The revolving door keeps spinning in Washington, D.C., leaving power in the hands of the well-connected, not the public.
Two nonpartisan reports underscore this never-ending, self-perpetuating problem.
An analysis by Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics, released earlier this month, found that more than 1,400 former members of Congress, Capitol Hill staff members or other federal employees had registered as lobbyists for the financial services sector since the beginning of last year — just as Wall Street reform legislation was taking shape. That included at least 73 former lawmakers, and 148 former staffers who had connections to congressional banking committees.
This week, the Sunlight Foundation reported that the nation’s telecommunications giants — including Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner Cable — had recently formed an army of 276 former government officials to lobby Congress and the Obama administration on upcoming overhauls to broadband and Internet rules. Eighteen of those lobbyists are former members of Congress.
“We’ve heard promises to stop the spin of the revolving door between government and lobbying, but that’s clearly not happening,” the Sunlight Foundation’s Paul Blumenthal said in a release that accompanied this week’s report.
Indeed. Even President Obama’s pledge to put a stop to such insider influence quickly fell flat. After signing an executive order to that effect, the president granted a waiver to former Raytheon lobbyist William J. Lynn so he could become deputy secretary of defense. PolitiFact, a fact-checking project of the St. Petersburg Times, lists Obama’s campaign promise to close the revolving door as broken.
“Wall Street hires former members of Congress and their staff for a reason,” David Arkush of Public Citizen told The Washington Post. “These people are influential because they have personal relationships with current members and staff. It’s hard to say no to your friends, but that’s what Congress needs to do.”
Well, if it wants to pass any meaningful reforms, anyway.
Polls show anti-incumbent sentiment running deep as the mid-term elections approach, and the perception that Congress is in the pockets of entrenched special interests is fueling at least some of it. For good reason.
Given that, we think the smart move for congressional incumbents is to champion real reforms to stem insider influence and the effect of special-interest money in campaigns. One would be to create an ethics panel that is independent from Congress, rather than having Congress police itself.
Another would be to support a constitutional amendment to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court and limit the funding of political campaigns by corporate, union and other private, special interests.
Until then, the revolving door of influence and favors will keep on spinning. And the public interest will be left outside.
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