US lawmaker reveals committee assignments in Congress are bought

A US Republican lawmaker has revealed an entrenched system of corruption in Congress, where lawmakers are expected to serve special interest lobby groups and prevented from passing legislation that benefits average Americans.

In a video clip that circulated online on Friday, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks further told his supporters that both dominant US political parties charge their members a whopping $1 million or more for chairmanships of committees and that only those receiving “contributions” from lobby groups can afford such placements.

“Special interest groups run Washington, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean literally,” Brooks emphasized while addressing his supporters at an event last month, video footage of which was shared on Friday by conservative pundit Lauren Windsor as cited in an RT report.

According to Brooks, lawmakers who want to be chairman of a major committee “have to purchase it.” Either the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) or Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) will charge members of Congress a fee to chair a committee for two years.

Those who can’t afford to cough up a million dollars take donations from special interest groups, and are then beholden to these lobbyists once in office, Brooks further underlined. 

“Now you understand how the public policy debate is so corrupted,” he added.

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The Republican lawmakers went on to elaborate that the fees vary depending on how important the committee is, pointing out that bidding for a top-tier chairmanship starts at $1 million.

One unnamed candidate running to lead the NRCC literally showed representatives “a brochure” of his prices, Brooks further asserted, explaining that the prospective NRCC chief had broken his pricing down into three tiers, and boasted that he would charge less than other candidates.

According to the report, party officials deny that payments are linked to committee assignments, and refer to this system as paying “dues,” a practice that has come under harsh criticism in the past.

“They told us right off the bat as soon as we get here, ‘These committees all have prices and don’t pick an expensive one if you can’t make the payments,’” Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky said in 2016, referring to the payments as “extortion” and refusing to pay up.

Massie further described in the same year how, earlier in his political career, a lobbyist from “the medical device sector” offered to pay for his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee, a powerful slot that would see the Kentucky Republican shape tax policy. The unspoken implication, Massie wrote, was that he would then owe the lobbyist his favor.

“It was one of the scummiest meetings I’ve ever been in,” Massie emphasized. “I left just reeling, thinking about the implications for how this place works, when you realize that the lobbyists pick who goes on which committee.”

Neither Brooks nor Massie represents the mainstream of the Republican Party, however. Brooks, who is currently running for the US Senate, is viewed as a “MAGA” candidate by establishment Republicans and has been sidelined by former US President Donald Trump, who withdrew his endorsement of the Alabama lawmaker last month due to his insistence that the GOP move past Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

Massie has also quarreled with Trump before, but has drawn particular ire from hawkish establishment Republicans in recent weeks over his refusal to back a resolution promising open-ended military aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, which he argued would hurt “innocent people in Russia.”

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