Leaping Lucrative Lobbying Loopholes

Remember that major purveyor of “fringe benefits” to standing (sitting?) members of Congress, that “Jack” of all tradeoffs, Jack Abramoff (above)? The man who found “ways and means” to lure highly-placed Congressional aides into his exceptionally well-heeled lobbying firm, where large organizations plied his business with millions of profit-driving dollars? Yeah, that Abramoff, who brought down the political careers of more than a few of our “stellar” legislators… and found himself with several years of free room and board courtesy of our prison system.

After that ethics battering, new ethics rules bounded onto the stage in 2007. According to a summary by the law firm of Caplin & Drysdale, here are some of the relevant restrictions:

o    Former Members and Officers of the House of Representatives are: (1) prohibited for one year from representing a foreign government or political party before the Government or advising such a foreign entity about lobbying activity; and (2) prohibited for one year from lobbying Congress.

o    Former House Senior Staff are: (1) prohibited for one year from representing a foreign government or political party before the Government or advising such a foreign entity about lobbying activity; and (2) prohibited for one year from lobbying their former House office or committee. 

o    Former Senators are: (1) prohibited for one year from representing a foreign government or political party before the Government or advising such a foreign entity about lobbying activity; and (2) prohibited for two years from lobbying Congress. 

o    Former Senate Officers and Senate Senior Staff are: (1) prohibited for one year from representing a foreign government or political party before the Government or advising such a foreign entity about lobbying activity; and (2) prohibited for one year from lobbying the Senate. 

Simple right? “Yet even after the ethics rules were revised in 2007 following a lobbying scandal, more than 1,650 congressional aides have registered to lobby within a year of leaving Capitol Hill, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from LegiStorm, an online database that tracks congressional staff members and lobbying. At least half of those departing aides, the analysis shows, faced no restrictions at all.” New York Times, February 1^st. What? No restrictions at all?!

It seems that the definition of these covered and restricted Congressional aides depends on whether or not they reach a particular level of pay or whether they are paid by the government or the elected representatives’ private donors or their own pockets. And while the rules are more strictly adhered to by the Senate, the House of Representatives is the laughing stock of loopholes.

“Some aides resist pay raises, to keep their salaries just below the cutoff that would prompt lobbying restrictions. More highly paid House aides, simply because their paycheck came from an individual lawmaker or leadership office rather than a committee they worked closely with, are immediately allowed to lobby former committee colleagues. This maneuver would be prohibited in the Senate, where senior aides cannot contact anyone in the Senate for a year.

“In other cases, former House aides can continue socializing with lawmakers, working on campaigns and attending committee hearings while representing private clients as a lobbyist. That loophole exists even though a lobbyist’s presence on campaigns and at committee hearings could serve as a reminder of pending requests by clients.

“The effortless way former staff members avoid the one-year ban raises new concerns about the revolving door. Some critics say it fosters a clubby culture in Washington, where lawmakers and their aides might seek to protect Wall Street and other industries like health care from new rules and legislation.” NY Times. You mean organizations with bottomless pits of cash that are deeply impacted by government regulation? You mean that our elected representatives could possibly be influenced in doing their jobs by the promise of a lucrative payoff to come?

What is going on appears to be the massive legalization of corruption. But if it is legal, is it really corruption? And that’s the problem. We care more about protecting special interests with tons of cash than we are worried about a system that has turned the U.S. economic system into socio-economic strata that boasts a continuously contracting middle class and economic polarization statistics that are only found in developing countries (“banana republics”) and nowhere else in the developed world.

Courts tells us that the mega-rich can buy political media influence without monetary caps (Citizens United), state legislatures are legally able to gerrymander their opponents out of any possibility of getting elected, our tax codes favor those generating wealth from investments versus labor and these lobbying loopholes allow the wealthiest segments of our society to buy more direct influence from those elected to serve the general public. And the polarization of wealth accumulation continues, year after year, to increase that great divide between the haves and the have-nots.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our bastion of American democracy is truly turning into a banana-republic-like plutocracy where most of us are left, powerless, out in the cold.