But Why Did 94 House Democrats Change Their Votes on FISA?

In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for telecoms that assisted the NSA in illegal wiretapping.  Most of us have wondered what happened to change the minds of 94 Democrats.  What happened between June 20 and March 14 to change 94 Democratic hearts and minds?

The answer might well be simple:  money.  Could it be that simple?

MAPLight.org has published a breakdown of contributions received from Telco PACS by the 94 Dems who experienced the change of heart.  [Maplight.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Berkeley, California. Its search engine at MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between Money And Politics (MAP) via an unprecedented database of campaign contributions and legislative outcomes.']

Here’s the bottom line:

Verizon,  AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging:

$8,359  to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for Telcos (94 Dems)
$4,987 to each Democrat who remained opposed to immunity for  Telcos (116 Dems)

88 percent of the Dems who changed to supporting immunity (83 Dems
of the 94) received PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint
during the last three years (Jan. 2005-Mar. 2008).  ( MAPLight.org)

Of course the average amount received is a bit misleading.  A few of the very prominent Dems who changed their votes took a lot more than $8000.  According to this website,

Nancy Pelosi [CA], Speaker of the House, allegedly received $24,500.

Steny Hoyer [MD] allegedly received $29,000.

James Clyburn [SC] allegedly received $29,500. 

Rahm Emanuel [IL] allegedly received $28,000.

Frederick Boucher [VA] allegedly received $27,500.

Gregory Meeks [NY] allegedly received $26,000.

You can see the complete list here.

I guess with campaign finance laws in the state they’re in, we can’t expect them to turn down free money.  I would like to believe that there are other reasons why they supported the current incarnation of  FISA.  I wish I could think of some.

At Firedoglake, Eli writes:

You will not be surprised to hear that Steny, Rahm, and Nancy placed 2nd, 3rd, and 7th on the list of telecom $$$ recipients, but you may be surprised to learn that each one of them sold out the Constitution – and protected the telecoms from (at least) millions of dollars in losses – for less than $30,000 apiece.  Jeez, Steny should’ve said something if he needed cash – ActBlue could’ve matched that in a couple of hours.

Which is why none of this makes sense to me. This is not enough money to justify selling out your principles, assuming you have some.  At least when you do a deal with Satan, you ought to end up with something really good in exchange:  world domination or the Nobel Prize or the patent on a crude oil replacement that can be generated from landfill.  Something that will vitiate the damage to your soul.  There’s got to be more to it than a few thousand per changed vote.   Doesn’t there? Is it the promise of more? Or information unknown to the rest of us and rejected by a substantial number of Democrats who voted AGAINST the legislation?

As Digby says, this just shows that at least some of our Democratic legislators are willing ‘to sell out the constitution ‘for absolute chump change.’

The article duly notes that money isn’t the only reason legislators vote the way they do, but it really doesn’t get any more stark than this. Those who voted for it were, at least in some respect, either bribed or rewarded for voting to give their benefactors immunity for their possible crimes after the fact. There is no national security issue here. No overriding principle. It’s purely to shield corporations from liability for knowingly violating the constitution.  (Hullabaloo)

DownWithTyranny had already tried to follow some of the money trails before this piece came out. DWT states flatly:

A day or two ago I tried showing the correlation between Hoyer’s 7-figure PAC distribution operation– funneling corporate bribes to Democratic caucus members– and how willing the recipients were to stab their constituents in the back for Hoyer’s special interests pals. Huge correlation….

Overall, the biggest Democratic bribes (Republicans got even more, but who doesn’t expect them to take bribes; that’s why they’re in politics), over $10,000 each, went to 31 mostly conservative Democrats and Blue Dogs….

As the Executive Director of MAPLight.org says here, ‘"Campaign contributions bias our legislative system…  Simply put, candidates who take positions contrary to industry interests are unlikely to receive industry funds and thus have fewer resources for their election campaigns than those whose votes favor industry interests."’… 

DownWithTyranny further muses, ‘What I don’t understand is why they’re not required to recuse themselves from these kinds of votes when they get paid off like this. Oh, wait… I do know. They make their own rules of conduct…. This should be illegal.’ 

At Corrente, shystee has a very cynical explanation:  that progressives are very much mistaken when they assume that politicians are moved to act by the values that they share with their constituents.

Part of their job is to persuade voters that they share their concerns (whether they really do or not) in order to get elected.

The other (primary) part of their job is to find ways of complying with pressure from groups that have the power to keep them in or remove them from their job. 

Leverage, not ethics or values or character or morality, is what determines how politicians act. [emphasis in original]

And what is the consequence of all this? Or rather, what is the consequence specifically for the telecoms?

Retroactive immunity could squash about 40 lawsuits pending against telecommunication companies that helped the government monitor the telecommunications traffic of Americans without warrants. The telecom industry has lobbied hard to insure that the provision is included in\ the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act update Congress is currently considering.  (The Crypt)

The Democratic Caucus has a different spin.  According to Nick Pappas, its spokesman:

Many members of the caucus opposed the earlier version of this legislation and ultimately supported better legislation that was them product of bipartisan negotiations. Months of hard work, not campaign contributions, earned the support of many members.(The Crypt)

Of course, a number of  experts, including Jack Balkin and Jonathan Turley,  have pointed out that the Great Bipartisan version of FISA is not an improvement on anything that preceded it.    FISA already gave the executive branch worryingly broad surveillance powers. Now, not only is Telecom immunity a problem — it also alarmingly expands the surveillance powers of the executive branch. Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley called it an ‘evisceration of the fourth amendment.’   

So are certain of our Democratic representatives gullible morons who don’t understand the grave implications of their votes or did they find that they just didn’t have the spine to oppose Bush and the heart to oppose the telecoms after the telecoms enriched their campaigns?  Is any third explanation really possible?

UPDATED TO ADD: I am trusting and gullible myself, of course. And I want to be fair. Even when the hand-writing’s on the wall in plain English, I always try to find another possible interpretation. And I realize, as a commenter points out below, that POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC is a fallacy. There’s not necessarily a cause and effect connection here.

And I’d probably dismiss this from my mind if anyone, anywhere, could show me how this ‘compromise’ legislation is a ‘compromise.’ What, specifically, did they compromise? Show me the compromise. I want to know why they think this bill is better for the American people than what went before because I don’t really see it. Those scholars and constitutional lawyers whose opinions on these issues I’ve come to trust don’t seem to see it either.

The fact that a substantial number of Dems in the House continued to resist it, and that there’s a push in the Senate to repudiate it, seems to add weight to the inference that ‘bipartisan’ in this case doesn’t mean ‘compromise.’ The emphasis that Hoyer and others have placed on this word continues to trouble me.

If you are concerned about this and wish to take action, there’s still time. Call and ask your Senators to vote AGAINST Telecom immunity.  More at this link. 

CROSS-POSTED AT BUCK NAKED POLITICS