Following in the footsteps of so many elected officials who came before him, it’s been revealed that Texas Democratic Congressman Vicente Gonzalez has set up a cozy little arrangement for himself since taking office in 2017. He’s been renting office space from a property management company called Tenant Services LLC. That wouldn’t be all that unusual since all members maintain offices in their home districts to handle constituent services and other needs, but this arrangement involves a special feature. The owner of Tenant Services LLC is Vicente Gonzalez. In other words, Gonzalez is using campaign donations to pay himself for the privilege of working out of one of his own buildings. This type of arrangement isn’t technically illegal as long as the member is receiving a fair value for the cost, but certainly has a dubious look to it. (Free Beacon)

Texas Democratic congressman Vicente Gonzalez has funneled tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to a company he owns and directs, a move that elicited condemnation from liberal media outlets and ethics experts when employed by former president Donald Trump.

Since 2018, Gonzalez has sent $33,000 to a mundane-sounding property management company, Tenant Services LLC, for office rent, according to federal campaign finance disclosures. As it turns out, Gonzalez owns that company, financial statements and corporate records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The setup allows Gonzalez to use his job as a politician to pocket more than just his congressional salary, through which the Democrat earns $174,000 a year.

We’re not talking about the massive amounts of campaign cash that other officials have made disappear in the past, but it’s a nice chunk of change all the same. And we should make clear that this is not just a Democratic problem People in both parties have been found doing this in the past. Curiously, they seem to show little interest in reforming our campaign finance laws to end these practices or even simply make them more transparent.

As mentioned above, Gonzalez is hardly alone in this sort of racket where members of Congress have funneled money either directly to themselves or to their family members. One of the more famous profiteers in recent memory has to be Ilhan Omar. She paid her husband’s political “consulting” company nearly three million dollars before finally severing the arrangement last year after the press called her out on it constantly.

Both Gonzalez and Omar pale in comparison to Maxine Waters. She has had her daughter on her campaign’s payroll every election cycle dating back to 2004 for various, vaguely described jobs. The daughter has collected at least $1.1 million from her mother’s campaign donations over that period of time. Many other examples exist.

But there seems to be little that can be done about all of this and few if any members of the House or Senate show much of an appetite for reforming these laws. When supporters send money to candidates or elected representatives, they do so with the expectation that the money will be used to help put or keep the person that best represents their positions in office. How many of those donors would be comfortable writing checks if they knew that the money was just going to be flushed into their representative’s bank account or that of one of their relatives? I’m guessing not many people would be wild about that.