Abramoff: Let’s Focus on What Matters: Battling Washington’

Post Reply
User avatar
Enki
Posts: 5052
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2011 6:04 pm

Abramoff: Let’s Focus on What Matters: Battling Washington’

Post by Enki »

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/abra ... orruption/
Last week, the Sunlight Foundation’s reporting blog responded to a post I wrote about my experience as a lobbyist convincing members of Congress not to impose a retroactive tax on inverted companies, including my then-client, Tyco. Inverted companies are those who reincorporate overseas, primarily to avoid paying US corporate taxes. Tyco was actually purchased by ADT, based in Bermuda, but that transaction had the same effect.

Keenan Steiner writes:

But a review of the record, and interviews with a former colleague as well as with a congressional staffer to a key senator pushing the legislation, do not support his claims and suggest that, in this case at least, Abramoff may be exaggerating his clout…

Abramoff’s lobbying advice looks back to the summer of 2004, when the tax loophole-closing legislation had passed both the House and the Senate.

Here’s where I must disagree: the thing is…I didn’t have a job in the summer of 2004. In fact, my firm, Greenberg Traurig, had fired me in March of that year.

And that’s just the beginning of the inaccuracies in Steiner’s post.

Fact-checking is important. But in seeking to undermine what I’ve written, the Sunlight Foundation, a champion of lobby reform and political accountability, misses the point. I’m not exaggerating my clout – I’m trying to tell the truth.

I named seven senators who we targeted with what were, essentially, bribes: Chruck Grassley, R-Iowa, Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Jim Bunning, R-Ky., Tom Daschle, D-S.D., John Breaux, D-La., and Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark. These bribes were more than “junkets” as Steiner writes, and the targets encompassed more than the seven legislators themselves. As I’ve made clear in my book and elsewhere, I didn’t just provide travel opportunities or campaign contributions, but also tickets to games and meals at my restaurant. The targets weren’t just members, but also, and especially, their staff. The checks we rounded up were often from employees of these clients, and many times were directed to party organizations and PACs.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
Post Reply