It’s become a well-worn phrase in coverage of Washington doings to refer to the “revolving door” that connects Congress and K Street — the new shorthand for DC lobbyists. The perception that the nation’s capital has degenerated into a cesspool of special interest-driven influence peddling, where lawmakers bend to the whims of high-priced lobbyists, who in turn fill their campaign coffers and ensure their electoral invincibility, is at the heart of recent polling showing Congress to be less popular than root canal, traffic jams, cockroaches, and colonoscopies.
Just how completely intertwined is Congress with the paid influence peddlers whose high-priced offices line the K Street corridor in Washington? New York Times reporter Eric Lipton offered a jaw-dropping case study in Sunday’s paper by zeroing in on Sen. Max Baucus, the powerful Montana Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
While former members of Congress who join the lobbying world are conspicuous and invariably draw attention, the much more active revolving door involves the migration of congressional staff members into lobbying, where they can then bring clients’ issues to the attention of their former boss. On that score, Baucus may have few rivals, Lipton reports that no fewer than 28 aides who have worked for Baucus have gone on to lobby on behalf of tax issues during the period of the Obama administration.
“K Street is literally littered with former Baucus staffers,” an executive at a wholesalers’ trade association tells Lipton. The story says former Baucus staff members have “saved their clients millions — in some cases, billions — of dollars after Mr. Baucus backed their requests to extend certain corporate tax perks, provisions that were adopted as part of the so-called fiscal cliff legislation in January.”
The story goes on to document the generous fundraising help former staffers have provided to Baucus’s campaign account. It also has all the requisite insistence from Baucus’s office (the senator himself declined to comment) that all decisions the senator makes are based on the merits of the policy, not on who is advocating them.
Ironically, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an op-ed co-authored by Baucus and his House Republican counterpart in which they emphasize their commitment to “writing bills in an open and transparent fashion. No cutting deals behind closed door.”
Jonathan Chait isn’t buying it, referring instead yesterday in New York to the “Baucus industrial complex on K Street” that makes the real story behind bills moving through the Senate Finance Committee anything but transparent.
Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard law professor who was the subject of the Conversation interview in the winter issue of CommonWealth, laid out in sordid detail the path from congressional staffer to lobbyist:
Jim Cooper [a Democratic congressman from Tennessee] talks about Congress as a farm league for K Street, where the lobbyists work. And the image here is you’ve got these people who think of their purpose, or their objective, their business model, as, “How do I get out of Congress on my way toward becoming a lobbyist?” I think it was reinforced by a really wonderful passage in Jack Abramoff’s book, where he said the most effective technique I had was going into a Senate office, and I’d talk to the chief of staff. And I say, what are you going to do in two years? And the chief of staff says, well, I don’t know. And Jack would say, well, I want you to look me up. And Abramoff said, from that moment I owned that staffer. And not a single dollar had traded hands. What’s really disgusting is, especially at the staffer level, there’s developed a kind of awareness of who are the chumps and who are the smart people. And the chumps are the people who don’t cash out in time. And the smart people are people who’ve figured out —well, I’ve been here long enough, I’ve been on this committee, I can now cash out and have a successful career as an influence peddler. When that’s true, basically, we’ve now shifted power to the machine of lobbyists. That’s going to be great for some people. But it’s obviously not great for the way that democracy functions.
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
The House passes a $500 million transportation finance bill by a 97-55 margin, rejecting Gov. Deval Patrick’s push for a heftier $1.9 billion package, the Associated Press reports (via WBUR). Business leaders desert the governor. The margin fell four votes shy of the two-thirds needed to override a promised Patrick veto. CommonWealth reports that gaining passage of the bill in the Senate could be more difficult.
What happened to Johnny Ramos is criminal, and it can all be traced back to a 50-year-old state law that imposes a blanket prohibition on hiring security guards with felony convictions, CommonWealth reports.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Fall River Housing Authority will offer state Rep. David Sullivan a revised one-year contract to become executive director, which will include a clause to void it if a plan to regionalize the state’s housing authorities is enacted.
A Plymouth School Committee member is being charged with assault and violating a harassment protection order after she allegedly aimed her car at a neighbor in a long-running dispute.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The National Review takes stock of Scott Brown’s future in and out of politics, in and out of Massachusetts.
The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz explains why President Obama’s second-term agenda is stalled. Meanwhile, Obama appears to be brushing back the activist left, the Daily Beast also reports.
The Washington Post, working with ProPublica, publishes a cool graphic showing the split as well as the fuzziness in Congress on guns.
ELECTIONS
As first reported yesterday by CommonWealth’s Michael Jonas, Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo plans to announce today that he’s entering the growing field of candidates for mayor.
The Globe profiles Democratic Senate candidate Ed Markey, one-time rabblerouser turned consummate US House insider. Meanwhile, Markey gets the upper hand in a last night’s debate with challenger Stephen Lynch.
The race for mayor in Lawrence starts to get crowded, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
An unusual scenario with which Joe Biden is becoming acquainted: A sitting vice president who would be the underdog for his party’s nomination.
RELIGION
The New York Times profiles Rev. Matt Malone, the new editor of the Jesuit weekly magazine America — and former deputy director of MassINC.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
A slots parlor proposed for Worcester takes a drubbing at a hearing, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
The Aquasino is scheduled to dock in Lynn by mid-May. The boat takes patrons out to international waters where gambling is allowed, the Item reports.
A new twist the debate over an Allston development proposal that has been mired in controversy over parking spaces: The would-be developer apparently doesn’t own the parcel.
EDUCATION
In the new spring issue of CommonWealth, Michael Jonas talks to Harvard’s Tom Kane, who directed the massive Gates Foundation study of teacher effectiveness, the largest project of its kind ever done. We can measure teacher effectiveness and use it to inform education policy and practice, says Kane, and we owe to students to do so.
The New Bedford School Committee narrowly approved one of two proposed Innovation Schools after a year of debate.
The Lynn public schools ranked first among nine urban school districts in science and language state achievement test scores, the Item reports.
HEALTH CARE
Engineers and technicians at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford voted to reject a plan to unionize.
TRANSPORTATION
Lt. Gov. Tim Murray said the decision to not include funding for the South Coast Rail in the House transportation plan is “economic injustice.”
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Look who’s talking: CommonWealth reports that the man behind Cape Wind and the project’s biggest opponent have been negotiating privately for more than a decade.
A new study says climate change could cause the Mediterranean to become unsuitable for growing grapes, shifting wine production to places like Canada and other currently inhospitable locations.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Bristol District Attorney Sam Sutter announced the indictment of a convicted killer in the unsolved stabbing murder of a Fall River mother 25 years ago.
New license plate-reading technology is a boon to public safety, say law enforcement officials, but its raising privacy concerns as well.