Intoxicated on fundraising

By Ruth Marcus
WashPost
Wednesday, June 2, 2010

"You don't have to drink. You just have to pay."

Has there ever been a better summary of how Washington works -- and the need for campaign finance reform -- than this line from a 2007 e-mail?

The context: An executive at Innovative Concepts, a small defense contractor, was balking at going to a wine-tasting fundraiser for Rep. Jim Moran. The Virginia Democrat sits on the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls defense spending -- and the executive's boss made clear that attendance had nothing to do with the quality of the cabernet.

Moran raked in almost $92,000 at the event, sponsored by the now-defunct lobbying firm PMA Group. And Innovative Concepts received an $800,000 earmark in the next defense spending bill.

It went almost unnoticed last week, but a plucky new outfit called the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) referred to the Justice Department a stack of such e-mails and other evidence collected in its investigation of the PMA Group.

(More here.)