
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 29, 1990                   TAG: 9006290148
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

GIFTS, S&L CRISIS TIED

Common Cause, the political advocacy group that has been pushing for campaign finance reform, said Thursday that savings and loan interests contributed more than $11 million to members of Congress during the 1980s and that lawmakers on the House and Senate Banking Committees got the bulk of the contributions.

The study by Common Cause, one of the most thorough on the issue, touches a sensitive political nerve because it blames political contributions for delaying action in Congress to address the industry's problems before they reached mammoth proportions.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause, said the contributions "contributed to the worst financial scandal in American history, and yet members of Congress have done nothing to change the corrupt campaign finance system that allowed it to happen."

The study found that Sen. Pete Wilson, R-Calif., who is running for governor, received the most of any senator. He accepted $243,334 during the decade.

He was followed by Donald W. Riegle, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee; Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee; Alan Cranston, D-Calif., the No. 2 ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y. Their share of contributions ranged from $200,900 to $88,235.

Riegle and Cranston, along with three other senators, Dennis DeConcini, Democrat of Arizona; John McCain, R-Ariz., and John Glenn, D-Ohio, are under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee for attempting to intervene with federal regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr. and his Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.

In all, the five senators received more than $1 million in political contributions from Keating, his family and associates.

In the House, the study found that six lawmakers from California, which has the largest savings institutions in the country, led the list with contributions ranging from $61,000 to $85,000.i

Four of the six are members of the House Banking Committee.

The Common Cause study comes as the question of who is to blame for the savings and loan scandal is becoming a heated political issue, certain to be central in this fall's congressional elections and in the presidential elections of 1992.

The tactic by both Republicans and Democrats now is to avoid being tainted as a sympathizer of the savings industry. Yet some lobbyists and members of Congress complained Thursday about the perspective of the study, saying that not every lawmaker who accepts money has put his or her vote up for sale.

"I am troubled by the long list of names that imply wrongdoing simply by being on a list," said one member of Congress named as having received modest contributions. He asked that he not be identified.

While the savings and loan industry is not the largest contributor to Congress, it is among the top eight. The other large donor industries are energy, banking, food processing and restaurants, home building, medical suppliers, agriculture and insurance.

by CNB