Doesn't appear as if Congress-critter Hastert is a believer that one chooses goes to Congress to be a public servant, not to become wealthy.
Hastert's wealth is grounded in land :
During his long career in public service, House Speaker Dennis Hastert has amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune through real estate holdings that belies the humble image of a former small-town high school wrestling coach.He lives on a 127-acre homestead near Plano that includes farmland, a pond and woods, situated along a creek and adjacent to a private forest preserve. Based on the price Hastert received for a sale of adjoining undeveloped farmland in December, his land alone is now valued at more than $4.5 million. In all, Hastert's net worth has soared from no more than $290,000 to more than $6 million during his 19-year tenure on Capitol Hill that has seen him rise from the back benches of Congress to speaker of the House.
Hastert's accumulation of wealth through a series of land deals has been the subject of recent scrutiny since a private research group last month questioned his sale of land near a federally funded highway project that he championed.
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His biggest payday as a real estate investor -- $2 million -- has stirred controversy because it dovetailed with federal assistance he secured for the Prairie Parkway. As part of a real estate partnership, Hastert sold land that is 3 miles from the proposed freeway. The $207 million funding was inserted into the fine print of a mammoth federal transportation bill.He accumulated that wealth while he earned an annual salary that has ranged from $77,400 when he first entered Congress to his current salary as House speaker of $212,100 and as he put two sons through college. His wife brought home a teacher's salary until she retired about six years ago.
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Hastert first began to reap substantial profits in 2002, when he moved from his Yorkville home and sold to a developer the surrounding land on Route 34, which has become a central corridor for growth in the region.But his big winnings, responsible for most of his fortune, have come from the controversial tract associated with the freeway, land near Plano that he purchased in two transactions in 2002 and 2004. In addition to the sale of his Yorkville house, Hastert cashed in two other real estate investments during the months before the first of the two land purchases, tying his financial fortunes to the property.
At the end of 2002, just after Hastert purchased the property near Plano, property records and congressional financial disclosures indicate that his net worth stood somewhere between $1.2 million and $1.5 million, less than a quarter of his current wealth.
So, from 2002 until now, Hastert suddenly reaped quadrupled his net worth. Hmmmm. More than just a 'hint' of corruption.
Hastert entered Congress in 1987 a man of relatively modest means, worth no more than $290,000. His financial disclosure forms, which provide broad-range estimates, reported that he and his wife held assets totaling between $120,000 and $275,000. The largest: farmland from his wife's family in southern Illinois and a half-interest in a building in Plainfield, Ill., that had housed his father's Clock Tower Restaurant. He listed total debts of between $70,000 and $165,000.The disclosure did not require him to list the equity he had built in his home at the time. But Hastert had just seven months earlier purchased a home in Yorkville for $225,000, Bonjean said. County records show that he had taken a mortgage of $140,000 when he bought the property.
Now his net worth appears to be more than $6.2 million, a figure that his staff does not dispute.
..His congressional disclosure forms show bank accounts and mutual funds with a combined value of between $20,000 and $125,000 at year-end. The same document indicates he had few debts: a mortgage on his Washington townhouse with a balance between $50,000 and $100,000 and a mortgage on his Plano residence that county records show had a balance of $520,000 as of February 2006.
An automobile enthusiast, he owns at least 10 vehicles, five of them antiques, including a 1942 Lincoln Zephyr Sedan and a 1956 Lincoln Mark II Convertible. He also keeps two 1950s open-cab Mack fire trucks, owned by his congressional campaign committee. He is not required to disclose the value of the vehicles.
