Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) lives rent-free in a million-dollar luxury home, and one watchdog group wants the GOP-controlled Senate to look into his cozy situation as a possible ethics violation.
"The senator hasn’t paid a penny out of his own pocket to live there," Andrew Kerr reported yesterday for the Washington Free Beacon, "because the church where he serves as a part-time pastor is footing the bill. "Warnock’s lavish DeKalb County home came equipped with a plethora of luxury accommodations, including a 100-bottle wine fridge, a Bluetooth-enabled cooking range, and remote-controlled privacy curtains."
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) filed a complaint this week claiming that "Warnock’s free luxury housing arrangement likely violates the Ethics in Government Act."
Possible sanctions include "public reprimand, fines, or censure," which probably doesn't have Warnock losing any sleep at night in his luxury bed.
As I keep reminding people, the real scandal isn't the ethics violations that congresscritters get away with, but what's allowed by the ethics rules they write for themselves. In other words, I'm not expecting much, if anything, to develop from FACT's complaint.
To be fair, a million-dollar home ain't what it used to be. You hardly have to be in the nicest part of town anymore to find one million-dollar home after another. And if you head down to Best Buy today, you might have a hard time finding a cooktop that doesn't have Bluetooth.
But even if things like remote-controlled privacy curtains aren't as exclusive as they once were, getting them on someone else's dime certainly lends an aristocratic charm that clashes with Thomas Jefferson's "republican simplicity."
Here's the thing: a million-dollar home with a hundred-bottle wine fridge is out of reach for most of Warnock's constituents and for his part-time flock, too. Which is fine, I suppose, since congresscritters earn a comfortable, if not exactly extravagant, low six-figure salary. What isn't so fine is that Warnock, by grace of his position as a representative of the people, doesn't have to pay for what his constituents can only dream of.
That's hardly representative of the people, is it?
Getting elected to Congress — particularly the Senate, where expensive, statewide elections forge incumbency into an almost immovable object — is a ticket to the good life, paid for by others. Warnock's nice house is paid for by his congregation. His steakhouse dinners are paid for by lobbyists. His travel is paid for by you and me. His financial gains (and I'm making an informed guess here) are likely "earned" by having insider knowledge unavailable to the typical investor.
But I'm only picking on Warnock because he's the latest example. If there's just one of these 538 jokers who didn't get their standard of living elevated the day they got elected, I'd like to know who they are so I can single them out for praise.
I'm not kidding about that. As fun as it is writing up one grifting fraudster after another, being able just once to highlight an ethical congresscritter might be a welcome change from more of the grifting same.
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