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      CHICAGO (AP) - Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the Chicago
Democrat who became the leading architect of congressional tax
policy in the Reagan era but later went to federal prison for
corruption, died Wednesday, a family friend said. He was 82.


      Rostenkowski, who served 18 terms before losing in 1994, died
surrounded by family at his home in Lake Benedict, Wis., friend
Ellen Tully told The Associated Press. He had been treated for
prostate cancer in the 1990s.

      As House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Rostenkowski was
known as a consensus builder and a master of legislative tactics.
He is credited with leading a 1983 effort to rescue Social Security
from insolvency and pushing through a sweeping 1986 overhaul of the
nation's tax system.

      But Rostenkowski himself acknowledged that his legacy would
always be tainted by his stint in federal prison.


      "I know that my obituary will say, 'Dan Rostenkowski, felon,'
and it is something that I have to live with,"' he said in a 1998
broadcast interview with Robert Novak and Mark Shields.

      In 2000, however, then-President Bill Clinton pardoned
Rostenkowski. Two prominent Republicans, former President Gerald R.
Ford and former House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel were among
those urging the pardon.

      Rostenkowski's problems began in 1992 when a grand jury in
Washington charged him with 17 counts of misusing government and
campaign funds.


      The scandal forced him to step down as chairman and led to his
1994 defeat by Republican unknown Michael Patrick Flanagan, who
became the first GOP congressman from Chicago in 35 years.

      It was part of a Republican sweep that returned the GOP to power
in both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1950s.
(Flanagan served just one term before being ousted by
then-Democratic state Rep. Rod Blagojevich, who later became
governor - and was ousted from office in his own scandal in January
2009.)


      In the end, Rostenkowski pleaded guilty two counts of mail
fraud. He admitted in his plea agreement that he had converted
office funds to his own use for gifts such as Lenox china and
armchairs.


      He admitted hiring people on his congressional payroll who did
little or no official work - but took care of his lawn, took
photographs at political events and family weddings, helped his
family's business and supervised the renovation of his house.

      Even after pleading guilty, Rostenkowski continued to say that
what he did should have been counted as a violation of House rules
- not a crime.


      Rostenkowski served 17 months in prison, mainly at the federal
government's correctional center at Oxford, Wis. After his release,
he spoke to a prison reform group and joked about "my Oxford
education."

      Biographer Richard Cohen wrote that Rostenkowski was "among the
half dozen most influential members of Congress during the second
half of the 20th century."


      U.S. Rep. Danny Davis of Chicago called Rostenkowski "larger
than life in terms of his own being."


      "He goes down in history as one of the powerful chairmen of the
Ways and Means Committee and, of course, the people of Illinois
remember him with tremendous fondness as a key element of the
political landscape in our state," Davis said Wednesday.


      Daniel David Rostenkowski was born Jan. 2, 1928, into one of
Chicago's leading Polish-American political families. His father
was an alderman.


      Rostenkowski was educated at St. John's Academy, a Wisconsin
military school, and Loyola University in Chicago. He served in the
infantry in Korea from 1946 to 1948. He was a state representative
and later a state senator before his election to the U.S. House in
1958.


      Rostenkowski was a pillar of the Chicago Democratic Machine - a
ward committeeman whose precinct captains were experts at getting
out the vote. He once said that in Chicago politics is "a blood
sport."


      Until the end, he never faced more than token political
opposition.


      As Ways and Means chairman, he handled the job in old-school
fashion, once telling an Associated Press interviewer that those
who crossed him legislatively "should not expect any largesse, so
to speak, from me."


      But he believed in compromise and expressed dismay at the
partisanship that descended on Capitol Hill after he left. He was
fond of closed-door meetings where political dramatics were shelved
in favor of deal making.

      "We looked at politics as compromise," Rostenkowski said. "We
were going to work together. We were going to get something done.
We were Democrats and Republicans but we were also legislators.
Politics is war today. Everybody wants to fight. Nobody wants to
give in."


      "As much as people criticize the back room, the dark room or
the cigar or smoke-filled room, you get things done when you're not
acting," he told an interviewer. In his day, he said, "we'd argue
like hell on the floor of the House of Representatives but we were
out playing golf that night."


      He had little use for rules limiting contacts with lobbyists.

      "If a congressman is going to be a rascal he's going to be a
rascal," Rostenkowski once told an interviewer.


      Rostenkowski brought in millions of federal dollars for public
works projects, including Kennedy Expressway reconstruction and
turning Navy Pier on Chicago's downtown lakefront into a
recreational area.

      As chairman, Rostenkowski opposed protectionist trade
legislation and played a key role in pushing through the North
American Free Trade Agreement, which lowered trade barriers between
the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Never a favorite with liberal groups,
Rostenkowski joined forces with many corporations to win approval
of the measure, which was proposed by the Clinton administration
but bitterly disliked by organized labor.


      Rostenkowski won praise for driving the 1986 tax overhaul
legislation.


      In a dramatic gesture designed to focus attention on the issue,
he went on national television and urged viewers to write to him
with their own views on how the nation's tax laws could be
improved.

      He told them that if they had trouble spelling his name, all
they had to do was "write Rosty" in Washington.


      The bill then-President Ronald Reagan finally signed into law
eliminated numerous loopholes.


      "I think the epitaph I'd like to see, even on my gravestone,
would be, 'He wrote good law,"' Rostenkowski said later. "That it
was fair."

      Associated Press writers Mike Robinson and Tammy Webber
contributed to this report.

Gallery

Politics and Government News

Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the Chicago
Democrat who became the leading architect of congressional tax
policy in the Reagan era but later went to federal prison for
corruption, died Wednesday, a family friend said. He was 82.

Dan Rostenkowski, 18-term congressman, dies

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