The Schnorrer state: the accomplishments Ted Stevens brags about are worse than the crimes he denies.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Column

A FEW YEARS ago, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma suggested taking money earmarked for a notoriously extravagant "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska and using it for reconstruction in Louisiana. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, a fellow Republican, angrily declared, "This is the first time I have seen any attempt by any senator to treat my state ... differently from any other state."

In a tirade that included threats to behave like "a wounded bull on the floor of the Senate," to "be taken out of here on a stretcher," and to "resign from this body," Stevens' insistence that all he wanted was equal treatment for Alaska may have been the least believable thing he said. During the last four decades, no one has done more than Stevens to ensure that Alaska is treated unequally, receiving far more in federal spending than it pays in taxes.

The octogenarian senator's gift for grabbing dollars in the zero-sum game of congressional appropriations helps explain his easy victory in last summer's Republican primary, despite his indictment less than a month before on federal charges of hiding corporate gifts. Yet the "track record of delivering results for Alaskans" he brags about is more scandalous than the crimes he denies.

Federal prosecutors accused Stevens of violating the Ethics in Government Act by failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts from VECO Corp., a now-defunct oil services and construction company whose CEO has admitted bribing state officials. Stevens' trial was expected to conclude a few weeks before the November 4 general election.

Although the government said Stevens "could and did use his official position and his office on behalf of VECO," it did not charge him with accepting bribes, apparently because it did not have enough evidence of a quid pro quo. But if Stevens did help VECO with grants or contracts, it was of a piece with the "results" he has delivered for his constituents since he joined the Senate in 1968. And the amount of taxpayer money involved was a drop in the ocean compared to the billions of dollars he has directed Alaska's way.

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