CURRENT UPDATES: August 11, 2000
For Immediate Release
Contacts: Bill Hartung, 212-229-5808 x106
hartung@newschool.edu
Steve Kent, 914-424-8382

BLUE DOGS, PORK AND "MORALITY":

The Arms Industry's Buyout of the Democratic Party

New York, August 11th - As Vice President Al Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman head to Los Angeles for next week's Democratic national convention, the issues of character and personal morality have taken center stage.

The conventional wisdom on Gore's selection of Lieberman as his running mate is that it was a bold stroke designed to distance the Democratic ticket from Bill Clinton's personal misbehavior in the Monica Lewinsky affair, conduct which was roundly condemned by Lieberman in a speech on the Senate floor last year. Further evidence of Gore's attempt to come across as the "squeaky clean" candidate was his decision to withdraw an invitation for Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) to speak at the convention after she refused to cancel a fundraiser for her Political Action Committee, Hispanic Unity 2000, which was to be held at Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner's Mansion.

"Gore's emphasis on personal morality and 'character' is all well and good," notes William D. Hartung, a Senior Fellow at the New York-based World Policy Institute. "But the real problem with the Democratic Party - and the Democratic ticket - is a failure of public ethics, not private morality," says Hartung.

Private Morality Versus Public Ethics: A Tale of Two Fundraisers

"Loretta Sanchez is being censured for holding a fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion, but no one in the Democratic Party hierarchy raises an eyebrow at the fact that Raytheon - a major weapons contractor with a multi-billion dollar stake in the National Missile Defense (NMD) system - co-hosted a fundraiser for Sanchez and her colleagues in the conservative 'Blue Dog' caucus on Santa Monica Pier a day before the Democratic National Convention kicks off. Gore and Lieberman are carefully attuned to even the slightest hint of personal impropriety, but they are politically tone deaf when it comes to the massive conflict of interest involved in their avid solicitation of funds from major weapon makers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin," Hartung asserts.

Joe Lieberman: 'No Bull, No Pork?'

Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman is so confident in his image as a straight shooter grounded in his strong Jewish faith that he has jokingly adopted the slogan, "no bull, no pork." But while his observation of the dietary laws may pass muster, Lieberman fails to consider the irony of his slogan when it comes to public policy. As the junior Senator from Connecticut he has been one of the most successful purveyors of military pork in the Congress. "Lieberman went to bat for the troubled F-22 combat aircraft - which at a cost of $200 million per copy is the most expensive fighter plane ever built - largely because the engines for the plane are built by a Connecticut-based contractor, the Pratt and Whitney unit of United Technologies," notes Hartung. "He was also one of the first Senate Democrats to join Thad Cochran and Trent Lott in supporting a costly and unworkable National Missile Defense scheme."

Lieberman's efforts on behalf of the weapons industry have not gone unrewarded. According to Federal Election Committee data processed by the Center for Responsive Politics, Lieberman has received over $96,000 in contributions from defense companies and their employees in the current election cycle. His second largest contributor overall -- with $33,000 in total contributions -- has been Connecticut-based arms maker United Technologies.

Blue Dogs and DLC: Will the Real Democrats Please Stand Up?

For the past five years, Joseph Lieberman has served as the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a conservative, pro-military current within the Democratic Party that helped catapult Bill Clinton and Al Gore onto the national political scene in the early 1990s. When he first came to the Senate, Lieberman received the support of Peace PAC, the political action committee of the pro-arms control Council for a Livable World. In his first year in office, Lieberman scored a 100% arms control voting record by CLW's assessment, but by the mid-1990s his rating had plunged to less than 25%, in large part due to his staunch support for the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict, his uncritical support for costly Cold War weapons systems, and his enthusiastic embrace of Republican-inspired missile defense schemes.

Meanwhile, the members of the 30-member "Blue Dog" caucus, which include armed services committee members Norman Sisisky of Virginia and Ellen Tauscher of California, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from defense contractors in the past decade. Conscious of this generous support from the weapons manufacturing sector, in the spring of 1999 the vast majority of the members of the caucus - 27 of 30 - voted in favor of deploying a National Missile Defense (NMD) system "as soon as technologically feasible."

One of the biggest soft money donors to Democratic Party committees during this cycle has been former Lockheed Martin board member and current CEO of Loral Space Bernard Schwartz, who has lavished over $1.1 million on the Democratic National Committee and Democratic congressional and senatorial committees since 1997.

"Between the Blue Dogs and the DLC clones, progressive legislators who support basic values like international cooperation and arms control have become an endangered species within the Democratic Party," notes Hartung. "Al Gore should stop worrying about creating the perception that he is 'soft on defense' - which is apparently a major factor in his support for a costly NMD system - and start worrying about the reality that he and his party have increasingly become 'soft on defense contractors,' pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into costly and dangerous programs like missile defense at the expense of arms control."

NOTE: THIS ADVISORY IS PART OF INSTITUTE'S 'PEDDLING ARMS, PEDDLING INFLUENCE" SERIES. TO SEE OTHER REPORTS IN THE SERIES AND ACCESS DAILY UPDATES DURING THE DURATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION, CHECK OUT OUR WEB SITE.

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