Sometimes It's Easy To Forget That There's More To The Swamp Than Just Trump

I was shocked once when a friend in Texas told me a Blue Dog candidate for Congress-- an eventual winner-- didn't really care about being a member of Congress as much as he cared about getting prepared for a career as a federal lobbyist. Being a member of Congress is the kind of preparation you need for it-- and almost no one gets rich as a member of Congress-- Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan aside-- but you can certainly become a multimillionaire as a K Street lobbyist.

Something between a quarter and a third of members of Congress who retire-- voluntarily or involuntarily-- don't go back to their beloved hometowns. Instead they stay in DC to become lobbyists or quasi-lobbyists. (And some of the ones who do go back to their home states, become lobbyists there.) No one denies there's a revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street. Some try to deny it reeks of corruption and is part of the swamp that Trump exploded to trick frustrated morons into voting for him.

According the OpenSecrets.org, the last time they counted-- a few years ago-- there were 429 former members of Congress working as lobbyists. Most, though not all, are slimy corrupt conservatives, not just Republicans, but walking-talking buckets of excrement like Joe Crowley, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Dick Gephardt, Tim Mahoney, Heath Shuler, Jane Harman, Harold Ford (Sr and Jr) Bart Stupak, both Bayhs, Tom Daschle, Al Wynn, Joe Garcia, Mike Ross, Bill Lipinski (you-know-whose dad) and Mary Landrieu as well.

Yesterday, Public Citizen looked at the latest congressional revolving doorism-- and it's worse than ever! They make the discouraging point that "Nearly two-thirds of recently retired or defeated U.S. lawmakers now working outside politics have landed jobs influencing federal policy, providing further evidence that members of Congress continue to spin through Washington’s revolving door at astonishing rates.

The report found that 59% (26 of 44) of former members of the 115th Congress (2017-2019) who have found employment outside politics have gone through the revolving door. These lawmakers quickly found employment at lobbying firms, consulting firms, trade groups or business groups that work to influence the federal government. These former lawmakers cashed in on their connections by representing wealthy special interests who can afford to pay top dollar for insider information and influence.

Under current federal law, former federal lawmakers cannot lobby their legislative ex-colleagues for one year if they served in the U.S. House of Representatives and two years if they served in the U.S. Senate. However, they can immediately lobby executive agencies and can be hired by lobbying firms as “strategic consultants” advising lobbyists on how to approach lawmakers but avoiding lobbying contacts themselves.

Notable revolving-door lawmakers from the previous Congress include former U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), who works for lobbying giant Squire Patton Boggs, and former U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who works for lobbying firm Akin Gump, where he is registered to lobby in favor of the same controversial copper and gold mine in Alaska that he pushed for while in Congress. Those two firms, which are the largest in Washington, D.C., recently hired five former lawmakers between them.

"No lawmaker should be cashing in on their public service and selling their contacts and expertise to the highest bidder. Retired or defeated lawmakers should not serve as sherpas for corporate interests who are trying to write federal policy in their favor," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "We need to close the revolving door and enact fundamental and far-reaching reforms to our corrupt political system."

The For the People Act (H.R. 1), which passed the House in March, enacts sweeping reforms that should raises ethics standards at all levels of government. Importantly, H.R. 1 would define “strategic consulting” as lobbying, closing that loophole for former members of Congress.

H.R. 1, which is tepid and watered-down and doesn't even go 20% of the way towards cleaning out the swamp, was treated as though the world was collapsing by the GOP and not even one Republican voted for it! And now, McTurtle is refusing to allow a vote on it in the Senate.

By going through Washington’s “revolving door,” lawmakers are effectively trading in on their relationships and knowledge to help companies profit and to enrich themselves-- a pattern that has been in place for many years. The most famous and egregious example of Washington’s revolving door problem came in 2004, when Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA) announced he would leave Congress to accept a $2 million a year salary as head of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry’s main lobbying organization. Tauzin was chief architect of the 2003 prescription drug legislation that prohibited the federal Medicare program from negotiating lower drug prices. Tauzin left PhRMA in 2010, earning more than $11 million in his final year at the trade group,  but remains a lobbyist with clients in health care and other industries.

Currently, federal ethics laws provide minimal protections against influence-peddling by former members of Congress. Former members of the House of Representatives are barred from making lobbying contacts with their ex-colleagues for one year. A two-year ban applies to former Senate lawmakers.

However, loopholes in the ethics laws diminish the impact of these modest “cooling off” periods. For example, former lawmakers can immediately turn around and lobby executive agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Federal Trade Commission or the Food and Drug Administration so long as they do not lobby Congress. Former lawmakers are also able to brand themselves as “strategic consultants” who advise registered lobbyists on strategies for approaching lawmakers, but do not make lobbying contacts with lawmakers themselves.  This loophole, nicknamed the Daschle loophole, after former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) who worked for several major D.C. law and lobbying firms for more than a decade but did not register as a lobbyist until 2016, is a common way to meet the technical requirements of the law while ignoring the law’s intended purpose.

Some former lawmakers have been quite open about how easy it to advise corporate clients on lobbying strategy and still comply with lobbying rules.  In 2013, after leaving the Senate to join Covington & Burling for the first time, Kyl told the Washington Post there is a “a huge amount of work that can be done” legally even while restricted by a two-year cooling off period. Kyl added:

Several pieces of legislation would strengthen these ethics laws for former government officials. The For the People Act (H.R. 1), which passed the House of Representatives in March, enacts sweeping reforms that would raise ethics standards at all levels of government. Importantly, H.R. 1 would define “strategic consulting” as lobbying for former members of Congress, subjecting this activity to the existing revolving door restrictions. The legislation would also bar former executive branch officials from doing “strategic consulting” on behalf of a lobbying campaign as well as making direct lobbying contacts for two years after leaving government service.

Lawmakers in both parties have introduced ethics reforms that go further. Legislation by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) would impose a five-year ban on lobbying for members of Congress and the executive branch. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed to permanently ban all elected officials from lobbying. Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) have proposed a lifetime lobbying ban for all members of Congress, as have Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Rick Scott (R-FL).

The scumbag walking corruption scandal Pelosi and Hoyer had decided would run the Democratic Party after them, Joe Crowley was hired as a lobbyist by Patton Boggs after AOC beat him in a primary last year. They also hired another loser, Bill Shuster (R-PA), the super-corrupt former chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "Both Crowley and Shuster," reports Public Citizen, "are leading an initiative at the industry-funded Bipartisan Policy Center to find new ways to finance highways and infrastructure, including ending federal reliance on gas taxes, which would benefit oil companies. Crowley also was named an honorary co-chairman of the Pass USMCA Coalition, which is advocating for Trump’s revised North American Free Trade Agreement in Congress. Squire Patton Boggs was the fourth largest D.C. lobbying firm last year, with total lobbying income of more than $24 million. Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham University law professor and former candidate for New York attorney general, tweeted that Crowley 'is selling twenty years of the goodwill of his constituents to the wealthy clients of Squire Patton Boggs.'  Along with former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) Crowley has joined the advisory board of Northern Swan Holdings, which has raised $96 million to expand investing in marijuana cultivation in Latin America as part of a plan to 'invest in new low-cost, large-scale cannabis cultivation and processing centers and build out distribution channels and brands in Europe, Latin America and North America.'"

Did the DSCC or the DNC badger you into wasting money on Blue Dog p.o.s. Joe Donnelly? The woke Democratic base refused to come out and vote for him-- in the midst of a blue wave-- because he voted with the Republicans too much. Republicans didn't vote for him either, of course; they had their own candidate. Public Citizen reported yesterday that he "joined lobbying and law powerhouse Akin Gump in April. Donnelly is advising financial services, defense and health care clients, saying in a statement that he looks forward to 'putting my legislative skills to work on behalf of many of Akin Gump’s clients.' The co-chair of the firm’s public law and policy practice, Brian Pomper, said Donnelly’s experience 'will be invaluable to our clients who are navigating this era of a divided government.' Akin Gump was the top lobbying firm in D.C. last year, with total lobbying income of nearly $38 million. In 2017, when Gallup polled about ethics and professions, nurses were viewed as the most ethical (82%), followed by military officers (71%) and grade school teachers (66%)-- and the bottom of the heap? Lobbyists, of course. The 5 most despised, corrupt occupations:

• Business executives- 16%
• Advertising practitioners- 12%
• Members of Congress- 11%
• Car salespeople- 10%
• Lobbyists- 8%

And here's the kind of congressional bipartisanship we like to see-- bipartisanship to serve the interests of the American people... very different from the kind of swampy bipartisanship we usually do see: