Thursday, November 19, 1998

Livingston is Mr. Special Interests

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN - As fallout from the recent plebiscite continues to flower, what was up is down, down up, up down, all around. Which leads me to my first twinge of Newt Nostalgia.

Oh no, not already! Yep. It was brought on by Rep. Bob Livingston, who will be the next House speaker.

At least Gingrich was a real ideologue. Livingston is just Mr. Special Interests. He's the guy who helped our own Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison help the oil industry to a richly undeserved continuation of its legally protected rip-off, sucking oil out from underneath public lands without paying anything close to market royalties. Livingston is the guy who let oil lobbyists sit at the conference table to explain their position while that little midnight special was being ridered onto an unrelated bill.

Do not miss the continuation of the Barlett and Steele investigation in Time magazine. The latest focus is on how corporations avoid billions in federal taxes. The next time you hear some Republican claim his party stands for lower taxes, tell him you know exactly how $125 billion a year can be returned to individual taxpayers - just by making corporations pay what they actually owe. As usual, the biggest (and least effective job-producing) corporations are getting the fattest share of the rip-off.

However, our chances of getting anything done about corporate welfare are even dimmer under a Livingston regime than under Gingrich's. Mr. Business-As-Usual not only has a special affinity for Big Oil, but he also heavily favors the defense industries and has a special relationship with the merchant marine. He is so anti-environment he even opposed money for the Superfund to clean up toxic waste sites.

Livingston has had some differences with fellow Republicans because he doesn't like loading up appropriations bills with riders involving social issues like abortion and birth control. But he doesn't mind loading them up with breaks for special interests.

Two things you might want to bear in mind about Bubba Livingston:

n He was planning to quit Congress this year to make big bucks as a lobbyist. That was his ambition until Gingrich talked him into running again by hinting that he could become Gingrich's successor because Gingrich planned to run for president.

n Livingston is so opposed to campaign finance reform that during a 1993 debate, he put on a big, red clown's nose and a clown hat to show how anyone who voted for campaign finance reform should dress. Livingston also led an "ethics reform task force" that made it harder to bring ethics accusations against a House member. Not exactly a goo-goo guy.

One reason Livingston had the votes for speaker is that his personal political action committee, BOBS-PAC, became a leading contributor to Republican candidates this year, raising more than $1 million in less than six months - all from special interests. Livingston had no opposition at all in his own district; nevertheless, he used his clout as Appropriations chairman to raise not only the $1 million for his PAC but also nearly $1 million for his personal campaign committee, most of which he donated to the party.

In addition to using the PAC to get around the $1,000 contribution limit (PACs can give $5,000), according to a Nov. 11 Washington Post article, Livingston "took tens of thousands of dollars in 'earmarked' checks from corporate PACs and passed on the money to grateful campaigns, essentially serving as a legal conduit for PACs such as United Parcel Service, Bell Atlantic and Atlantic Richfield."

Also according to the Post, "James C. Pruitt, a former Livingston staffer now a lobbyist for Texaco Inc., helped organize Washington corporate interests. The PACs of two of the leading lobbying groups in town, Williams & Jensen and Cassidy & Associates, sponsored fund-raising events for Livingston. The Cassidy firm is known for working the Appropriations Committee for clients seeking money earmarked for specific projects." Livingston's PAC had so much money that by the end of the campaign, it was even donating to Senate and gubernatorial candidates.

During a West Coast fund-raising swing this summer, some lobbyists flew cross-country to kiss the ring of the man they call "the pope of Congress" (the 13 Appropriations subcommittee chairs are called "the College of Cardinals"). The Post reported, "While Livingston politely demurred from accepting the title, executives representing various industries, from oil to real estate, treated him like a visiting head of state."

So what we have here is the lobby's darling, a perfect exemplar of everything that's wrong with the system of legalized bribery than now runs this country as a corporate oligopoly. Bring back Newt!

Molly Ivins' column regularly runs on Mondays and Thursdays.

Creators Syndicate, Inc.