Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock was an important young person in the Republican party. Then he announced his resignation Tuesday, which caused a lot of questioning to the public. Schock had been caught spending thousands of dollars to decorate his office in a “Downton Abbey” theme. Congressman’s staff told the Post that the decorator had volunteered her services but that he had to pay for the objects. Schock had reimbursed his congressional account for $40,000 for the redecorating, which had been paid for through his House account.
Schock’s startlingly clueless response? To ABC News, he said, “haters are gonna hate.”
Anyone who runs for office knows that press corps to look into every dollar the lawmaker had ever spent through his office and campaign budgets. It as founded out that Schock was living a lavish life. He was staying in fancy hotels and spending $90,000 of his campaign dollars on chartered planes, also thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds on private planes. He took his staff a visit to New York City last year by the Indian Prime Minister, at a cost of more than $10,000 by using taxpayer expense. There are rules that a member of staffer can’t accept anything of value from someone who is a lobbyist or who works for a company that employs a lobbyist. The rules were not mean’t to be really strict but just to keep congressmen in line that, they can not spend on whatever they like, using their House accounts.
“You can have all the rules in the world, but if someone is going to lack ethics, he or she is going to break the rules anyway. Schock may have been a rising star, politically. But when it comes to self-preservation and basic sense, he’s lacking. He’s saving himself by choosing a new line of work.”