“Reverse Revolving Door”: Lobbyists Snag Top Staff Positions On Capitol Hill
In January shortly after being sworn into office, Congressman Rodney Davis, a freshman Republican who eked out a win with a margin of less than a thousand votes in Illinois last year, announced that he had received several plum committee assignments. His legislative portfolio includes subcommittees that oversee commodity regulations, nutritional programs, biotechnology, and, most importantly, the 2013 Farm Bill, which sets agriculture policy for the next five years.
One of his first steps in office? Davis hired Jen Daulby, the director of federal affairs for Land O’Lakes, one of the largest producers of milk and cheese in the country, to be his chief of staff. Disclosures show that just months ago, Daulby led a Land O’Lakes lobbying team that worked on the Farm Bill, genetically modified foods labeling, rules concerning pesticides and hazardous dust, and the new commodity regulations enacted by President Obama’s financial reform law, Dodd-Frank.
What a match.
In other words, Daulby’s past lobbying portfolio perfectly reflects the new responsibilities for Davis’ committee assignments, where he will have wide sway over policy. A former Monsanto lobbyist with previous experience on Capitol Hill for several other lawmakers, Daulby is one of many staffers who rotate back and forth between public service and influence peddling.
On Monday, The Nation posted an investigation of the “reverse revolving door” in Congress, by which lobbyists hired as senior-level congressional staffers receive substantial exit bonuses or other financial rewards from their employers shortly before they assume their new Congressional positions.
In Daulby’s case, Land O’Lakes provided a parting gift of a $35,772 bonus (in addition to her 2012 bonus) in the first few weeks of January. The Davis-Daulby story isn’t all that unusual.
The members of Congress who hire former lobbyists are often outspoken supporters of legislation also heartily endorsed by their new staffers’ previous employers.
Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the Homeland Security Committee, hired IBM lobbyist Alex Manning as his cybersecurity subcommittee staff director this year. On behalf of IBM last year, Manning worked to pass the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act (CISPA), legislation that provides broad powers to the government and to private corporations to gather private Internet user data. The ACLU—which has rallied against CISPA along with EFF, and many other civil liberties groups—called the bill a “flagrant violation of every American’s right to privacy.”
IBM, which sent nearly 200 executives to Washington to advocate on behalf of stronger cyber security laws like CISPA, has been one of the bill’s strongest supporters. CISPA passed the House in April. Representative Randy Hultgren (R-IL) recently hired Katherine McGuire, a CISPA-supporting lobbyist for the Business Software Alliance, as his chief of staff. Hultgren voted for the bill that passed last month.
Representative Fred Upton (R-MI), who is in his second term as chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, has a long history of employing lobbyists to staff his committee. When he gained the gavel after the midterm elections, Upton hired Gary Andres, a lobbyist for UnitedHealth Group and other corporate interests, as his staff director. In 2012, Upton announced that America’s Natural Gas Alliance lobbyist Tom Hassenboehler would be his new chief counsel to a subcommittee that oversees environmental regulations. As DeSmogBlog’s Steve Horn noted, Hassenboehler is a climate change denier who worked in previous years to block cap and trade legislation. Disclosures show Hassenboehler was paid by his former employer, a trade group for fracking and natural gas companies, to lobby on a number of environmental regulations, including EPA rules concerning fracking.
This phenomenon isn’t new. In the beginning of the last Congress, at least thirteen freshman lawmakers hired lobbyists as their chiefs of staff. The chiefs of staff for Senators Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio even came from the same lobbying firm.
How, exactly, are these lobbyists-turned-staffers influencing policy? While it is difficult to discern what goes on behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, it is part of the job description of lobbyists-turned-staffers to help lawmakers draft legislation, and the bills they produce reliably include big giveaways to corporate interests. Representative Davis’ office did not respond to a request for comment about his new chief, former Land O’Lakes lobbyist Jen Daulby. But in March, Davis signed onto a bill currently pushed by Land O’Lakes to roll back federal oversight of pesticide use.
By: Lee Fang, The Nation, May 9, 2013
“A Holiday Wish List For Congress”: Work In The Spirit Of The Season And Help Get The Country Back On Track
For many of us who give gifts at this time of year, the rituals put in perspective the differences between what we can afford, what we need, and what we want. Considering the nation is more than $16 trillion in debt and facing the so-called fiscal cliff of automatic across-the-board spending cuts and tax hikes, lawmakers need to concentrate on doing just what is needed.
With that in mind, here’s my suggested holiday wish list for Congress:
For many of us who give gifts at this time of year, the rituals put in perspective the differences between what we can afford, what we need, and what we want. Considering the nation is more than $16 trillion in debt and facing the so-called fiscal cliff of automatic across-the-board spending cuts and tax hikes, lawmakers need to concentrate on doing just what is needed.
With that in mind, here’s my suggested holiday wish list for Congress:
1. Peace and harmony. We can’t afford for the ideological differences between the political parties to paralyze us. Make a short term deal to prevent us from going over the fiscal cliff and set up the 113th Congress to succeed where the 112th Congress fell short. Here’s a suggestion on how to do that.
2. Fund only the defense we need. Every year, the defense budget is full of weapons and programs someone in Congress wants but that the Pentagon doesn’t need or want. Leaders as diverse as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright, and James Baker, along with former Defense Secretary Robert Gates say we can spend less on national security. And working with others, we at Taxpayers for Common Sense have provided a set of suggestions on where to cut defense spending.
3. Be good shepherd. The Farm Bill is one of the best examples of programs some people want, but we don’t need right now. It is hard to argue that with farm country seeing record profits the last few years we need to continue to provide massive crop insurance subsidies and other subsidy programs for farmers. What we absolutely don’t need is to have a trillion dollar farm bill shoe-horned into the last days of the 112th Congress.
4. Listen to the wise men—and women. In the last two years, wise men and women from former Sen. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to former Sen. Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin have laid out plans for long term restructuring of our budget and reduction of our debt. It’s time to listen to those ideas and set the stage for solving our fiscal problems.
5. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The tax code is riddled with loopholes and breaks that total more than $1 trillion in forgone revenue every year. It’s time for lawmakers to give taxpayers the gift of flatter, simpler, and fairer tax code that eliminates most of the breaks and generates the revenue to fund the government we need.
We know that Congress will be back at work even as many of us are enjoying time off with our families and we hope that each and every one of them can work in the spirit of the season and help get the country on track for a brighter fiscal future. That’s what America needs.
By: Ryan Alexander, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, December 24, 2012
“The Polar Express”: It’s A Wonder Anything Ever Gets Done In Congress
This is the season of Extreme Politics. Everything’s exciting. Mitt Romney paid taxes! Joe Biden just bought a 36-pound pumpkin! Paul Ryan is campaigning with his mom again!
Oh, and Congress is ready to go home to run for re-election. I know you were wondering.
“I haven’t had anybody in West Virginia tell me we should hurry home to campaign,” protested Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat.
This might be because Manchin is approximately 40 points ahead in the polls. He could probably spend the next month in a fallout shelter without anybody noticing. Nevertheless, he is so fearful of alienating conservatives that he refuses to say who has his support for president. There are only about five undecided voters left in this country and one of them is a senator from West Virginia.
The good news is that our lawmakers spent their last pre-election days in Washington working to pass a bill that would keep the government running for the next six months. This is sometimes referred to as a “continuing resolution,” and sometimes as “kicking the can down the road.” Personally, I am pretty relieved to see evidence that this group has the capacity to kick a can.
Let’s look at what else they were up to. This is important, partly because the last things you take up before going back to the voters shows something about your true priorities. Also partly because it will give me a chance to mention legislation involving 41 polar bear carcasses in Canadian freezers.
The Senate had a big agenda for its finale. Kicking the budget can down the road! Passing a resolution on Iran designed to demonstrate total support for whatever it is Israel thinks is a good idea! The Sportsmen’s Act!
O.K., the last one was sort of unexpected. It’s a bunch of hunting-and-fishing proposals, ranging from conservation to “allowing states to issue electronic duck stamps.” Also, allowing “polar bear trophies to be imported from a sport hunt in Canada.” A long while ago, some Americans legally hunted down said bears, happily envisioning the day when they could display a snarling head on the study wall, or perhaps stuff the entire carcass and stick it in the front hallway where it could perpetually rear on its hind legs, frightening away census-takers.
But then the United States prohibited the importation of dead polar bears, and there have been 41 bear carcasses stuck in Canadian freezers ever since.
Free the frozen polar bears! Well, not before November, since the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, dug in his heels, claiming the whole hunting bill was only coming up to help its main sponsor, Jon Tester of Montana, in a tight race. McConnell, who publicly set his own top policy priority as making sure Barack Obama didn’t get re-elected, hates naked partisanship.
The House, meanwhile, declined to take up two major bipartisan bills from the Senate. One was the farm bill, which Speaker John Boehner admitted he just couldn’t get his right wing to vote for despite pleas from endangered rural Republicans.
The other was aimed at reviving the teetering U.S. Postal Service, which is about to default again. “I hear from our Republican colleagues they didn’t want to force their folks to make difficult votes,” said Tom Carper, a lead Senate sponsor.
Really, there’s no excuse on this one. By the time a difficult issue has been turned into a bipartisan Senate bill, it’s no longer all that difficult. People, if you see a member of the House majority campaigning in your neighborhood, demand to know why the Postal Service didn’t get fixed.
Although on the plus side, the House did agree that the space astronauts should be allowed to keep some flight souvenirs.
One thing virtually nobody in the Senate considered a pre-election priority was spending hours and hours arguing about a proposal from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky to eliminate foreign aid to Libya, Pakistan and Egypt. However, in the grand tradition of the upper chamber, Paul had the power to hold up the crucial kicking-the-can bill hostage by threatening a filibuster if he didn’t get his way.
“He can keep us here for a week and a half if we don’t let him bring it up,” grumbled Senator Charles Schumer.
Rand Paul does this sort of thing all the time. Who among us can forget when he stalled the renewal of federal flood insurance under the theory that the Senate first needed to vote on whether life started at conception?
The majority leader, Harry Reid, pointed out repeatedly that he has had to struggle with 382 filibusters during his six years at the helm. “That’s 381 more filibusters than Lyndon Johnson faced,” he complained. Obviously, Robert Caro is never going to write a series of grand biographies about the life of Harry Reid.
It’s a wonder anything ever gets done. Although, actually, it generally doesn’t.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 21, 2012
“Congress Goes Postal”: A Full Agenda Of Futile Symbolic Votes, On The Rare Occasions It’s In Session
Congress is gone. Yeah, I miss them, too.
All the members are off on a five-week recess, after which they’ll return for a few days, then go away again, then hobble back as lame ducks. This is going to do terrible things to the Congressional approval rating, which had climbed all the way up to 17 percent at one point this year. Now it’s sunk to BP oil spill level, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re back to the point where poll respondents say they have a more favorable attitude toward “the U.S. becoming communist.”
You are probably wondering what your elected officials have been up to. Well, the best news is that House and Senate leaders worked out a plan to avoid a government shutdown for six more months by agreeing to just keep doing whatever it is we’re doing now.
This is known as “kicking the can down the road.” Failure to kick the can down the road can lead to “falling off the fiscal cliff.” There are so many of these crises looming that falling off a cliff should be reclassified as an Olympic event.
Just this week, Congress failed to protect the Postal Service from tumbling, and the service defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment for future retiree health benefits. It was the first time that the U.S. mail system failed to meet a financial obligation since Benjamin Franklin invented it.
The Postal Service has multiple financial problems, and, earlier this year, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to deal with them. It would not have fixed everything, or even resolved the question of whether the strapped agency would be allowed to discontinue Saturday mail delivery as a cost-savings measure. “It’s not perfect,” admitted Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, one of the sponsors.
At this point, the American public has been so beaten down by Congressional gridlock that “it’s not perfect” sounds fine. In fact, we’d generally be willing to settle for “it’s pretty terrible, but at least it’s something.”
The Senate plan would have definitely been preferable to the Postal Service default, which could be followed by an all-purpose running-out-of-cash later this fall. Carper was pretty confident that if the House passed a postal bill of any stripe, the two sides could work out a compromise during the long August vacation. That would presumably be a watered-down version of imperfection, which, as I said, is exactly what we’re currently dreaming about.
But the House leadership wouldn’t bring anything up for a vote. Speaker John Boehner never said why. Perhaps he was afraid voters would blame his members for the closing of underused post offices. There is nothing Congress cares more about than post offices, 38 of which the House has passed bills to rename over the past 18 months.
So, no Postal Service bill. You can’t deal with every single thing, and the House had a lot on its to-do list, such as voting to repeal the Obama health care law on 33 separate occasions.
Meanwhile, the national farm program was teetering on the cliff.
The farm bill has long been a classic Congressional compromise, combining aid to agriculture with the food stamp program, so there’s pretty much something for everybody. The Senate recently voted 64 to 35 to approve a new five-year authorization, which reformed some of the most egregious bad practices, like paying farmers not to grow crops. It was, I hardly need mention, not perfect.
Then, the House Agriculture Committee passed a bipartisan farm bill itself. Yes! In the House, people! Everybody was on board!
Then, the House leadership refused to allow it to go up for a vote. Boehner told reporters, “no decision has been made” about what to do next, without giving any hint as to when said decision might be coming along.
The problem appears to be Tea Party hatred for the food stamp program. But who knows? Boehner isn’t saying. Maybe his members want the power to rename the farms.
The House Agriculture Committee chairman, Frank Lucas, just kept making sad little noises. Lucas is from Oklahoma. His state is having a terrible drought. It’s been more than 100 degrees there forever. As a gesture of appeasement, the leadership did allow passage of a narrow bill providing disaster relief to cattle and sheep ranchers. The Senate dismissed it as too little, too late.
Meanwhile, several attempts to get a bill passed on cybersecurity for the nation’s power grid, water supply and financial systems failed entirely.
Maybe Congress will pick up the ball when it comes back to town for a couple of weeks this fall before the election. But it already has a full agenda of futile, symbolic votes plus the crucial kicking the can down the road.
Maybe it’s possible to have a negative approval rating.
By: Gail Collins, Op Ed Columnist, The Washington Post, August 3, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 
