Jackie Clegg Dodd making big bucks … since marrying Senator Dodd

Making work pay … Washington DC style. My guess is this isn’t what Hope n Change was talking about. The Courant does the digging.

Every day we see more and more why people will spend so much money for a job that pays so little. Today’s Hartford Courant reports that Dodd’s wife, Jackie Clegg has seen her income soar since marrying the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. No … nothing illegal here on its surface, and in fact that is the problem. As the Courant points out, appointing the spouses or relatives of high powered Congress people to corporate boards or high paying government jobs is a “time honored tradition.”

Since the low-profile family wedding on a rise above the Connecticut River in 1999, Jackie M. Clegg Dodd’s income has quadrupled to the mid-six-figure range. All of the increase is due to her appointment as a highly compensated member of multiple corporate boards of directors.

Clegg Dodd, a former legislative aide and senior federal Export-Import Bank officer, was compensated at a rate of about $500,000 a year in 2007 and 2008 from seats on five corporate boards, according to the most recent filings by the companies to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

What struck as I read through the article was not so much her appointments to the boards … which come after her marriage to Dodd, but her qualifications. She lists her consulting firm as one of her qualifications but there apparently is no record of any clients in recent years.

But Clegg Dodd’s consulting firm has neither clients nor a current business phone listing. “There are no clients now and there have been no clients for three and a half years,” she said, responding to written questions.

Her only other qualifications appear to be her time as a legislative staffer on the banking committee and vice president for congressional affairs for the Export-Import Bank. These are fine indeed, but I would question whether they qualify a person to be the board member who overseas audits.

Charles Elson, who directs the corporate governance program at the
“You are held to a very high standard,” Elson said. “Basically, if you are on an audit committee you better have been an accountant.”

Still the one quote in the article that stood out for me and merely served to affirm what I have believed for so long is this one:

“In Washington, offering employment to the spouses and family members of politicians is a time-honored, if not so honorable, tradition,” said Sheila Krumholz of the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

It’s not illegal but perhaps as long as we are talking about tougher regulations on out of control greedy corporations these days, maybe now is the time for some tougher regulations on out of control “greedy” Congress people. Seems to me these folks, Dodd and the rest,  aren’t much different than the Wall Street executives they love to demonize. Washington insiders who game the system to their advantage. The difference of course is these folks have an affinity for spending our money and our children’s money while lining their pockets and presumably their children’s pockets as well. Come to think of it … maybe there isn’t a difference.

It just may be time for term limits. Now that’s a regulation you can count on.