Word: packwoods
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Before a hushed and somber Senate, a teary Bob Packwood told his colleagues, "It is my duty to resign." The Oregon Republican's decision followed a stunning and unanimous vote by the Ethics Committee to recommend his expulsion. The committee issued its final report on the case, which found that Packwood had engaged in sexual misconduct against nearly a score of women, improperly sought a job for his wife from lobbyists and altered pertinent evidence. What ensued was a gripping 24-hour endgame that saw Packwood first declaring his intention to fight on in the full Senate, then slowly realizing...
Like other Washington diarists, Bob Packwood no doubt wishes he had kept his thoughts to himself. And at the end of last week, so did his Senate Republican colleague Phil Gramm of Texas. A March 1992 entry by the Oregon Senator puts himself, Gramm--then head of the G.O.P. committee that finances Senate candidates--and two of their aides in a brief discussion about funneling an illegally large amount of national-party money to Packwood's re-election campaign. "And what was said in that room would be enough to convict us all of something," Packwood wrote to himself. "[Gramm...
Upon releasing the text of Packwood's diaries last week, Ethics Committee chairman Mitch McConnell and vice chairman Richard Bryan fired off a letter to Gramm asking him to explain the passage. Gramm replied that, yes, the National Republican Senate Committee did give the Oregon Republican Party $96,500 shortly after the Gramm-Packwood meeting took place. But Gramm insisted that the money was not used to support Packwood, to whom the N.R.S.C. could give only $17,500, but for legal party-building activities such as voter registration and getting out the vote. Moreover, he said...
...Packwood says the diary entry was wrong, that if Gramm said what was on the transcript, it was in jest. Still, in 1993 Packwood seemed quite serious when he erased the passage from the audiotape into which he had dictated it. In its place, he said, "There was the usual argument--I suppose a more polite word for it would be discussion--of how much money the national committee or senatorial committee was going to give the state party." How did the actual words come to light? Packwood kept a copy of the original, which he never altered...
Roth remains a creature of legislative habits too. As Bob Packwood's successor as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Roth is as hot to cut taxes as Packwood was cautious. Probably best known for his role in the deficit-ballooning, Kemp-Roth tax cut of 1981, which slashed rates 25% across the board, Roth says he is determined to stage an encore performance, planning to cut estate and capital-gains taxes and provide tax relief by expanding individual retirement accounts and creating a new tax credit for families with children. He also wants to overhaul the federal income...