WWhen Covid-19 materialized as a serious threat, Richard Burr took action. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the North Carolina Republican had access to information about the pandemic that was not available to the American public. It unloaded hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stocks, including investments in the hospitality industry that were likely to be hit hard. Burr also contacted his brother-in-law, who made his own stock dump. After announcing the trades, Burr resigned as chairman of the intelligence panel. But it was not charged with a crime
For reporter Matt K Lewis, the story is part of a growing problem: the outsized role of wealth in Washington. The Daily Beast reporter he has written a book, Filthy Rich Politicians, that was published in the US this week. The extent of the problem is reflected in Lewis’s subtitle: The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals and Ruling Class Elites Cashing In on America.
“Rich people get elected, and people, when they’re elected, tend to get richer,” Lewis says. “Over time, it’s gotten worse.”
The narrative is bipartisan and includes progressives and populists from Squad members to electoral denialists.
“I think it’s just ironic that I wrote the book Filthy Rich Politicians at a time when all the politicians in America … one thing they almost all have in common is trying to position themselves as populist outsiders attacking the elites,” Lewis says.
He worries that politicians will shore up their finances during times of crisis, as Burr did during Covid.
“This, I think, is one of the most interesting and disturbing parts of the book. Everyone knows that politicians are rich and that some of what they do is sketchy. That, I think, most Americans don’t fully appreciate.”
Whether it’s about Covid or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lewis says, “These are the times when it really pays to have insider information.” He notes that the list of members of Congress who made bargain purchases of stocks before the Ukraine war included Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a Democrat, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a notorious far-right Republican.
The House of Representatives has become a flashpoint. In the lower house, where members are ostensibly closer to average Americans, incomes have risen sharply. The average member of Congress is now 12 times richer than the typical American household.
“In the last four decades, the gap has demonstrably widened between politicians and ‘We the People,'” says Lewis.
The causes range from insider trading to book deals to lobbying, family and friends getting in on the action through paid positions as campaign or office staff. Lewis cites numerous examples.
Matt Lewis. Photo: Center Street
Former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, have made millions from their stock trades, beating out top investors including Warren Buffett, while Nancy Pelosi. defended reform attempts.
In the annals of lobbying, there is Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana. On Capitol Hill, Tauzin helped then-President George W. Bush pass a Medicare bill. After his term, he became Tauzin a Big Pharma lobbyist.
Running for office is ideal for high net worth individuals. After all, it requires significant time off work and enough campaign funds to raise outside donations. It helps if you’re born into wealth, marry into it, or both.
Lewis comes from a different background, although he notes that his wife, Erin De Lullois a political consultant who has worked with some of the Republicans he criticizes as self-proclaimed populists, despite their Ivy League degrees.
Lewis’ father was a prison guard for three decades. The family never lacked food on the table, but Lewis got a rough introduction to the world at large when he made his own foray into campaign politics. A $1,000 check arrived late in his bank account, giving him an impromptu lesson in how much it costs to be poor in Washington.
Then, after becoming an opinion reporter at the Daily Caller, a conservative outlet, Lewis learned how rich people populate the D.C. landscape. One day, I was investigating a tip that a prominent liberal family was polluting the environment with their boating hobby. A family member argued otherwise, asking if Lewis knew anything about sailing or yachting. Lewis confessed no, asked his colleagues if they did and saw a sea of hands.
“For me, it was really surprising that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, so to speak,” he recalls.
Lewis planned his book as a survey of the 100 richest politicians in the United States. It evolved into a more substantive project, though the original idea is reflected in two lists in the appendix: the 25 richest members of Congress and the 10 richest presidents.
Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott, who before entering politics ran a company fined $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud – leads the congressional list with more than $200 million. First on the presidential list is Donald Trump, whose net worth exceeded $3.1 billion.
“Leaving money aside, [Trump] he changed the game in so many ways,” Lewis says. “He’ll never be the same, and not primarily because of his wealth — he’s such a different kind of human being and president than we’ve ever seen.”
Ironically, Trump’s populist denunciations of corruption and the DC “swamp” resonated strongly with voters.
Citing a 2015 Pew Research Center poll, Lewis says, “Three-quarters of Americans believed that politicians were primarily selfish and interested in feathering their own nest. I don’t think it’s any surprise that a year later, Donald Trump was elected. He talked about how the game was rigged, he talked about elites and the establishment and the need to drain the swamp.”
Joe Biden takes the stage with his wife Jill, sons Hunter and Beau and father Joe Biden Sr. at a campaign event in 1988. Photograph: AP
The Biden family has also done quite well financially, not just the president’s scandal-plagued son Hunter, but Hunter’s uncles Frank and James.
“There are many ways in which politicians and their families can enrich themselves, trading off the family relationship, the name and the access,” says Lewis.
mention a story in the Atlantic on Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential bid: The campaign brought in more than $11 million, with about 20% of that amount going to the candidate’s family or companies they worked for.
“You have an example of other people’s money, in this case campaign donors, being transferred to Joe Biden’s family,” Lewis says. “Given my druthers, I’d make it illegal.”
He offers more suggestions for limiting the influence of wealth in politics, including a counterintuitive proposal: increasing the salaries of Congress.
“I strongly believe in that,” says Lewis. “This will happen after we ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks, after we impose a 10-year moratorium on the revolving door of lobbying, after we ban the ability to make millions from a book deal while serving the country, after we ban the hiring of family members for congressional offices and campaigns.
“Living in Washington DC is not cheap. Once we’ve reduced the ability to enrich themselves through nefarious or certainly questionable means, it would further compensate them so they could focus on the real work.”
