Pelosi’s Coiffure – Recalling the 1990s House Bank and House Post Office Scandals [Buck Throckmorton]

Americans have long been sick of the special privileges our elites have awarded themselves. During Covid, however, with our elite politicians excusing themselves from the draconian restrictions they impose on the rest of us, it feels like a major backlash is brewing.

Queen Pelosi’s coiffure may be the last straw. It brings back memories of the House Bank and Post Office scandals from the 1990s - scandals that flushed out a generation of corrupt Democratic leaders, including the Speaker of The House.

The House Of Representatives had created the “House Bank”, an institution to which they could deposit money. More importantly, it served as a cash dispenser from which they could write checks against accounts which had no cash on deposit. There were no penalties or consequences for an unlimited number of bounced checks, which effectively created an unlimited credit line to cover those bounced checks.

From Congressional Quarterly:

Revelations that hundreds of sitting and former House members for years had routinely overdrawn their House bank accounts without penalty shook the House throughout 1992. The scandal, which touched more members than any ethics controversy in congressional history, drove some members to retire and helped defeat others in primary or general elections.

Of the 269 sitting members with overdrafts, 77 — more than one in four — retired or were defeated in primary or general election bids for the House or other offices. That was a far higher casualty rate than other members suffered. Only 28 of 166 members (about one in six) with clean bank records had their political careers cut short.

The Speaker Of The House tried to blame its own creation, the House Bank, for Congress’ lawless corruption.

In an April 17 column he [Speaker of the House Thomas Foley] wrote for The New York Times: “The members named yesterday did not abuse their banking privileges. It would be more accurate to say that most members were abused by the bank.”

The Ethics Committee Chairman was bouncing hundreds of checks, in an ethical manner no doubt.

Among the surprises was the news that the ethics committee's chairman — Louis Stokes, D-Ohio — overdrew his account 551 times. Stokes, who became chairman of the ethics committee for the second time in 1991, had recused himself from the bank investigation after acknowledging that he had overdrawn his account “on occasions.” But he had given no hint of the magnitude of the problem.

A leaked document showed that as many as 28 current members had $10,000-plus overdrafts at some point.

This was just in 1992. By 1994, Dan Rostenkowski, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was indicted for crimes associated with his privileged position as Chairman of the most powerful Congressional committee. Among them was obtaining at least $50,000 in cash from the House Post Office by disguising the transactions as stamp purchases.

Other Congressmen were also laundering cash payments to themselves through the House Post Office.

The indictment says Mr. Kolter illegally obtained more than $11,000 from 1985 through 1990 by disguising cash payments from the House post office as stamp purchases by his Congressional office.

Voters had finally had enough of the Washington elite Democrats. In 1994 Republicans won 54 House seats, flipping the House to the GOP for the first time in four decades. Republicans also picked up 8 seats in the Senate that year. Among the casualties that year – Speaker of the House Thomas Foley.

It’s starting to smell a lot like 1994.

posted by Open Blogger at 03:40 PM

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