Getting Lipinski's message out cost taxpayers $230K

As a freshman congressman, Daniel Lipinski wanted to ensure constituents knew what he was doing, but he rarely got mentioned in Chicago news stories. So he spent $230,000 in taxpayers' money to get his message across.

The Illinois Democrat spent more than any other member of the state's congressional delegation on mailings to constituents during 2005-2006 through the use of ''franking'' privileges.

Federal law grants the privilege to members of Congress, allowing them to spend money from their office budget on postage-free mailings to constituents -- often newsletters and brochures extolling the lawmakers' own virtues. ''I continue to be a leader in Washington introducing and passing legislation to help improve your everyday lives,'' Lipinski told constituents in one flier.

Lipinski might have been the biggest spender in Illinois' House delegation during 2005-2006, but he was far from alone. The 19 members spent a total of $1.85 million by using franking privileges.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a North Side, was second, spending $215,000. Rep. Jerry Weller, a Morris Republican, was a distant third with $164,000 in expenses.

Lipinski, a former University of Tennessee professor who wrote a book entitled Congressional Communications, says he used the mailings appropriately.

He filled their mailboxes with newsletters, invitations to town meetings, postcards announcing seminars on Medicare and letters on such topics as veterans' issues.

Unlike many colleagues, Lipinski does not leave the work of putting together the newsletters to others. He stays up late doing it himself.

“’I continue to be a leader in Washington introducing and passing legislation to help improve your everyday lives...”

Translation: “ I continue to be a little weasel who found the one place and one ‘career’ in life in which I could be ‘special’. Being ‘special’ is important to me, and I am so convinced that I am ‘special’ that I actually believe you need me to ‘introduce and pass legislation to help improve your everyday lives’.”

Politicians are an amusingly pitiful lot. We need absolute career term limits. Period. No one should be able to hold elected office more than 16 years in total (counting any and every elected federal office you’ve ever held). That’s four general terms you can divide into whatever different offices you want to serve in, and should be enough for anyone. Some will say that this doesn’t allow enough government ‘experience’ to season people for positions like the Presidency. I absolutely disagree. I have absolutely no doubt that there are many people out there who could be great Presidents that have never held any political office. It’s about courage, vision, ethics, and an ability to think outside the box of your own world view that makes a President, or any effective office holder for that matter.

It’s one way to bash the current political class. The MSM, while applauding the legislation which criminalizes raising money for political speech (which increases the value of the newspaper and TV news-script writer’s editorial pen, exempt from these sanctions) likes to harp on this particular boondoggle:

http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_ColumnistArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173351512839
Thursday, June 7, 2007
So What?
Winston-Salem Journal

Fifth District Congresswoman Virginia Foxx has long sold herself to voters as a fiscal conservative who is tight with the taxpayers’ dollars.

But in marketing herself during her first term, Foxx was awfully liberal with her use of taxpayers’ money. Foxx, a Republican, spent $326,642 of taxpayer money to send more than 1.6 million pieces of mail to her constituents during 2005-06.

That means that Foxx considerably outspent the other 12 members of North Carolina’s U.S. House delegation on mailings, and spent almost seven times as much as the average member of Congress.

And, when asked about the expenditures by the Journal’s Mary Shaffrey, Foxx showed that she’s adopted the Washington establishment’s arrogance when it comes to spending public money: “So what?” she said.

So what? In the real world, $326,642 is a lot of money, even if it isn’t in Washington.

So what? Greensboro’s Republican congressman, Howard Coble, who doesn’t spend public money for the kind of blanket mailings for which Foxx has now developed a penchant, will explain. “It’s fiscally irresponsible, and much abuse results from it ... and the taxpayers ultimately pay the price,” Coble said of free-mailing privileges for congressmen.

Let’s put Foxx’s mail habits in context. The National Taxpayers Union, which opposes the free mail privileges, says that only eight members of the House sent out more than 800,000 pieces of mail last year. And Foxx sent out twice that many.

It’s obvious, here, that Foxx had taxpayers underwrite her first bid for re-election. With 1.6 million free campaign brochures delivered to constituents, Foxx had a big advantage over her challenger last fall. Such a big advantage, it turns out, that she was sending money she raised from her supporters to other Republican congressional candidates.

That’s a neat little shift of campaign-finance responsibilities: Taxpayers pay for her campaign literature while she pays for that of other candidates in other states.

The free mail privilege for bulk mailings should be stopped. The budgets for senators and representatives should, of course, include postage for writing to individual constituents. Mass mailings, however, are nothing more than public campaign financing for incumbents.

Foxx should use e-mail to communicate with her constituents. Or, when she wants to send out campaign brochures, she should use the money she’s been sending to other congressional candidates.

Whatever course she takes, she should just stop spending taxpayer money for political campaigning.

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