We spend a lot of time on this blog questioning the loyalty of North Dakota congressmen like Byron Dorgan given that they get the majority of their campaign money (92.2% in Dorgan’s case) from out-of-state interests.  With all that money from people who are not North Dakotans making it’s way into Dorgan’s pocket just how loyal to the interests of North Dakotans does he remain?

Now we have another good reason to question Dorgan’s loyalty.  His wife is a lobbyist for the life insurance industry which staunchly opposes the lifting of the federal estate tax.  You see, in order to avoid having the estate tax ruin the family business most farmers and ranchers in North Dakota buy huge life insurance policies which can be used to pay off the estate tax when the farmer/rancher in question passes on and leaves his property and business to his next of kin.  Life insurance companies want to keep it that way, for obvious reasons, and Dorgan agrees...but not because North Dakotans want him to agree given that 85% of this state’s citizens oppose the estate tax.

Dorgan agrees probably because his wife is employed by the life insurance industry as a political lobbyist, which is something that funnels lots of life insurance industry dollars into his pockets.

When Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) rose to the Senate floor last summer and passionately argued for keeping the federal estate tax, he left one person with an interest in retaining the tax unmentioned.

The multibillion-dollar life-insurance industry, which was fighting to preserve the tax because life insurers have a lucrative business selling policies and annuities to Americans for estate planning, has employed Dorgan’s wife as a lobbyist since 1999.

Democrats, with all their talk of ethics reform, haven’t planned on addressing this issue:

Democrats made ethics reform a major issue in last fall’s congressional elections, but the ethics package the House approved earlier this month didn’t address the issue and neither did the one proposed by Senate Democrats. Last week, however, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) proposed banning spouses of senators from lobbying any part of the chamber. The lone exception is for spouses who were lobbying at least one year before their husband or wife was elected.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the legislation as soon as today. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called Vitter and said he would support the proposal with one caveat: It should exempt spouses who are already lobbyists.

So Reid’s ok with it as long as people like Dorgan get to keep their cushy arrangements.

What’s really frustrating about Dorgan’s situation is that he gets almost no criticism for it from North Dakota’s media.  When he opposed the estate last year despite the clear wishes of North Dakota’s citizens I heard nary a peep about it from the state’s editorial pages.  And that’s sad.  Dorgan is pandering to an industry his wife lobbies for against the clear wishes of his constituency.  This isn’t rocket science, Dorgan should be raked over the coals for that kid of behavior.

But he hasn’t been.