Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson handed out 23 illegal scholarships

It certainly pays to be a family member or friend of Texas Congressman Eddie Bernice Johnson. Yesterday it was learned that she had steered six scholarships towards family members and friends, but today that number has jumped to 23.

U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson awarded eight scholarships last year to her grandsons and a top aide’s children – bringing to 23 the number of awards she handed out since 2005 in violation of Congressional Black Caucus Foundation eligibility rules.

Since 2005, she has handed out 23 scholarships that violated the Congressional Black Caucus’s anti-nepotism rule and she still is trying to tell us that she didn’t realize that she was doing anything wrong?

I did not intentionally mean to violate any rules in the process,”

I have a major problem with this statement because even if this was not a strict rule–which it was–there is still a major ethics problem here. The mere fact that this woman did not have a problem–and found nothing wrong with–using her position to create a slush fund of sorts in order to hand out money to friends and family shows a real lack of integrity.

She is now claiming that she will repay the money by the end of the week, but that simply is not good enough. She abused her position of authority and for that she must step down. This is exactly the type of behavior that people are sick and tired of.

She had to have known that taking taxpayer dollars and spending it on family members was wrong but she did it anyway; if she didn’t realize that this wasn’t proper behavior, that alone should disqualify her from office because she apparently has a problem determining right from wrong.