Bob Packwood hailed for tax revamp, scandal sidestepped
What happens when a formerly disgraced senator is called as an expert at his old committee? Nobody mentions it. Story Continued Below Thatâs what happened on Tuesday, when former Senate Finance Chairman Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) came to his old stomping ground to talk about how he helped overhaul the tax code in 1986. âWe are trying to learn everything we can about 1986 and how they did it and he was a tremendous leader at that time,â said Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) as he entered the hearing room. âI believe in redemption. I believe that you donât judge people for mistakes made in the past, you judge them for what they are today and frankly he did a terrific job of working on tax reform.â But between 1986 and today, Packwood became persona non grata in the Senate. In 1995 the Ethics Committee, then chaired by current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), voted to recommend the venerated Packwood be expelled after considering more than 10,000 pages of evidence and allegations from at least 17 women that the former Finance chairman had forcibly kissed, groped or otherwise harassed them. For his part, Packwood said it felt good to be back. âIt seemed like any other hearing that I participated in,â he said after the hearing, when asked if he thought he was treated well. He said it was his first time to be asked to the Senate to testify. He works now as a lobbyist and said he talks to several members of the committee lobbying for a major Medicare provider. The panel also has oversight over health issues. After the controversy, Packwood, now 82, has been used as shorthand for a Washington culture where harassment was accepted and ignored. Just last year McConnell used the case against Packwood to defend his record for women in the Senate. âThe chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a member of my party, had a case before the Senate Ethics Committee with regard to sexual harassment. In those days 20 years ago much of this was never taken seriously by anyone,â McConnell said at the time. âAfter investigating the case and bringing together all of the evidence, I moved to expel him from the Senate. And with the Senate on the verge of expelling him, he decided to resign.â McConnell used his vote on Packwood as evidence there was no such thing as a Republican war on women. The choice to call him as an expert Tuesday reopened that old fight. Jess McIntosh, vice president of communications for EMILYâs list, a fundraising organization for female Democrats, suggested that the choice to celebrate Packwood in the committee is part of the same gender-deaf culture that led Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to shush a female reporter during a televised interview. âSo Rand Paul wants the woman interviewing him to calm down and shhh, but heâs going to sit with his colleagues and listen attentively to Bob Packwood,â McIntosh said in an email. â2015 is off to an awesome start for Senate Republicans.â Packwood did little to dispel that message, at one point referring to the Senate as âa small fraternity.â The sex scandal that ended Packwoodâs career and became a parable on the campaign trail was dismissed as an unrelated, unfair question on Tuesday. Inside the Finance Committee, Packwood wasnât a man discredited; he was once again an expert and political genius. Packwood, who read journal entries from 1986 as part of his testimony, gave members personal advice on the dangers and politics of reform. He broke down the challenges of a value added tax and the need to rebuff special interests in the name of a simpler, fairer tax code. Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), who served with Packwood on the committee, said thatâs exactly how it should be. People should be judged on what they accomplished in government, not on the foibles of their personal lives, he said in an interview. Every few years Washington is forced to decide how to assess the careers and lives of revered legislators whose personal lives have been marred by scandal. Simpson said if you canât divide the two, youâd never learn important lessons. âIf thatâs the case we never should have listened to anything that Ted Kennedy said,â he said. âForget Clinton, forget the people, whatever theyâve done before, what does that have to do with their brains and their intellect?â It was a message shared by Republicans on the committee. âThatâs got nothing to do with it,â said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who served on the committee under Packwood. âWeâve brought in people from prison to testify; heâs never been to prison.â Grassley, like most other Republicans on the panel, said Packwood had experience to share and they didnât see how his conduct had any bearing on the conversation. âEverybody makes mistakes, some people make bad mistakes, some people recover from them, some people donât; it depends on how they handle themselves after the mistake,â said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). âI know of no reason why he shouldnât be testifying this morning on taxes and the â86 tax act.â The question wasnât so easy for Democrats. Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the committee and Packwoodâs successor in Oregon after his resignation, would not address the question directly; he only made clear that Packwood wasnât his choice. âSen. [Bill] Bradley was our witness,â Wyden said. âThe Republicans chose Sen. Packwood and the two are going to talk about bipartisanship.â Sen. Debbie Stabenow, (D-Mich.), one of only two women on the committee, would only say she was surprised. âI think it was an unusual choice,â she said. âI wasnât serving when he was here but I was surprised.â Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who served on the Ethics Committee during the 1995 investigation, joked that as long as he wasnât called to testify about âan internship programâ it wasnât her business. âIâll leave that to the Finance Committee, but it would not have been my first choice,â she said. âHe was expelled from the Senate for conduct unbecoming of a senator involving underage girls.â