Washington's revolving door spins on despite reforms

02.06.2014

Lawmakers, staffers cash in on governmental experience when they become lobbyists.

WASHINGTON — As chief of staff to Rep. Charlie Dent for more than nine years, Bethlehem native George McElwee knows his way around Capitol Hill, which is precisely why he was lured away by a private Washington, D.C., lobbying firm at the end of last year.

No sooner had McElwee left the business of shaping legislation from the inside than he was officially registered to help influence it from the outside.

The revolving door in Washington can be dizzying, with lawmakers and staffers slipping between the public and private sectors as if it's a rite of passage.

While Congress tightened lobbying laws in 2007, there is nothing that prohibited McElwee from bidding Dent's office goodbye in November and immediately turning around to lobby Congress on behalf of his new private-sector employer.

The only thing McElwee explicitly cannot do — for at least one year — is lobby Dent's office directly.

Good-government groups describe the revolving door as emblematic of a lax system that allows members of Congress and their staffers to parlay their extensive legislative expertise into higher-paying jobs outside the government.

More than 1,650 congressional aides have registered to lobby within a year of leaving Capitol Hill, The New York Times reported recently. The Sunlight Foundation found that 44 percent of today's D.C. lobbyists are former government employees, compared with just 18 percent 15 years ago.

The author of the study, Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at Sunlight, said "Congress has become a farm team for K Street" — the common nickname for Washington lobbyists because for a time many firms were located there.

A chief of staff, the right hand of a lawmaker, offers not only policy proficiency but also access and knowledge of the legislative process, Drutman said. That person will have relationships with other offices, will know how and when to make an argument and will be able to navigate the different personalities on Capitol Hill, he said.

That kind of information can be invaluable to a business, which is why many will pay top dollar to employ a former congressional staffer.

Meredith McGehee, policy director at Campaign Legal Center, said it makes sense that a staffer would use his congressional expertise in a new career. Trying to stop that would be akin to "telling a baseball player they can't go coach baseball," she said. It's what they know best.

But McGehee thinks the "cooling off" period — the time between working in Congress and lobbying it — could be longer and broader.

"That was information and contacts made at taxpayer expense, so being able to use it for private interests" should involve more than selling it to the highest bidder, McGehee said. "There has to be a balance."

In 2005, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal spotlighted the corrupt influence-peddling that can go on in Washington shadows. In response, Congress sought to rein in the cozy relationship between K Street and Capitol Hill.

President George W. Bush signed a law in 2007 strengthening lobbying disclosure laws, but the section dealing with revolving doors was watered down before final passage.

In the end, it limited a senior House staffer from lobbying his or her own office or committee for one year, and forbid any U.S. House members from lobbying any office on Capitol Hill for a year.

The rules in the U.S. Senate were made a bit stricter. Senators can't lobby Congress for two years, and senior Senate staff must wait a year before contacting anyone in the Senate, not just their former office.

Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, helped craft the 2007 law. Originally the House restrictions were written the same as the Senate's, but enough House lawmakers nearing retirement — with their eye on a seven-figure post-Congress paycheck — threatened to kill the bill if the revolving-door language wasn't softened, Holman said.

"The revolving door is a widespread and pernicious problem," he said. And the laws related to them "are almost meaningless — it's very ineffective."

McElwee is now working for the Organization for International Investment, a Washington trade association representing the U.S. operations of foreign corporations. His company spent more than half a million dollars lobbying Congress in the last quarter of 2013, disclosure forms show.

McElwee said, via email, that running Dent's office for almost a decade "is a highlight of my professional career" because he served his home, the Lehigh Valley. His new role is an extension of that, he said, because global companies employ nearly 270,000 Pennsylvanians at their U.S. subsidiaries.

McElwee is listed as a registered lobbyist on the fourth-quarter disclosure forms, lobbying on issues such as changes to tax laws on foreign investments in U.S. real property interests to the pending Trans Pacific Partnership free trade agreement.

Dent does not sit on the Ways and Means Committee that deals directly with those specific issues. But even if he did, there would be nothing prohibiting McElwee from lobbying the committee.

There is little appetite in Congress for additional reforms. But Holman figures all it will take is another scandal.

"Following the growing trend, it's going to spill over into another scandal eventually, and I suspect that's right around the corner," he said.

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