Guilty Legislators To Lose Pensions

Guilty Legislators To Lose Pensions

Friday, Jan. 12, 2007
By AP/JIM ABRAMS

Members of Congress convicted of serious crimes would lose their taxpayer-paid pensions, sometimes totaling more than $100,000 a year, under a measure unanimously approved by the Senate Friday.

The 87-0 vote to deprive lawbreaking lawmakers of their retirement benefits was part of a comprehensive ethics and lobbying bill that the Senate has taken up as its first piece of legislation in the new Democratic-controlled Congress. "There's something that really grates in the notion that you can put the public's trust and the public's business up for sale and then walk away and have the people that you betrayed turn around and pay for you to be able to have a fat pension," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., author of the amendment.

Kerry said there were at least 20 lawmakers convicted of serious crimes receiving pensions, some as high as $125,000 a year. Currently, a lawmaker can lose his or her pension only if convicted of crimes such as treason or espionage. The Kerry provision would extend that to cases of bribery, conspiracy to defraud the United States and perjury.

Kerry said the measure was in part inspired by the case last year of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., who was sentenced to eight years in prison for accepting bribes from defense contractors.

The provision is not retroactive and would not affect Cunningham, who would be entitled to an initial pension of as much as $64,000, according to calculations by the National Taxpayers Union. "Given the momentum on the House side, this just might be the year that Congress purges one of its most brazen perks," said Pete Sepp of the NTU, which has led other advocacy groups in urging Congress to deny pensions to members convicted of crimes.

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