Doolittle’s Doing All Right

It looks like Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) and his wife are in for a banner year.

You’ll remember that Julie Doolittle gets 15 percent of every contribution raised by her husband’s political committees. Well, it turns out that they’re on a record breaking pace. From today’s Washington Post:

Overall, in the 2005-2006 election cycle, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, Sierra Dominion [Julie Doolittle’s consulting firm] has collected $82,127 from the Doolittle committees. That is already ahead of the $77,947 in commissions in the 2003-2004 cycle, even with nine months to go until the election.

Impressive! And this is without any contributions in the last year from corrupt defense contractor Brent Wilkes or Jack Abramoff.

When asked by the Post about the propriety of their scheme, Doolittle’s spokesman stood by it, saying that it was “consistent with that of other fundraisers” (which is wrong – only one other member of Congress has a similar arrangement) and that it “was designed to avoid the appearance that Sierra Dominion is compensated for anything other than its tireless and effective work.” Got that? So it appears to everyone else as if the Doolittles are profiting personally from every single contribution made to his committees, providing a perfect method for funneling bribes, but actually, this setup was chosen to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Oh, the irony.