAP.

To my personal knowledge, that has been the case since at least the 1970s. If there has been a time in the history of the Republic when it has NOT been the case, I will be much amazed.

Posted by wj | February 21, 2008 11:28 AM

Wink wink nudge nudge "bring this to the front burner but evaluate it completely objectively" crapola is a favor, like everything else. I'd very much like to see why it merited special consideration over everything ahead of it in the queue if the answer has nothing to do with the fact that the guy with the most to gain donated a boatload of money to McCain and zipped him around on his private plane

Posted by Jack | February 21, 2008 11:41 AM

A politician using his position to get favors for his campaign contributers? I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked...

I'm all for exposing this sort of thing, but perhaps we could lighten or workload by a few orders of magnitude by finding the few politicians who HAVEN'T done this.

Posted by Josh | February 21, 2008 12:09 PM

I spent some forty years working under FCC regulation, and it's clearly not unreasonable to ask for help in moving the commission along.

They have been better or worse depending on the chairman at the time, but there is an incredible tendency to simply not take action if there is a real decision to make.

This is compounded by the deterioration in the quality of commission staff, now totally dominated by lawyers, many of whom fail to have even a elementary grasp of the technology they are supposed to regulate, and the poor quality of recent political appointees to the commission. By 'recent' I mean the last twenty years; I would indict both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Posted by Bill | February 21, 2008 12:30 PM

Asking regulators to get off their dead asses two years after a deal is struck doesn't strike me as a terrible thing to do, even for campaign contributions and plane rides. I'd have more respect for McCain if he had simply worked to defund a regulatory body that takes two years to make decisions, but I'll take what I can get.

Posted by Will Allen | February 21, 2008 1:28 PM

To assess this situation correctly, one would have to know if McCain performs this service for those who have not contributed. If he does, then, as Will Allen points out, "asking regualators to get off their dead asses two years after a deal is struck" is not unreasonable. If he only performs such services for contributors, then he is a hypocrite.

Indeed, I have known ordinary people who had some issue with delayed government action writing congresspersons and actually getting some improved service- and they were not contributors.

Posted by Yancey Ward | February 21, 2008 1:43 PM

Such a letter may sound innocuous, but it has far greater effect than the actual words suggest - and Congress as a whole certainly intends to keep it that way. IIRC, McCain's part in the Keating scandal some years ago was one or more letters to bank regulators asking them to resolve the questions with the Keating savings and loans audit quickly. The regulators read that as pressure to give Keating a pass - and eventually taxpayers had to pick up the tab for Keating's bad investments and reimburse the depositors. If McCain's aid to Keating was the innocent mistake he claims it was, he's just demonstrated that he's a slow learner. Not that I think he's any worse than his colleagues...

What should be done about things like this? Restrict the reach of federal regulators, and when regulations are necessary do something about agencies that take years to make a simple decision. But that reduces Congressmens' and Senators' power and ability to gather donation, and Ron Paul's the only person in Congress that's for that...

Posted by markm | February 21, 2008 1:56 PM

NYT to John McCain:

I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you.

McCain was never going to make any outreach to the right. It would appear that he no longer needs to do so.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Posted by mark l. | February 21, 2008 3:01 PM

Check the websites for most congresscritters and you will find a form for:
- expediting Social Security retirement benefits problem resolution
- expediting Social Security disability determination
- resolving queries on VA benefits

So, they are used to asking various bureaucrats for "expediting" problems that their constituents have at various agencies.

I sent a letter to my congresscritter asking for action on the extension of overseas adoption paperwork (by fast tracking a law) and got a callback from a staffer. The first question the staffer asked was if their was an agency they could write on our behalf. In this case no, since the law needed a change. They said they would look into it, and got a nice letter saying they would vote for the extension when it got to the floor. I've never given this person a dime, they just wanted to provide a constituent a service.

Posted by ech | February 21, 2008 4:25 PM

Several years ago, when my green card application was stuck in the dark labryinth of the INS, I asked my congressman, Senator Bob Bennett of Utah for help. His query to the INS about the status of my case was sufficient to dislodge the jam. My application was approved ONE WEEK after I contacted the congressman. Note that no special favors were done to me or to anyone; my case had just languished for no specific reason.

I was very thankful for representative government in this case.

Posted by Kevin P. | February 21, 2008 4:28 PM

According to McCain's statement, both sides requested contact with the FCC. So the side that gave and the side that didn't got what they wanted. Why is that controversial?

Posted by Thomas | February 21, 2008 4:39 PM

One of the jobs of Congresscritters is "constituent service". That is, running interference for citizens and employers who are having difficulty with the federal bureaucracy. This is something most Congressional offices take very seriously and, for the most part, something they do without regard to someone's status as a donor. In this context, the question has been asked why Senator McCain, from Arizona, would write a letter on behalf of some company in Florida. In my experience, it's not uncommon for a Senator or Representative to write a letter on behalf of a non-constituent. They consider it part of Congressional oversight of executive agencies. (Congresscritters seldom need a GOOD reason to bust the chops of a bureaucrat. It's something they'll do as part of their never ending turf battle with the administration -- ANY administration.)

One recent example, I wrote a letter to our local Congressional Representative on behalf of a client. I did not name the client because the client wished to remain anonymous. The staff of the local Representative forwarded my letter on to the chair of the appropriate committee. The chair's staff wrote and said they were going to send a letter of complaint to the agency. They said they would include my client's name if I wanted and, in that case, would monitor what action the agency took. I hadn't contributed to either Congressmen nor had my client. No contributions have been asked for. The local Representative is a Republican and the committee chair is a Democrat. In this case the local Representative's office was providing good constituent service and the committee chair was engaged in oversight. It's how the system is supposed to work.

Posted by David Walser | February 21, 2008 5:01 PM

According to McCain's statement, both sides requested contact with the FCC. So the side that gave and the side that didn't got what they wanted. Why is that controversial?

The statement also says that the normal review process for a broadcast license transfer takes about 418 days and they were past the 800 day mark. It seems to me that if a lobbyist wanted to get the chairman of the Commerce Committee to exert some “undue influence” with a regulatory agency on their behalf, they would have tried to get it approved sooner than the normal time and not when it was already taking nearly twice as long as the average time (and also past the mandatory statutory period) to get a decision.

Posted by Thorley Winston | February 21, 2008 5:30 PM

Thomas wrote: According to McCain's statement, both sides requested contact with the FCC. So the side that gave and the side that didn't got what they wanted.

Thorley Winston wrote: The statement also says that the normal review process for a broadcast license transfer takes about 418 days and they were past the 800 day mark.... it was already taking nearly twice as long as the average time (and also past the mandatory statutory period) to get a decision.

That all can't be right, there's got to be a juicy conspiracy theory in here somewhere!

Posted by anony-mouse | February 21, 2008 8:00 PM

Indeed, most senators' websites have a page for "Constituent Services," offering to help constituents if they are having problems getting a resolution on any matter pending with any federal agency. They particularly state that they can make inquiries regarding status but cannot force an outcome in the constituent's favor. They do not say that they are limited to visas and social security checks.

That said, I don't have a good sense of how much impact this sort of thing actually has, and I suspect it's (sadly) rather common.

Very little, if the agency in question is a notorious black hole and thus one that gets frequent congressional inquiries. I don't know if that was necesarily the case with the FCC in 1998-99, but some of them frequently go well past their statutory deadlines. If you've had a matter pending for a year that the agency has 60 days to act on, for example, you're entirely justified in nagging by any means available.

Posted by AT | February 21, 2008 10:00 PM

The comments, so far, are actually quite alarming. Congresscritters being praised for helping citizens through bureaucracies they themselves created. Bureaucracies funded by congress. Bureaucracies enforcing regulations and laws passed by congress. Almost makes one wonder the true purpose of a Congresscitter.

Perhaps if Congress thought about the regulations they passed. Or perhaps even the need to have a bureaucrat question and regulate every single move made by a person or business.

Political favor: the act of appearing to help a donor or voter through a problem created by the politician in the first place.

Posted by John Davis | February 21, 2008 11:38 PM

MM should read what Lanny Davis wrote about this. It's completely consistent with what people who have ever actually dealt with the government have been saying all day.

I then learned that Senator McCain and his staff were not comfortable with mentioning the economic danger to WQED, even if Senator McCain went on to state in the letter that he took no position on the merits of the decision. I was told Senator McCain was only willing to the send a letter with a "vanilla" status inquiry, together with a request that the matter be handled as expeditiously as possible (or words to that effect) - i.e., taking no position on the merits of approval or disapproval of the WQED/WQEX-Cornerstone-Paxson transactions whatsoever.

...

Another fact not included in the Times's and Post's account: Mr. Paxson, the individual cited in the Times and the Post as engaging a lobbyist to help get his purchase of Cornerstone's channel approved as part of the three-way transaction, failed to get what he wanted.

Opponents of the transaction from a Georgetown University legal clinic filed a complaint with the FCC alleging that McCain's letter violated the ex parte rules. even though the letter expressly asked only for status and expedited review, and took no position on the merits. The FCC investigated the matter and found no violation by Senator McCain. That fact was also omitted from both the Times and the Post story today.

Posted by AT | February 22, 2008 4:52 AM

I am a resident of Illinois, and I can testify that sometimes the caseworkers involved with constituent services have no clue as to what they are doing. I can also testify that this was the case with the offices of Senator Richard Durbin (D) and Representative Melissa Bean (D-8th District).

Bean's Director of Constituent Services sent a "letter of inquiry" to the wrong agency, but that was a moot point because he misidentified the issue anyway.

Durbin's caseworker was so ignorant that she did not believe me when I advised her that Medicare Advantage HMOs are regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She insisted on referring a matter to the Illinois Department of Insurance. They in turn sent me a letter referring me to...the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

There is no law that representatives in Washington have to provide constituent services. And there is no law that a representative cannot assist somebody who is not a constituent, however it is just that normally they won't (at least for commoners like us).

If we could have obtained assistance from a representative from another state...well that would have been fine with me. Oh well.

Posted by John Olsen | March 3, 2008 12:43 AM