Posts Tagged ‘legislation’

Jack Abramoff’s Guide To Buying Congressmen

Disgraced Washington, DC superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, released from jail in June, has a few suggestions for lobbying reform. He should know. Most of this stuff is primarily applicable to the US, but in the Netherlands too, the donation system is vague and the revolving door (the practice of former public officials getting high-paid jobs at companies they used to regulate) is unfortunately a very prominent aspect of political life. As witnessed by certain ministers of Transportation becoming directors of major airline companies.

From an interview with Abramoff:

Disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff is out of jail. He was released in June. He now works as an accountant at a kosher pizza parlor. And he needs a literary agent. “I was actually thinking of writing a book,” he told “60 Minutes.” “The Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Congressman.”

In the interview, Abramoff gives away some of the tricks of his former trade. The big one? Dangle a job, he told Lesley Stahl. “When we would become friendly with an office and they were important to us, and the chief of staff was a competent person, I would say or my staff would say to him or her at some point, ‘You know, when you’re done working on the Hill, we’d very much like you to consider coming to work for us.’ Now the moment I said that to them or any of our staff said that to ’em, that was it. We owned them. And what does that mean? Every request from our office, every request of our clients, everything that we want, they’re gonna do. And not only that, they’re gonna think of things we can’t think of to do.”

Abramoff had softer methods, too. “I spent over a million dollars a year on tickets to sporting events and concerts and whatnot at all the venues,” he says. “I had two people on my staff whose virtual full-time job was booking tickets. We were Ticketmaster for these guys.”

Once the key staffers or legislators were bought, the trick was getting clients what they wanted without attracting attention. “So what we did was we crafted language that was so obscure, so confusing, so uninformative, but so precise.” The following line of text, for instance, quietly won Abramoff’s Native American clients a casino license: “Public law 100-89 is amended by striking section 207 (101 stat. 668, 672).”

From his book on tips for lobbying reform:

Ban donations from lobbyists and those who receive public funds. “Instead of limiting the size of every American’s political contribution, we need to entirely eliminate any contribution by those lobbying the government, participating in a federal contract, or otherwise financially benefiting from public funds. If you get money or perks from elected officials — be ‘you’ a company, a union, an association, a law firm, or an individual — you shouldn’t be permitted to give them so much as one dollar.

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No gifts. “Not only should lobbyists be banned from contributing to officials’ organizations and campaign funds, they should be banned from gift-giving as well.

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Stop the revolving door altogether. “Next, the lure of post-public service lobbying employment needs to be eliminated. The revolving door is one of the greatest sources of corruption in government. If you choose to serve in Congress or on a congressional staff, you should be barred for life from working for any company, organization, or association which lobbies the federal government. That may seem harsh — and it is. But there’s a reason. Congressmen know better than anyone how to get around a ban on lobbying. They ‘consult.’ What’s the difference? If you lobby, you officially try to persuade a representative or staff. If you consult, you call the representative to say hello and ask that representative to meet with you new partner at the law firm. You don’t lobby. Your partner lobbies. Does anyone believe the representative doesn’t get that joke?”

Tags: Camiel Eurlings, Congress, Congressmen, corruption, donations, gifts, House of Representatives, Jack Abramoff, legislation, lobbying, lobbyists, political system, regulation, revolving door, tickets, U.S. Senate, Washington DC
Category U.S. politics |

The 111th Congress Got Things Done

Ezra Klein argues (and I see that argument a lot) that the last Congress was one of the most productive ones in history. A victory of policy over politics. The question how that resonates with the public, now or in the future, is another one.

Ezra Klein:

But if you see the point of politics as actually getting things done, the last two years, for Democrats, have been a stunning, historic success. Whatever else you can say about the 111th Congress, it got things done.

There was health-care reform, of course. The bill is projected to cover 32 million Americans (lifting us above 95 percent insured) while cutting the deficit by about $140 billion in the first 10 years — and by more after that. It creates competitive insurance markets in every state and ends the days in which insurers could turn you away or jack up your premiums because you have preexisting conditions. It empowers an independent commission to cut Medicare’s costs and begins to ratchet back the tax break for employer-sponsored health-care insurance that’s been at the root of many of our system’s dysfunctions.

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There was financial regulation, too. If you were looking for a bill that reformed the financial-services sector, as I was, Dodd-Frank probably didn’t go as far as you hoped. But it did what it set out to do, creating a 21st century financial-regulation system that now includes a regulator for the consumer-financial products that filled the bubble, a systemic-risk regulator able to watch the institutions that turned the bubble into a crisis, and an array of new methods and powers that can be used to take down the firms that pose a threat to the system.

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Then there was the stimulus. Too small? Absolutely. Were there votes to make it much bigger? Probably not. And even putting aside the economic relief that the expansions of Medicaid, COBRA, food stamps, tax cuts and unemployment benefits gave to millions of Americans, or the millions of jobs the Congressional Budget Office estimates the legislation created or saved, there were the investments designed to pay dividends down the road.

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And those are just the big bills: The 111th Congress also passed Ted Kennedy’s national service legislation, and the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program to four million more kids, and new regulations on tobacco, and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

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[Reasonable] people disagree on whether these bills were worth doing in the first place – on whether the government should do more to regulate the financial sector, or stimulate the economy, or expand health-care insurance. It’s entirely possible to believe the 111th Congress did a lot, and most of it was bad.

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But if they failed as politicians, they succeeded as legislators. And legislating is, at least in theory, what they came to Washington to do.

Tags: 111th Congress, Congress, Democratic Party, financial regulation, health care reform, legislation, policy, stimulus
Category U.S. politics |