The continuing problem
of Congress members becoming lobbyists needs to end, writes columnist Scott Maxwell.
There’s a lot to dislike about Congress.
The lying. The gluttony. The betrayal. The fraud.
It’s basically like every single layer of Dante’s inferno jammed into one square mile on the banks of the Potomac.
But one of the longest-running problems in Washington, D.C., is the revolving door between the halls of Congress and the lobbying shops on K Street.
Members get elected and do favors for lobbyists, who then hire them to do same thing for the next crop.
It happens so often that the Center for Responsive Politics says that there are now 400 former members of Congress working as lobbyists.
That means we could practically fill Congress with former members of Congress who are now paid to lobby Congress. We could at least get solid quorums.
Many of the members-turnedlobbyists are high-profile names you’d recognize — Republicans such as John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Democrats such as
Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt. But many of them are also political nobodies — politicians who got elected for just a few terms, then quickly parlayed that experience into golden tickets in the lobbying corps.
They snagged a seat on a House banking or energy committee, did favors for banking or energy companies … then became banking or energy lobbyists.
These revolving doors swing on the greasiest of hinges — and it’s time to stop them once and for all.
Well, last week, a couple of freshman House members filed a bill to do just that.
Among other things, the “Faith in Congress Act” — sponsored by Winter Park Democrat Stephanie
Murphy and Pennsylvania Republican Brian Fitzpatrick — would enact a lifetime ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists.
Murphy says it’s overdue. She’s right. I’m pretty sure most of you think so, too. Heck, it’s part of the reason
Donald Trump was elected. He vowed to clamp down on Congress’s revolving door when he vowed to “drain the swamp” … an expression Nancy Pelosi used a decade before him when making similar vows of change.
We’ve been talking about this far too long. It’s time to actually pull the plug.
Now, Murphy’s and Fitzpatrick’s bill is certainly a long shot. And some may argue they filed it simply to pander for votes and media coverage.
Maybe so. That may have also be the case with State House Speaker
Richard Corcoran’s slimmeddown version of the same thing (a six-year lobbying ban for former legislators) when he proposed it for the Florida Legislature last session. But I supported that, too.
Some politicians howl that such a proposal would deny them a right to make a living.
Horse hockey. If there are