The $enate

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) had a good laugh during a Sept. 11 Senate Budget Committee hearing at the notion that most Americans believe that members of the Senate are very wealthy — apparently unaware that his checkbook doesn’t look quite like that of many of his fellow lawmakers.

“I saw a poll that was taken not so long ago that [showed] the American people think all senators live in mansions, that we have servants, and that we’re chauffeured in limousines,” the former tax commissioner explained. “I drew this to the attention of my wife, who was highly amused by this, since I drive a 1999 Buick, we live in an 1,800-square-foot house and the servants in our household are Kent and Lucy.”

Lucy, the senator’s wife, is a lobbyist for Major League Baseball.

About half of the U.S. Senate is made up of millionaires, and it’s a very bipartisan caucus. We suspect that most of those do actually live in mansions and employ servants, but limos? That’s so executive branch.

Take my political party — please!

Watch out for Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) over the next month — he’s looking for material.

The Judiciary Committee’s top Republican is headlining the Oct. 17 Funniest Celebrity in Washington contest at the Improv. Until then, we dare say that nobody is safe. Specter is well known for both his dry one-liners at public events and his propensity to surprise his leadership.

This event may prove the perfect opportunity to do both.

MoveOn.org has nothing on Rudyard Kipling

After a grueling week of House and Senate whippings, not to mention a full-page ad in The New York Times renaming him “General Betray Us,” Gen. David Petraeus revealed on Wednesday how he was keeping it all together.

Like any good soldier, he looks to great literary works.

“I was sent a poem by Rudyard Kipling, actually the morning that that ad came out, from my hometown — an old friend,” Petraeus told reporters at the National Press Club.  “It’s the poem ‘If.’”

Petraeus credits the verse, which begins, “If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,” with getting him through the waves of criticism this week.

“I took some strength, I think, from that,” he said.

Congressional conversations welcomed in the Speaker’s Lobby as long as we can hear

The House Speaker’s Lobby might seem like a less-than-ideal venue for a member to buttonhole a colleague about a hotly contested bill, given that the place is the designated hangout for reporters snooping for stories.

From the looks of things during a recent House vote, though, it was more important for Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) and Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) to keep their conversation from their fellow members of Congress than from the press.

The two picked a bench just outside of the House chamber to huddle for an intense conversation about the election reform bill that caused a widely discussed dust-up in Slaughter’s committee.

They were deep in conversation for a few minutes before Slaughter looked up and noticed that reporters from most of the Capitol Hill publications were congregated around them, ears cocked for newsworthy morsels.

 Suddenly, they seemed to lose interest in legislation.

“Have a great weekend,” Slaughter said loudly to her colleague, who was inches away from her. “You have a great weekend, too,” Holt replied at a similar volume.

Sen. Sherrod Brown first to fall victim to gambling habit

Oh, how we love fall. What could be better than crisp weather, appropriations battles and members of Congress crisscrossing the Capitol building to repay their NFL gambling debts?

Only one week into football season, it was Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), clad in a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, traipsing over to the office of Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) with a basket of Ohio treats to atone for the black-and-gold’s 34-7 trouncing of the Cleveland Browns on Sept. 9.

For a score like that, it seems that Brown got off pretty easy. 

Flacks: We’re coming for you

A tradition will be reborn on Sept. 14, when the Flacks vs. Hacks Softball Game returns to the National Mall.

The annual event fell through the cracks last year in the chaos of the elections, but former GOP leadership aide Bob Stevenson returned to the Hill from his cushy office at OB-C Group this week to announce that the game, which pits press staff against congressional reporters, was back.

So let’s see what you’ve got, flacks. We know you can spin and dodge, but can you hit and run?

Mike Soraghan contributed to this page.