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Stripping Convicted GOPers of Pension May Not Be Constitutional, Pelosi Says
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ShareJanuary 19, 2007 1:10 PM
ABC News' Teddy Davis and Matthew Zavala Report: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday that retroactively stripping two convicted former House members of their congressional pensions may not be constitutional.
"The real question," said Pelosi when asked about the promised pensions of former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who was sentenced to prison earlier today, and former Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., who is already serving his sentence, "is whether we would have the constitutional authority to do something retroactively."
A spokesman for an anti-tax organization, which is opposed in theory to convicted members of Congress receiving pensions, seemed to agree Friday with Pelosi’s legal assessment.
"I have to agree that that is murky territory," Pete Sepp, vice president for communications at the National Taxpayers Union, told ABC News. "Changing the terms of an entitlement is tricky business. Congress could try and we could see what the courts have to say. But I doubt that the answer would be favorable."
Ney will first be eligible to receive a congressional pension in 2010, according to the National Taxpayers Union. If he waits until 2016 to start receiving his pension, he will be eligible to receive $29,000 per year.
Ney was sentenced Friday to 30 months in prison in Morganstown, W. Va. for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in illegal gifts in return for legislative favors. Cunningham was sentenced last year to eight years and four months in prison for taking $2.4 million in bribes from at least three defense contractors.
Pelosi made her comments about Ney and Cunningham during the question and answer period which followed the "prebuttal" to President Bush's State of the Union address which she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., offered earlier today at the National Press Club.
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