IT’S WELL KNOWN in Washington that congressional staffers tend to be underpaid and overworked. One might assume that they accept these conditions in exchange for the connections and prestige that Congress affords. Increasingly, however, the motivation is a lucrative job on K Street.
Despite HLOGA, more than 1,650 former Congressional aides have registered to lobby less than a year after leaving Congress, according to the New York Times. These freshly-minted lobbyists often return to the Hill to lobby on the very legislation that they worked on while they were staffers. The rules that intended to prevent this “revolving door” effect are so weak, particularly in the House, as to be practically nonexistent. As the Times points out, former House staffers can avoid the one-year moratorium on lobbying as long as their salaries are less than the paltry sum of $130,500.
In fact, restrictions on the revolving door have been so easily circumvented that, according to the Sunlight Foundation, the number of registered lobbyists with previous government experience actually peaked in 2009, two years after the passage of HLOGA. To make matters worse, as LobbyBlog reports, even though lobbying registrations are on the decline, there is a well-known shadow industry of unregistered lobbyists who are working as “strategic advisors” while still technically complying with current disclosure rules. It stands to reason that there are even more former staffers who are “unlobbyists” to whom the current lobbying restrictions don’t apply at all.
So why is this a big deal? The biggest concern is that staffers and members who are eyeing a cushy job on K Street will try to influence legislation to favor their future employers before they even leave Capitol Hill. Indeed, as the Times points out, staffers are often hired because of specific legislation or issue areas on which they worked, and when the turnaround from staffer to lobbyist can be measured in months or even weeks, the current system’s potential for abuse becomes apparent.
Tags: HLOGA, LobbyBlog, New York Times, Revolving Door, sunlight foundation
