Former U.S. Lawmakers to Join Lobbyists
April 10th, 2009Via: Bloomberg:
Lobbying, scorned during the 2008 campaign, is an occupation of choice among former members of Congress looking for jobs.
Barack Obama shunned political contributions from lobbyists and, on his second day as president, announced new ethics rules to reduce their influence. Republican nominee John McCain disdained lobbyists as “birds of prey.”
Still, about one-quarter of the House and Senate members who retired or lost elections last year have found new jobs with lobbying firms, where business is booming as Obama pushes for multitrillion-dollar changes in federal banking, health care, energy and military procurement policies.
“Even though some people deplore lobbying, it’s still a growth profession,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow with the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group.
Law, lobbying and consulting firms have announced the hiring of at least 15 of 61 House and Senate members who left politics or were defeated in 2008.
The new hires include Jim McCrery of Louisiana, who was the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee before moving to Capitol Counsel LLC, where clients include Roche Holdings AG, the world’s biggest drugmaker by value. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican who sat on the Senate Finance Committee, joined the Covington & Burling LLP firm, which has advised the Investment Company Institute, the mutual-fund industry trade group.
New York Republican James Walsh, who retired in January after 20 years in Congress and joined the K&L Gates LLP law and lobbying firm, said companies have legitimate needs for experienced advisers.
‘Demagoguery Going On’
“There’s a lot of demagoguery going on,” said Walsh, 61, who spent 12 years in the House’s powerful “college of cardinals,” as appropriations subcommittee chairmen are known. “Politics is an honorable profession. This profession, consulting, can be also as long as you conduct yourself honorably.”
