The start of the 114th Congress means new members will be busy settling into their Capitol Hill offices. It also means a whole new batch of former lawmakers can cash out and settle on K Street. Officially, that is.
Lobbying restrictions on more than 100 former lawmakers and staff expired this week, but a report released on Tuesday by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics shows that several former Hill staffers have jumped the gun and are already peddling influence around town.
“Of the 104 former congressional members and staffers whose ‘cooling off’ period ends during the first session of the 114th Congress, which opens today, 29 are already in government relations, ‘public affairs’ or serve as counsel at a firm that lobbies,” the report found. It also noted that thirteen of those ex-officials “are even registered as lobbyists already, working to shape policy in Congress or the executive branch on behalf of paying clients.”
Although a 2007 ethics laws bars departing Senators from lobbying their former colleagues for two years after they leave office, the organizations warned that a “culture of shadow lobbying” has emerged since. In that environment, former legislators and their staffers have taken clout accrued from their time on the Hill and exerted it to shape legislation.
Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the former chair of the Senate Budget Committee who was instrumental in crafting the Affordable Care Act, left office in January 2013. Though lobbying restrictions on him are set to be lifted this week, the report pointed out that Conrad has been serving on the board of Fortune 500 company Genworth Financial since March of 2013. Conrad himself may have never picked up the phone, but during his lucrative tenure at Genworth, the company “reported lobbying Congress on Dodd-Frank implementation, long term insurance and bankruptcy law, among other things,” according to the study . Former Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who jumped ship before the start of the 113th Congress to become President of the influential conservative think tank and lobbying firm the Heritage Foundation, was also cited by Sunlight and the Center for Responsive Politics.
The report also called out former Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who both quickly joined lobbying firms after their 2013 departures.
While these actions might be technically legal, Sunlight and the Center for Responsive Politics said they seem to run afoul of the spirit of the law.
“The shackles, even while they’re on, are more spaghetti than steel,” the groups said.
Real the full report here.
