Sen. Menendez case reinforces sleazy D.C.: Our view

The Editorial Board | USATODAY

The 68-page bribery indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., isn't the kind of reading typically required in civics classes. It should be.

The indictment, which details a pattern of favors Menendez did for a wealthy eye doctor who plied him with huge campaign contributions and private jet trips, paints a depressing picture of the sleazy side of Congress, where what's legal can be just as bad as what's illegal.

The crux of the criminal case against Menendez, only the 12th sitting senator in U.S. history to be indicted, is that he repeatedly used his influence to help wealthy Florida eye physician Salomon Melgen get visas for his girlfriends, protect his cargo security business in the Dominican Republic, and fight charges that he had overbilled Medicare by almost $9 million.

The doctor, in turn, allegedly bribed Menendez with expensive vacations and hundreds of thousands of dollars in political and legal defense fund contributions. Menendez, until recently the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, didn't report the gifts on his annual financial disclosures.

The senator's defense is that there was no bribery because the two have been friends for decades. Friends exchange gifts, and members of Congress routinely help people. The contributions? All legal. In a "news conference" after last week's indictment that was more of a pep rally for his supporters, Menendez denied wrongdoing and ludicrously implied he's a victim of government persecution.

Whether what the senator and the doctor did was criminal is for a court to decide. It's reasonable to wonder, though, whether Mendendez would have been quite as helpful to someone not as generous, especially to someone not even from New Jersey. And it's reasonable to wonder whether a senator with a greater sense of ethics and propriety would have so willingly created such a strong appearance of corruption.

Perhaps most eye-opening is the senator's years-long intervention for the doctor in a fight with Medicare. Melgen, who billed Medicare more than any other physician in the country in 2012, was found by an audit to have double- or triple-charged Medicare for single vials of an eye medicine. Safety rules said the vials should be used only once on one eye, but the doctor apparently used them multiple times, billing for the full vial each time. Medicare demanded reimbursement of close to $9 million.

Rather than stand up for taxpayers, the senator pressured Medicare officials and even argued the doctor's case personally with Kathleen Sebelius, then the secretary of Health and Human Services. To her credit, Sebelius told Menendez that Medicare was "not going to pay for the same vial of medicine twice," the indictment said.

Also disturbing, in part because it's so routine, was the effort by Menendez and his staff to extract political contributions from Melgen, who gave $600,000 in 2012 to a super PAC that steered the money toward Menendez's re-election.

Whether all this constitutes bribery is almost beside the point. Menendez's behavior reinforces the disturbing idea that a senator's influence can be bought and that Congress is for sale.

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