When Covid-19 materialized as a serious threat, Richard Burr took action. As chair of the Senate intelligence committee, the North Carolina Republican had access to information on the pandemic that was unavailable to the American public. He unloaded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stocks, including investments in the hospitality industry that was likely to be hard-hit. Burr also contacted his brother-in-law, who made his own stock dump. After the trades were publicized, Burr resigned as chair of the intelligence panel. But he was not charged with a crime.
For the reporter Matt K Lewis, the story is part of an ever-increasing problem: the outsized role of wealth in Washington. The Daily Beast journalist has written a book, Filthy Rich Politicians, that was published in the US this week. The extent of the problem is reflected by Lewis’s subtitle: The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling Class Elites Cashing in on America.
“Rich people get elected, and people, when elected, tend to get richer,” Lewis says. “Over time, it has gotten worse.”
The narrative is bipartisan and includes progressives and populists from members of the Squad to election deniers.
“I think it’s just an irony that I wrote the book Filthy Rich Politicians in a moment when all the politicians in America … one thing almost all have in common is trying to position themselves as being populist outsiders attacking elites,” Lewis says.
He is concerned by politicians bolstering their finances during moments of crisis, as Burr did during Covid.
“That, I think, is one of the most interesting and disturbing parts of the book. Everybody kind of knows politicians are rich and some of what they do is sketchy. This, I think, most Americans don’t fully appreciate.”
Whether regarding Covid or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lewis says, “These are the moments when it really pays off to have inside information.” He points out that the list of members of Congress who made advantageous stock purchases ahead of the Ukraine war included Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a Democrat, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a notorious hard-right Republican.
The House of Representatives has become a flashpoint. In the lower chamber, where members are ostensibly closer to average Americans, incomes have climbed quite high. The average member of Congress is now 12 times wealthier than the typical US household.
“In the last four decades, the gap has demonstrably widened between politicians and ‘We, the people,’” Lewis says.
Causes range from insider trading to book deals to lobbying, family members and friends getting in on the action through paid positions as campaign or office staffers. Lewis cites numerous examples.
The former Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, have netted millions from his stock deals, outperforming top investors including Warren Buffett while Nancy Pelosi fended off attempts at reform.
In the annals of lobbying, there is Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana. On Capitol Hill, Tauzin helped then-president George W Bush pass a Medicare bill. His term done, Tauzin became a lobbyist for big pharma.
Running for office is a perfect fit for high-net-worth individuals. After all, it requires significant time off from work and enough campaign funds to draw in outside donations. It helps if you’re born into wealth, marry into it – or both.
Lewis comes from a different background – though he notes that his wife, Erin DeLullo, is a political consultant who has worked with some of the Republicans he criticizes as self-proclaimed populists, despite their Ivy League degrees.
Lewis’s father was a prison guard for three decades. The family never lacked for food on the table, but Lewis got a rude introduction to the wider world when he made his own foray into campaign politics. A $1,000 check was late to his bank account, giving him an impromptu lesson in how much it costs to be poor in Washington.
Then, after becoming an opinion journalist at the Daily Caller, a conservative site, Lewis learned how rich people populate the DC landscape. One day, he was researching a tip that a prominent liberal family was polluting the environment with its penchant for boating. A family member contended otherwise, asking if Lewis knew anything about sailing or yachting. Lewis confessed he did not, asked his colleagues if they did, and saw a sea of hands.
“For me, it really hit home that I wasn’t in Kansas any more, so to speak,” he recalls.
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Lewis planned his book as a survey of America’s 100 richest politicians. It evolved into a more substantive project, although the original idea is reflected by two lists in the appendix: the 25 wealthiest members of Congress and the 10 richest presidents.
The Florida Republican senator Rick Scott – who before entering politics ran a company fined $1.7bn for Medicare fraud – leads the congressional list with more than $200m. Top of the presidential list is Donald Trump, whose net worth topped out at $3.1bn.
“Putting money aside, [Trump] changed the game in many ways,” Lewis says. “It’s never going to be the same, and not primarily because of his wealth – he’s such a different type of human being and president than we’ve ever seen.”
Ironically, Trump’s populist denunciations of corruption and the DC “swamp” resonated strongly with voters.
Citing a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, Lewis says: “Three-quarters of Americans believed politicians were primarily selfish and interested in feathering their own nest. I don’t think it’s any surprise that one year later, Donald Trump was elected. He talked about how the game was rigged, he talked about elites and the establishment and the need to drain the swamp.”
The Biden family has also been doing quite well for itself financially – not just the president’s scandal-embroiled son, Hunter, but Hunter’s uncles Frank and James.
“There are a lot of ways politicians and their families can become enriched, sort of trading off the family relationship, name and access,” Lewis says.
He mentions a story in the Atlantic about Joe Biden’s 1988 run for president: the campaign took in over $11m, with about 20% of that amount going either to the candidate’s family or to companies they worked for.
“You have an example of other people’s money – in this case, campaign donors – being transferred to the family of Joe Biden,” Lewis says. “Given my druthers, I would make this illegal.”
He offers more suggestions for limiting the influence of wealth in politics, including a counterintuitive proposal: raise congressional salaries.
“I firmly believe in it,” Lewis says. “This will happen after we ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks, after we impose a 10-year moratorium on the revolving door of lobbying, after we ban the ability to make millions from a book deal while you’re serving the country, after we ban the hiring of family for congressional offices and campaigns.
“It’s not cheap to live in Washington DC. Once we have curtailed the ability to get rich from nefarious or certainly questionable means, I would compensate them even more so they could focus on the actual job.”
Filthy Rich Politicians is published in the US by Center Street
