Excerpted from the Rhinelander Daily News:
U.S. Rep. Mark Green, who has criticized Gov. Jim Doyle for taking contributions from businesses seeking contracts with the state, voted for key legislation in Congress backed by some of his major donors, an Associated Press review has found.The article continues:
Green, Doyle's Republican challenger, voted for legislation to make it harder to file for bankruptcy and for a bill to overhaul pension rules. In his last House campaign, 2004, Green received more than $40,000 from political action committees supporting one or both of these bills.
Those donations are among the $468,000 that the state Elections Board has ordered Green's gubernatorial campaign to give up because the PACs are not registered in Wisconsin. An appeal of that ruling is pending with the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Green also voted for two main pieces of legislation favored by drug companies: to create a new prescription drug plan under Medicare, and to ban reimportation of drugs from Canada. He received at least $38,000 from drug company and health company PACs supporting one or both of these bills in the 2004 campaign. All but $7,000 of that was from PACs not registered in Wisconsin.
Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, a government watchdog group, said that Green's voting pattern is symptomatic of what goes in Washington.
"It's no surprise in Washington that way too much is for sale," he said. "Votes are for sale, access is for sale, political power is for sale. These contributions are, you stick tokens into the token box, and out comes votes. And that's the way Washington works so often."
Donors to Green's last congressional campaign that backed the bankruptcy bill included PACs of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. ($8,000); the American Bankers Association ($6,000); and Credit Union National Association ($5,000), the AP review found. None of those PACs are registered in Wisconsin.
The bill, the most sweeping rewrite of U.S. bankruptcy laws in a quarter-century, had been pushed for eight years by banks and credit card companies. Green voted for an earlier version of the bill in 2003, in the same election cycle that he received those donations, and again last year, when the final version was signed into law.
Those donors also backed legislation overhauling pension and savings rules, giving companies seven years to shore up funding of their traditional pensions. Republicans said the legislation will help ensure that workers and retirees can count on their pensions; Democrats said the bill did too little to prevent employers from eliminating their defined-benefit plans.
Other Green donors backing this bill, or provisions of it, include the PACs of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors ($4,500) and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. ($8,942) _ neither of which are registered in Wisconsin. The House passed the bill 279-131 this year.
