American Magazine | Spring 2006
http://www.american.edu/american/fall06_kstreet.html
Reforming K Street
AU experts examine the influence, ethics, and uncertain future of lobbying
Jack Abramoff, black fedora perched atop his head, black trench coat fastened snugly around his body, emerged from U.S. District Court in Washington in early January after pleading guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. The disgraced defendant looked more like a mobster sent straight from central casting than a lobbyist, the profession in which he achieved fortune then infamy. It hardly seems possible for any defendant to have appeared more guilty, short of holding a smoking gun.
For millions throughout the country, Abramoff’s Corleone-inspired image has become the face of the lobbying industry, an unfortunate reality as unfair as Enron representing all of corporate America.
“Lobbying has always been misunderstood and negatively characterized,” exhorts Patrick Griffin, a lobbyist and academic director of AU’s Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute, which under the direction of AU distinguished
professor James Thurber has placed more than 140 former students in jobs on Capitol Hill. “It’s unseemly to some folks, but I think it has an important role in our system.”
Lobbyist Robert Healy, senior director for Wexler and Walker Public Policy Associates, defines that role this way: “In a formal sense, lobbying is kind of the midpoint between the constitutional right to petition your government and actually getting it done.”
What follows is an examination of the industry through the eyes of players with ties to AU. To a person they believe lobbying is a necessary but broken part of the political process, but one that is not damaged beyond repair. Here’s how they’d start fixing it.
The Academics
Shortly after Abramoff’s January 3 guilty plea, Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Rules, picked up the phone and called Professor James Thurber, Washington’s preeminent academic on lobbying. Dreier had just been tapped by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to spearhead the Republicans’ lobbying reform effort.
“He called me in the middle of my class and said, ‘Jim, can you come down here for lunch to talk to me about the bill?’” Thurber recalls. “I went down there . . . and we sat for two hours and went through the bill. I didn’t write the bill; I just jumped in to help out a bit. It’s the environment. It’s moving forward.”
Thurber, director of AU’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies (CCPS), started the Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute 14 years ago. The issues that surfaced with the Abramoff scandal have been fodder for his lectures for years.
“I talk about the law, but I also talk about the core of ethics and how, if you want to succeed in this town, you have to be a professional,” he says. “One thing you never do is lie. You never spin, even if it may go against your case. It’s important for students to struggle with those values related to advocacy. We have a democracy with First Amendment rights. We have freedom of speech, and we have to be very careful about restricting that. But you have to regulate yourself.”
Tom Susman is an attorney at Ropes and Gray, and an adjunct professor at AU’s Washington College of Law.
“The Abramoff issue is sort of at the heart of what’s of concern to people in the lobbying world, and that’s the relationship between money and influence,” he says. “He arranged for trips for members of Congress. He had people give campaign contributions to members. He circumvented the restrictions. You say all right, we have money and favors being requested and we have actions taken by officials; that goes on every day in Washington. The problem is that if you have things of value being given right about the time the favors are requested or action is taken, you raise an inference that there’s a quid pro quo. Are there likely large numbers of lobbyists doing exactly those same kinds of things? Yes, there are, but it’s very hard to prove.
“You need to draw clear lines for a workable way to separate money and influence, but you can’t get rid of either,” Susman says. “Influence is protected by the First Amendment, and frankly, so is money.”
Thurber would start by closing the revolving door that often leads from the floor of Congress to K Street. Forty-three percent of the 198 members who left Congress since 1998 and were eligible to lobby have done so. Prior to 1998, that figure was about 20 percent, Thurber said. Many reformers want to double, from one year to two, the “cooling off” period that bars former legislators from becoming registered lobbyists. In recent years, traffic along the Capitol to K Street corridor has increased markedly. The most prominent case might have been that of former congressman Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who in early 2004 stepped down as chairman of the House committee that regulates the pharmaceutical industry to become the new president and CEO of the drug industry’s top lobbying organization, drawing the ire of several Washington watchdog groups.
“It’s a sad commentary on politics in Washington that a member of Congress who pushed through a major piece of legislation benefiting the drug industry gets the job leading that industry,” Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook told USA Today in late 2004.
Tauzin was able to make this move by exploiting a loophole that allows former members to immediately head associations, as long as they don’t directly lobby members, Thurber said.
“I think it creates distrust in government by the American people,” he says. “We have a fragile democracy, and if you dissipate trust in democracy, it’s very hard then for the institution to implement policy and have it accepted. Most Americans think Congress is corrupt, that lobbyists are corrupt; they don’t think of it as First Amendment rights, and that’s bad. It undermines democracy, and I don’t think there’s anything bigger than that.”
Despite the lumps taken by the lobbying profession in recent months, Thurber remains convinced of its relevance in the legislative process, and continues to teach his students an honest and ethical lobbying model that he believes produces results.
“The most effective lobbyists in town have coalition building, advertising, they have blogs, Web sites, they use e-mail. They also have issue campaigns,” he says. “They [succeed] because they have grass roots, top roots, and Astroturf. Grass roots, they have people out there. Top roots, they can mobilize them. They have leaders out there, leaders in every little town in America. They have state offices everywhere. Astroturf, that means fake top roots. They can mobilize people. They are most effective, not because of money, but because of people. People can vote.
“If you want to have a successful lobbying operation, grass roots, top roots, and Astroturf is one of the most effective ways because you’re going to scare somebody, and they’re going to think that they’re not going to get reelected if there’s a whole lot of organized people in the district,” Thurber says, his voice growing with excitement. “That’s the ultimate power in a democracy, to fire somebody, not to reelect them.
“Every generation that comes along seems to distrust Congress more and more. We need to have more transparency, and have people start to trust the process, and know that most people are clean, they’re not pushing the line.”
The Legislators
Fore!
In the halls of Congress, it’s an open secret that members often return from official travel having accomplished little more than shaving a few strokes off their handicaps. Among the first transgressions to emerge from investigations into Abramoff was a golf trip he apparently funded to St. Andrews Links in Scotland, known as the home of golf.
“Members are invited to speak at very nice locales all the time, particularly those who play golf,” says former congressman Martin Frost (D-Texas), a research fellow with CCPS. “There are many speaking events held where there are nice golf
courses, it’s just a matter of how much time you spend actually working and how much time you spend on the links.”
As a longtime staffer on Capitol Hill, Hugh Halpern ’91, ’92 has taken pri-
vately funded trips with legislators. He’s now Dreier’s chief staffer on the House Committee on Rules.
“Travel is a huge problem area,” Halpern says. “I think that’s evident in that the Speaker and Chairman Dreier came out with their view that there probably should be a ban on privately funded travel. It’s not something that’s hugely popular, but the problem is how do you tell the difference between the ‘good’ travel and the ‘bad’ travel? I’ve been up here almost 20 years and I’ve done both. I’ve done far more of the good stuff when you’re out there learning about the issues.
I served for four years on the Financial Services Committee, and you don’t understand how financial markets work until you’ve stood on the floor of the stock exchange in New York City. That’s something you can’t do behind a desk in Washington.”
When Frost served in Congress, from 1979 to 2005, he attempted to limit his travel to daylong excursions.
“I think the harm is that people with a special interest in a particular legislative point of view get to spend quality time with a member that the average public does not. I’ve come along to the view that we should eliminate all privately funded travel. It should either be paid for by the federal government, which [members] have to justify to [their] constituents, or paid for out of campaign funds.”
Former congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), who was awarded a distinguished public service award last year in honor of CCPS’s 25th anniversary, has arrived at the same conclusion.
“It should be said up front that trips by lawmakers [are] very good things,” he said during a January CCPS forum on lobbying reform. “I think you can get a lot of insight by getting out there and poking around. I think there’s good travel and there’s bad travel that serves a recreational purpose or the interests of those who are bankrolling it. If a member of Congress needs to travel, the United States government should pay for it. If a trip is not important enough for the United States government to pay for, it is probably not important enough to the people’s business.”
Under the current rules, private groups—but not registered lobbyists—can fund congressional information-gathering junkets. Often, these trips are taken to major metropolitan cities or balmy warm weather locales in the dead of Washington’s winter. Additionally, members are permitted to fly on private jets as long as they pay a first-class airfare, which is substantially less than the price of the charter flight. Hamilton, who after serving 34 years in the House now directs the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, believes all the trips can have a damaging effect.
“They control your life; they control the agenda; they control the schedule,” he says of the groups that foot the bill. “It gives the special interests a huge advantage in the legislative process.”
After initial pledges of bipartisanship, in February fractures began to emerge among party lines, with each party angling to cast itself as “reformers.” Democrats, for example, wanted to prohibit lobbyists from paying for any meals for members, while Republicans wanted to reduce the gift limit from $50 to $20.
“Real reform means eliminating all gifts and meals from lobbyists, not just expensive ones,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said at the January forum, just days before he got into a very public spat with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over the issue. “Ninety-five percent of the American public spends less than $20 on lunch. I get paid enough to buy my own lunch.”
The Lobbyists
Before he became a punch line for late night TV show jokes and a cover boy for the perils of greed, Jack Abramoff lived in the rarified air of the glitzy world of Washington lobbying. He owned a restaurant at which he wined and dined clients, could often be spotted at professional sporting events, and was not bashful about flashing money in front of friends and associates. But as quickly as Abramoff seemed to have arrived on the Washington lobbying scene, he lost his way.
“Abramoff wrote the book and signed it and provided members of Congress a road map on how to get around all of these things if they want to,” says Healy, a CCPS research fellow.
Congress’s record in policing itself in regard to lobbying is abysmal. Thurber said he knows of no prosecutions or civil penalties assessed to any member since the Lobbying Disclosure Act took effect in 1995, and the House Ethics Committee, charged with enforcing the rules, has been paralyzed by partisan bickering. That’s prompted many, like Frost, to support the creation of an independent, nonpartisan integrity department to police the dealings of lobbyists and members.
But Healy believes altering the relationship between lobbying and campaign fund raising provides the most reform bang for the buck.
“If I could wave the magic wand and make one thing happen today, it would be to do away with campaign finance and institute public financing at all levels for federal elections,” he says. “We’ve been tweaking regulations for a long time now, and it hasn’t changed anything . . . If the members of Congress are serious, there really is only one place to go and that is public financing.”
The cost of running for Congress has skyrocketed over the last 15 years. In 1990 congressional races considered competitive, victorious incumbents spent an average of $607,000, as compared to $1.44 million a decade later, according to the Campaign Finance Institute.
The Center for Public Integrity reported that federally registered lobbyists have served as the treasurers of at least 868 political action committees (PACs) since 1998. These committees spent more than $525 million to influence the political process.
“We need to have a big picture look at this thing,” Healy says. “In the world of lobbying, most Americans would like to think that things happen automatically, but we all know that they don’t. So the clash between the ideal and the real tends to be disturbing at times. I think lobbying will probably always have a certain degree of question marks around it because it deals with power, questions of influence, unequal access, all the kinds of things that most people in a democratic society don’t want to believe exist but do.”
Like Thurber, Griffin remains confident that lobbying, done right, can have an enlightening effect upon the legislative process.
“You educate people, you build political support back home, you build it here, you work grass roots, you maybe even buy some advertising, you make a public argument,” he says. “There are lots of tools you can bring to bear on your agenda.”
The Reformers
The 85-year-old League of Women Voters is a grassroots organization with more than 900 state and local chapters. The group takes an official position on about 40 issues and employs a lobbying army of . . . two.
“We don’t give anybody any money; we don’t take anybody out to lunch; we don’t have a private airplane,” says Nancy Tate, the league’s executive director and a member of AU’s School of Public Affairs advisory council. “We’re just trying to have the views of the members expressed. One of the things that members of Congress respond particularly well to is their constituents. Because we have 900 local leagues that are in lots of people’s jurisdictions, it means something [to a Congressman] to get a letter.”
The strategy sounds as if it was taken directly from Thurber’s blueprint. Because it plays by the rules and has an interest in democracy and issues, and not partisan politics, the league is leading the fight for reform in Congress. It has partnered with a number of other nonprofits in supporting an elimination of privately funded travel, a gift ban, the creation of an outside entity to enforce the rules, and an increase in disclosure and reporting.
“Really this is all about money, and that’s been going on for a very long time,” Tate says. “People with money, special interests, are able to think of better ways to influence the process, and members of Congress are encouraging them. A lot of the members bear responsibility, people aren’t just coming up to them in a garage and slipping them an envelope. The main thing that certainly applies to the members of the House is that the purpose of these gifts is to help the incumbent get reelected. The challengers don’t have a chance.”
The league wants to prohibit lobbyists from serving as officials on candidates’ campaign committees, in hopes of breaking incumbents’ strangleholds on offices. Of the 435 House races, only about 40 will be competitive come November, Tate said.
“No matter who you want, it’s always weighted to the incumbent,” she says. “In that sense, your vote doesn’t count; you’re going to get the incumbent nine times out of 10.”
If Fred Turner ’93 ’95, Rep. Alcee Hastings’s (D-Fla.) chief of staff, could snap his fingers and miraculously institute one change, he, too, would look to limit lobbyists’ ability to raise money for candidates.
“If you had public financing of campaigns and you eliminated PACs, lobbyists’ power would be based on the strengths of their arguments and not the size of their checkbooks,” he says. “Of course, that’s the most controversial [proposal] and the least likely to happen.”
Standing in the lobby of the Willard Intercontinental Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, where President Ulysses S. Grant supposedly coined the term “lobbying” more than a century ago, Thurber remains optimistic about the future of the profession he has grown to love.
“I think reforms will go through, and there will be a little more transparency and a little more enforcement. It will not hurt the industry or profession for our students,” he says, marble pillars and the hustle and bustle of institutional Washington surrounding him. “It’s a growth industry, because there’s complexity in the world that requires expertise and advocacy.”
The Process
Lobbyists serve as a vital cog of the democratic engine, plugging away on behalf of varying segments of the American public. To see exactly how, simply pop the hood and peer in.
In the second half of 2003, AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, shelled out $16.38 million for lobbying, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.com. The overwhelming majority of those funds went to lend support to the controversial Medicare reform bill that President Bush ultimately signed into law. One point on which the bill’s proponents and detractors agree: without AARP’s effort, which included a television advertising campaign, the legislation probably would not have seen the light of day.
Whether the $400 billion bill was good public policy is neither here nor there when the question being considered is the effect of lobbying on its fate. With 35 million members and a bevy of seasoned lobbyists on Capitol Hill, AARP provided the political muscle needed to push the measure past the finish line.
Walk up to most anyone on the street and they’ll likely have an opinion on at least one hot button topic of the day. But how many actually act to ensure that their voice is heard?
Fred Turner ’93, ’95 is chief of staff for Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.). Each week Hastings’s office hears from more than 1,000 constituents, an impressive figure until you consider that Hastings represents more than 700,000 people in his district. Who then speaks for those who may be interested if not involved?
Enter lobbyists, who unite the power of similarly minded citizens, corporations, or foreign governments to influence those in power. It’s an industry that has been steadily growing for decades, but has undergone a dramatic explosion in the last five years. Since 2000, the number of registered lobbyists has more than doubled, to 34,785, and spending on federal lobbying has jumped 30 percent, reaching a reported $2.1 billion last year. That’s a substantial amount of cash, for sure, enough to pay each member of Congress about $470,000 per month.
Those numbers are staggering and make it easy to grasp the impact both ethical and unscrupulous lobbyists can have on policy in this country. The Abramoff scandal sparked outrage among the punditry and populace, and both Republicans and Democrats responded by offering up reform proposals designed to curb the influence lobbyists can have on politicians.
In late March, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill requiring lobbyists to provide more information on their dealings with legislators. But the measure was criticized by several watchdog groups who called it weak, and as American magazine went to press the House had yet to pass its own bill, leading some to wonder whether Congress is capable of fixing a system that in many ways benefits itself.
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