Senator's Way to Wealth Was Paved With Favors

Mainly, the Senate relies on an ill-defined injunction not to bring shame upon the body.

Senate Ethics Committee Chairman George Voinovich (R-Ohio) declined to discuss the issues raised by The Times articles.

House Ethics Committee Chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) said he hoped to convene an advisory panel of current and former House Ethics Committee members next year to examine a range of ethics questions, including how to address the issue of lobbying by relatives.

"I do think we ought to revisit this," he said. He declined to comment on the issue of lawmakers' financial partners.

Lawmakers should be careful about their business relationships, John D. Saxon, a former Senate Ethics Committee counsel, said, speaking generally and not about Stevens in particular.

"It's a very slippery slope for a member of Congress to be entangled with someone in a business dealing and then use their official position to help them, even if it's on something completely different," he said.

'Stevens Money'

Today, Stevens is the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, and as president pro tempore stands just behind the vice president and the speaker of the House in the constitutional line of succession to the Oval Office.

For more than 20 years, he has been chairman or ranking member of the Senate's Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Since 1997, he has been chairman or ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee, which must approve every dollar of federal discretionary spending each year.

Stevens' position as a senior member of the Commerce Committee adds to his clout -- especially in telecommunications policy, which is under the committee's jurisdiction.

In Alaska, Stevens exerts unparalleled influence. No state is so dependent on federal dollars and decisions. The federal government still owns 60% of all its land, generates one-third of all jobs, and holds the keys to economic growth through regulation of its major industries -- oil and gas, fishing, timber and tourism.

Federal spending in Alaska, known locally as "Stevens money," runs as much as 70% above the national average on a per capita basis.

Since his first day in the Senate in 1968, Stevens has delivered for Alaska.

He has won tax breaks for Native businesses, bailouts for fishermen, a pipeline for an oil consortium and restoration of an abandoned Army post as a tourist attraction for a Yukon village.