Who Picks Up the $1 Million Tab
 So Congressmen Can Get the Luxury Treatment?

 House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas has collected more than $1 million
from willing corporations to give members of Congress the royal treatment.
 
 P H I L A D E L P H I A,  July 31 — It was a multimillionaire’s
 traffic jam as private jets brought America’s corporate elite and their
 politician friends to what will be the most unabashedly lavish political
 convention ever.
 
    “There is no sense of shame,” says Scott Harshbarger
 of Common Cause, a citizen watchdog group that opposes special interest
 politics. “No sense of outrage.”
      Behind it all are millions of dollars in mostly
 secret, but entirely legal, corporate money to pay for the wining and dining
 of a privileged and powerful few.
      “We don’t want the press anywhere near us,” says one GOP official.
      Republican officials actually shut down one entire
 public pier during last night’s fireworks display so that big money
 contributors could be entertained in private on a l68-foot yacht provided by
 the Amway Corporation.
      Philadelphia residents were told to go elsewhere, which didn’t settle well.
      “I think it’s wrong for us to be shut out because we’re Philadelphia, too,” one resident says.

 It’s all about access and influence and no one is more adept at brokering it
 than House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, one of the three most powerful
 leaders in the House, who has collected more than $1 million from willing
 corporations to give members of Congress the royal treatment at this convention.
      “I’ve been going to Republican conventions since 1984,” says Sen. John McCain.
“I’ve never heard of such lavish treatment for members of Congress before.”
      DeLay has set up a fleet of some 100 limousines available around the clock
for members of Congress, as well as a private train with an open bar parked on
a stretch of specially laid track near the convention site.

      This morning, the DeLay luxury treatment included a
 round of golf at a private club, with more parties to come this week.
      All invitation only and no cameras allowed.
      “You will be arrested unless you take your cameras and leave,” warned one DeLay aide.

 The Congressmen get treated like kings, the corporations get the access they
 want, and they all have Tom DeLay to thank for it.
      When asked the names of these corporations, DeLay
 answered, “There’s so many, I can’t even start.”
      And under a loophole in the law, the source of the
 millions of dollars in corporate money DeLay is using to pay for everything
 can be kept secret.
      DeLay’s office says they will never reveal those names because they don’t have to.
      This royal treatment is possible because members of
 Congress voted themselves a special exemption for the conventions.
      At all other times, the wining and dining and luxury
 gifts from secret corporate money would be absolutely illegal.