The Daily Inter Lake - Burns fires back.

By JIM MANN
The Daily Inter Lake
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., says the Abramoff attacks won’t end, but he’ll fight back to the end of his bid to be re-elected to a fourth term this year.

Ties between Burns’ office and Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist who has pleaded guilty to corruption and fraud, has dominated the race so far.

Burns has pledged to return nearly $150,000 that he received from Abramoff’s lobbying firm or Abramoff clients.

But Burns reportedly received more Abramoff money than any other lawmaker — and Democrats clearly believe that connection makes the 71-year-old senator vulnerable.

Burns insisted in a meeting Friday with the Inter Lake editorial board that he’s done nothing wrong.

“I wouldn’t know this Abramoff from a bale of hay,” Burns said, reiterating that he has never met the man, but conceding that some of his staffers have. Abramoff’s lobbying business, in fact, hired staff out of Burns’ office.

“This Abramoff was a predator,” Burns said, referring to Abramoff defrauding Indian tribes that were his clients. “He was a bad guy. He’s going to go to jail. The system got him.”

Burns said soon after his office was linked to Abramoff, his staff did a thorough accounting of fundraising records, appointment books and other documents to determine if there had been any impropriety.

“We really scrubbed our office and we really didn’t find anything that I, Conrad Burns, did wrong,” said Burns, who was upbeat about his prospects for re-election in a race that includes two Democrats, Montana State Auditor John Morrison and Jon Tester, president of the Montana Senate.

Burns is providing media outlets with a packet of nearly 50 pages of documents and a cover letter saying, “We believe these documents completely back up Burns’ assertions that everything was done properly, legally and fully reported.”

Even so, Burns said it’s unlikely that the Abramoff issue will go away, short of some form of exoneration from the Department of Justice, which he does not expect anytime soon.

With the arranged cooperation of Abramoff through a plea agreement, the Justice Department is expanding its investigation with speculation that public officials could be indicted.

Citing anonymous sources, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Washington Times have reported that Burns is among the lawmakers under federal investigation for their ties with Abramoff.

But Burns said the media is hardly a reliable source for predicting what the Justice Department might do. He said his office has not been contacted by the Justice Department.

“Is it unfair? Yes, it’s unfair,” Burns said. “But that’s the way it works, and you’re left out there twisting in the wind.”

Burns is not alone.

The influence-peddling scandal has been picked up by Republicans and Democrats with attacks on more than a dozen politicians seeking re-election. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has launched a campaign aimed at connecting Abramoff to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat who faces re-election in Nevada.

Burns said he fully expects Democratic advertising, with funding support from the national level, to maintain the Abramoff theme. The only possibility of that dying down, he said, is if Democrats start to run out of money in that effort.

In the meantime, Burns said he will fight back. He said he has been getting “positive feedback” on his most recent television ad, in which he dismisses Democratic allegations as being unfounded partisan attacks.

On other subjects, Burns was optimistic about the potential for democracy to develop in Iraq and spoke about polarized politics in Washington, Social Security reform and his reluctance to change the congressional practice of attaching “earmark” spending to larger budget bills.

If a successful democracy develops in Iraq, Burns said, there will be tremendous opportunities for economic development in that country and neighboring countries.

He said Iraq could be transformed in a manner that would compare to the contrasting conditions between North and South Korea.

Burns said North Korea, an autocratic communist country, is plagued with such poverty that it looks “just like it was the day I left there in the U.S. Marine Corps.”

Democratic South Korea has become an economic powerhouse on the Pacific Rim. “There’s the greatest example of what can be done,” he said.

Burns described an ongoing chumminess between himself and many Senate Democrats, but it is something that happens behind the scenes, over dinners or lunch or just in an elevator. Overtly, the Senate has become increasingly polarized ever since Senate debates were first televised in the late 1980s.

“Televising floor debates has done more to polarize the Senate than anything else,” he said. “Because people make speeches and talk that doesn’t add much to the debate ... They make political speeches.”

Some lawmakers and President Bush recently have been pushing for an end to the practice of attaching “earmarked” spending projects to large omnibus budget bills.

But Burns says he does not support that idea, and he rejects the common assertion that earmarks are added in secret or “in the dark of night.”

Burns said it was telling during the president’s State of the Union Address this week when Democrats stood and loudly applauded when Bush acknowledged that Congress rejected his Social Security reform proposals.

“I don’t think I would stand up and cheer, because they haven’t offered anything” to address projected funding shortfalls in the Social Security system, he said.

Burns said he believes “there’s a chance” that some reform measures could be resurrected this year and win Congressional approval.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com