Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last week called Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan “one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington.” Reid resorted to name-calling because he apparently felt that Greenspan should have focused on deficits, not personal accounts for Social Security, in his recent testimony before Congress. So we have the specter of Greenspan — who as Chairman of the National Commission on Social Security Reform from 1981 to 1983 has been thinking about Social Security for over twenty years — being called a hack by an unusually dirty Senator. Is that just more name calling? Two years ago the Los Angeles Times — yes, the reliably Democratic LA Times — profiled Reid and reported:

“What Reid did not explain was that the bill (a purported environmental protection measure) promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms, federal lobbyist reports show.”

and further on, concerning lobbyist payments to congressional relatives:

“… Harry Reid is in a class by himself. One of his sons and his son-in-law lobby in Washington for companies, trade groups and municipalities seeking Reid’s help in the Senate. A second son has lobbied in Nevada for some of those same interests, and a third has represented a couple of them as a litigator. In the last four years alone, their firms have collected more than $2 million in lobbying fees from special interests that were represented by the kids and helped by the senator in Washington. So pervasive are the ties among Reid, members of his family and Nevada’s leading industries and institutions that it’s difficult to find a significant field in which such a relationship does not exist.”

The entire article is damning.

Who’s the hack?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 8th, 2005 at 1:48 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, Nemesises ... Nemesi?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.