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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 18, 1992                   TAG: 9203180152
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

HOT-CHECK SCANDAL SKIDS INTO CABINET

Three Cabinet members acknowledged Tuesday they had written dozens of bad checks while in Congress, the first Bush administration involvement in the rubber check scandal that previously had ensnared mostly House Democrats.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Agriculture Secretary Edward Madigan and Labor Secretary Lynn Martin, all former Republican House members, said they had had overdrafts at the now-closed House bank.

Cheney, who said he'd never been given an indication of trouble with his checks, declared himself "angry and frustrated." Madigan called his situation "an embarrassment to me, my family and friends."

Martin said she was donating $425 to charity, representing the charges a commercial bank might have imposed, so "someone at least should benefit from this embarrassing episode."

Cheney told reporters he had written at least 21 "problem checks" and had been told by the ethics committee there had been four more. Madigan said he overdrew 49 checks. Martin had 16.

Aides said Madigan's checks totaled about $30,000 and the 21 Cheney had identified added up to $10,069. Martin said her bad checks totaled $5,125.20.

The disclosures could blunt any effort to paint the House rubber check mess as a primarily Democratic scandal. However, Republicans still contended the epidemic of overdrafts resulted from decades of mismanagement by the Democrats.

President Bush, traveling in Fayetteville, Ark., said, "It's an institutional problem." And Vice President Dan Quayle, in San Diego, spoke of "the arrogance of power of an institution that's been controlled by one party without serious challenge for nearly 40 years."

Rep. Vic Fazio, D-Calif., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, countered that the acknowledgements by Bush officials "does take some of the edge off the highly partisan charges." He said, "Clearly, when three members of the president's Cabinet are involved in this, it is a bipartisan problem."

Bush, asked about his own vulnerability, said he couldn't find his checks from 1967-71 when he was in the House. "I'd like to be able to say I didn't do it, but I just don't know yet," he said.

The disclosures by the three Cabinet officials added a new dimension to the controversy that until now had focused on Capitol Hill.

A probe showing that hundreds of lawmakers overdrew their accounts at the bank has been followed by an avalanche of public confessions.

by CNB