I spent 14 years in the NFL. Here’s why I’m quitting Congress after four. by Jon Runyan

Fourth and So Long
By REP. JON RUNYAN
January 24, 2014


People are constantly asking me how similar politics is to pro football. I spent more than a decade in the NFL before spending the past three years in Congress, and the truth of the matter is the two occupations are more alike than not. Both are contact sports, and you’d better be ready to play when you step onto either field. While it’s tough to say which is more difficult, there have been plenty of times in the past few years when I’ve thought politics was harder. At least in football you know exactly who your opponent is.

When I decided to run for Congress, I saw it as an opportunity to serve the South Jersey community that had become my home after signing to play for the Philadelphia Eagles. I didn’t choose public service out of political ambition or a desire for power, and never once thought of making a career of it. For me, it was simply a chance to give back to my community and the country.

There is no doubt that I am enormously proud of the work I’ve done on behalf of my constituents. We’ve got more than 60,000 veterans and their families in the 3rd District of New Jersey — and not a day has gone by that I wasn’t fighting for them. South Jersey is home to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, one of the finest military installations in the world, and it was my honor to represent the base and all of those who serve there. That’s the stuff that matters to me.

But my frustrations with the ways of Washington have been well-documented. Of course, the things that have bothered me most — the petty ambitions and the misplaced priorities — have frustrated many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Believe it or not, there are members of Congress who actually want to govern and get stuff done. Unfortunately, there are others whose agendas and strategies serve to advance their own interests and expand their donor base.

I guess, to use another football analogy, there’s no substitute for teamwork — and in Washington, I saw too little of it. I got myself into some trouble very early on when my comments in a closed meeting about the importance of working toward a common goal were leaked before the meeting even adjourned! At the time, we were attempting to pass a spending package to fund the government, and I had noticed that individual personalities and self-serving strategies had become the focus of our attention — a classic example, you could say, of guys playing to get to the Pro Bowl rather than the Super Bowl. In the months and years that followed, I watched repeated marches right up to the very edge of fiscal calamity, even the shutdown of the federal government — all of it leaving me quite frustrated and my constituents scratching their heads in bewilderment. Things seemed dysfunctional, and despite all the accomplished people around me, too often we accomplished less than I would have liked.

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It was Hurricane Sandy that not only decimated parts of my district but pushed me to the brink of my frustrations with the game of politics. In the fall of 2012, in the immediate wake of Sandy, I suspended my congressional reelection campaign and got to work helping those folks in South Jersey whose lives had been turned upside down by the storm. (My political opponent, well, she ran a radio ad comparing my record to that of the hurricane.)

I returned to Washington ready to fight for emergency aid to help the towns affected in my state and throughout the Northeast rebuild. Governors from both political parties joined ranks and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) and President Barack Obama famously teamed up to “restore the shore.” Republicans and Democrats from the impacted areas worked together in the House on a clean package to get immediate relief to our constituents.

And what did we get out of the Senate? A bill laden with sweeteners intended to secure yes votes from senators whose states weren’t even impacted by the storm. Things like money for fisheries in Alaska. Pretty soon opposition to the bill developed even as millions of Americans sifted through what remained of their possessions — those who were lucky enough to have something to sift through, that is.

It took weeks for a relief package to reach the floor of the House of Representatives. Even when it was pork-free, that bill garnered 180 “no” votes — including 179 members of my own party. Many of these members had previously requested aid for their own districts following other natural disasters. I actually carried the list of those members in my lapel pocket for weeks following that vote.

I can’t really pinpoint a specific moment when I made the decision not to seek a third term in Congress. It was more like a series of gut-check moments. Like on the third day of a seven-day family reunion vacation — I was leaving the next day to return to Washington — when my youngest daughter sat on the end of my bed and made it very clear to me she did not want me to go back, ever. A month before that, I was at the Detroit airport after dropping my son off at football camp at the University of Michigan. I was headed back to D.C. when I took the call from the head football coach at Michigan (my own alma mater), letting me know that my son was being offered a scholarship to play ball there. I missed the first plane that day to take the phone call, but I really missed being with my son and sharing that moment that you get once in a lifetime.

In each of these moments, I was reminded of a promise I made to myself while still playing football, that once I retired, I would be there for my kids. It became clear to me that there was no way I could do both. I came to Washington to serve my constituents, and I gave it my all. I’m grateful for the trust that my constituents in the 3rd District placed in me, and the opportunity they gave me to serve. Now it’s time for me to take my place on the sidelines.

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Rep. Jon Runyan has represented New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District since 2011 and previously played 14 seasons as a Pro Bowl offensive tackle in the NFL.

Of Pork and Pretend Ethics on Capitol Hill

The Eruption of Corruption Will Continue

By WINSLOW T. WHEELER

Last week there was a flurry of pretend ethics on Capitol Hill. The subject matter was eliminating earmarks (pork) in spending bills. Some outside observers were foolish enough to take seriously the protestations from Democrats and Republicans that they would reduce the torrent of pork on Capitol Hill. Others, some of them the elite prognosticators of must-read newspapers, opined that it was all an ignorable tempest in a teapot; not to be given "a disproportionate amount of attention" opined one Congress-gazing Pooh-Bah on a national radio interview show.

Far worse than the wishful thinkers expecting self-reform from either party in our current political system are those in a position to influence but fail to appreciate how thoroughly debased our political system has become. To understand why the latter are so misleading, we must first understand why the former are so foolish.

The Democrats were first out of the box proclaiming their earmark reform. No more would "for-profit entities," also known as corporations, get earmarks. This, they tried to imply, would obviate corrupt campaign contributions to members of Congress in return for earmarks -- contributions that Congress' lawmaking authority has made legal for time immemorial.

There were a few teeny-weeny little loopholes they forgot to mention. There was no definition of "for profit entities," which makes countless corporations eligible to receive earmarks. For example, of the 1,720 earmarks counted by Taxpayers for Common Sense in the 2010 Pentagon spending bill, all but a tiny handful will end up in the coffers of for-profit corporations, but because the nature of the recipient is left obscure in the text of public documents written by Congress many of them will not be affected.

That, however, was an insufficient loophole for the Democrats. The for-profit "ban" was announced only by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. The Senate Democrats, led by mega-porker Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, declined to participate. The separate announcements were stage managed to appear disconnected, but anyone who thinks they weren't pre-coordinated hasn't spent much time working on Capitol Hill, or even observing it closely. Under this new double-faced regime, any House Democrat looking to grease him- or her-self up with a too-obvious earmark for a business won't write to the House Appropriations Committee for an earmark, they'll write to their state's senators. The senators, from either party, will surely be happy to jump into the sleaze, provided - of course - there will be a campaign contribution for them, as well as the House member.

The Republicans were a little smarter, but not much. Hard upon the House Democrats' transparently limited "ban," House Minority Leader John Boehner announced "an immediate, unilateral moratorium on all [yes, all] earmarks, including tax and tariff-related earmarks." Wow! Pretty good. But as phony as a three dollar bill.

Not only did Boehner drop the bit about "tax and tariff-related earmarks" within twenty four hours, he also kept open the Senate escape valve - and more. His moratorium was good only until the end of the year, but more importantly, Boehner also knew no one would have to wait that long.

When the Democrats sponsored a short lived moratorium on earmarks in 2007 - just after Nancy Pelosi took over and announced "the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history" -- two new porking enterprises were started. The Democrats added a few "non-earmark earmarks" to the earmark-banned legislation in question, but more importantly, the electronic age blossomed for Capitol Hill porkers. In something called "phone-marking," the members and staffers simply phoned, faxed, and e-mailed the earmarks directly to executive branch agencies, simultaneously making it clear -- of course -- that failure to spend appropriated sums as indicated will result in any of a variety of forms of retaliation -- just as they do in the text of appropriations committee reports with routine earmarks.

The Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill actually barring themselves from the constituent- and campaign donator-pandering behavior of porking is about as likely as their denying themselves food and air. They know of no way to survive without it.

Which brings us to the Pooh-Bahs. Imagine a newspaper with a Congress expert so unknowing of the implications of the earmarking system that he deems it receiving a "disproportionate amount of attention." The context of that assertion was that earmarks account for less than one percent of all federal spending -- according to the conventional wisdom. Nothing could be more incorrect.

The earmarking system requires its congressional protagonists, and you, to be quite clueless about what they are doing. This reveals itself in the so-called "sunshine" that pretend reformers like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and "Pork Buster" John McCain say they have forced onto the system. They required revelations of the nature and sponsors of earmarks, but note who identifies it all. The explanations are written by the congressional advocates of the earmarks, not any objective entity like the Government Accountability Office, and the lists of earmarks are compiled by the appropriations committees. We rely on the self-interested parties put the sunshine on their own behavior.

Moreover, the congressional advocates keep themselves dependent on the corporate beneficiaries of earmarks for the information they write in their "revelations." For example, we hear porkers for items like the underperforming, over-cost C-17 transport aircraft describe it straight out of the Boeing brochure as "the reliable, easy-to-land on short runways, load 'em up, get 'em out, cheaper-to-fly C-17." (To some of its crews, the C-17 is known as "FRED," the last three words of which are "ridiculous economic disaster.")

To appreciate fully how rotten and pervasive is the earmarking system, go to any so-called oversight hearing of the House or Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees. First, you will hear question after question designed to elicit favorable testimony from Pentagon witnesses about one pork project after another. Second, when the subject is not pork, you will be exposed to a thorough lesson on how not to get to the bottom of any anything. Questions will be read off; after a non-answer there will be no follow up, and everyone will leave the hearing happy.

In the few instances when I have observed real oversight on Capitol Hill during my 31 year career there, I have never seen an executive branch witness leave happy. Being exposed for screwing things up, ignoring statutes, wasting money, and worse does not make for a witness' happy face on the way out. The pork system, however, requires both the member of Congress and the witness to be pals, agreed that the new pork morsel is just a wonderful idea, exactly what the troops need. Ripping the guts out of a Pentagon witness does not exactly grease the pork skids.

Oversight and pork don't go together. As a result, programs costing the taxpayers scores of billions pass through the system with nothing more than a congressional stroking. The pork system is responsible for piles more than "only a fraction of a percent of overall spending," as the Pooh-Bah opined on the radio.

The porkers on Capitol Hill are not going to reform themselves unless and until they get some adult supervision. That requires a higher standard than we now have for those assigned to watch over the political system and who purport to inform us what is going on and what is important.