Dan Rostenkowski, 1928–2010

As chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee for 13 years, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski shaped legislation that created Medicare, rescued Social Security, and reformed the tax code, all while funneling billions to his beloved hometown of Chicago. “I don’t know if he would pass a CPA exam,” said political scientist Paul Green, “but he knew how to count votes in the House.”

Rostenkowski grew up in a Polish neighborhood in Chicago in a house built by his grandfather, a delegate to the 1912 Democratic National Convention, said the Chicago Tribune. His father served as a city alderman and in the Illinois legislature. A star athlete, Rostenkowski earned 14 athletic letters in high school. He had a tryout with the Philadelphia Athletics, “but baseball didn’t pan out, and politics was his birthright.”

At 24, Rostenkowski assumed his father’s seat in the legislature; by 31 he had a coveted seat in Congress representing a solidly Democratic district. Since his wife refused to live in Washington, D.C., he went home each weekend, often driving with Republican Rep. Robert Michel. Rostenkowski rose up the party ranks, said The Washington Post, earning renown as a deal maker and cultivating relationships at such Washington haunts as Morton’s steakhouse in Georgetown, “where he held court over martinis and thick steaks at a table known as ‘Rosty’s Rotunda.’” In 1981, he became chairman of Ways and Means, one of the most powerful posts on Capitol Hill.

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Two years later, “he brokered the deal that led to the passage of a bill that kept the Social Security System solvent,” said The New York Times. But in 1994, Rostenkowski was charged with 17 counts of misusing his office for personal gain, including paying for furniture and china with House funds. He insisted that he hadn’t committed any crimes. But he failed to win re-election that year and soon pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud. He served 15 months in prison.

“With all the legislation that I passed, with all the history that I’ve written with respect to the economics of the country,” Rostenkowski remarked in 1998, “they’re always going to say there’s a felon named Danny Rostenkowski. That’s going to be the obituary.”