(6 of 10)
Lance contended that he had not attempted to conceal anything. If the Senators did not pursue some of the matters in greater detail, he implied, that was hardly his fault. Indeed, it seemed naive to believe that an appointee should volunteer to a confirmation committee every piece of ammunition it could possibly use to deny him the office. Lance sharply denied asking any federal officials either to close the Justice Department investigation into his campaign overdrafts or to lift the Comptroller's sanctions against the Calhoun bank. The involved officials have supported Lance's denial. Although the criminal case was closed without prosecution and the agreement was ended —both conveniently just before Lance's confirmation hearings—those actions looked like attempts by minor bureaucrats to curry favor with the incoming Administration. Some Senators, however, expressed suspicion of Lance's contacts, either personal or through his lawyers, with officials making those decisions.
While some members of the committee insisted that their priority task was to determine if Lance had concealed information from them, any such cover-up charge seemed unlikely to stick. The over riding public issue remained whether the Budget Director's banking practices had been as unethical, self-serving and casual as his critics charged. On these substantive matters, Lance's defense was weakest.
Overdrafts Even friendly Senators on the committee pointed out that Lance's biggest problem was to explain why he, his wife LaBelle and relatives, as well as his 1974 campaign committee, had been allowed to write large checks that seriously overdrew their accounts. As Democrat Henry Jackson told Lance: "The man on the street comes up to me and says, I cannot have an overdraft, and he sees one after another ... I think this is the heart of your problem."
Lance responded that the Calhoun bank had long had a "liberal" overdraft policy to attract customers and that it applied to all depositors. Moreover, he contended, such a policy was "not an unusual practice" in a small rural community like Calhoun, where the bankers knew most of their customers and could judge whether this "extension of credit" involved any risk.
He added that the Calhoun bank's losses from such overdrafts had been small, ranging from $3,999 in 1972 to a high of $7,307 in 1975. He sought to minimize his personal overdrafts, listing them as $8,799 in 1972, $16,845 in 1973, $26,272 in 1974 and $24,147 in 1975. These sums, he pointed out, were nowhere near the $450,000 in overdrafts that some newspapers had attributed to him. That figure was the highest total of overdrafts listed by the Comptroller of the Currency for nine relatives between September 1974 and April 1975. Lance claimed he had always had enough money on deposit in other accounts at the Calhoun bank to cover the overdrafts in his personal checking account.