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tom daschle
Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz Agree: The Revolving Door Between Congress and Washington's Lobby Industry Has Got to Go
"Retired or defeated lawmakers should not serve as chaperones for corporate interests who are trying to write federal policy in their favor."
Cruz and Ocasio-Cortez got into a surprisingly friendly chat on social media yesterday after we at Public Citizen released a report documenting the stark reality that nearly two-thirds of recently retired or defeated U.S. lawmakers who are no longer in government or politics have landed jobs influencing federal policy.
Some examples:
- Former U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), defeated by Ocasio-Cortez, now works for lobbying giant Squire Patton Boggs
- Former U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), now works for lobbying firm Akin Gump, where he is registered to lobby in favor of the same controversial copper and gold mine in Alaska that he pushed for while in Congress
- Former Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), launched her own lobbying firm before she even left Congress
- Former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) left his lobbying job at Covington & Burling to serve in the Senate for only four months after the death of Sen. John McCain. Kyl then returned to Covington with his Senate contacts refreshed
It's great to see that both Cruz and Ocasio-Cortez are appalled and think there should be a complete ban on former members of Congress becoming lobbyists. This a position shared by a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) Sens. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Better still, after Ocasio-Cortez and Cruz's unexpected breakout of comity, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), former chief of staff for Cruz, also chimed in with support.
By going through Washington's "revolving door," lawmakers are effectively trading in on their relationships and knowledge to help companies profit and to enrich themselves - a pattern that has been in place for many years.
Currently, federal ethics laws provide minimal protections against influence-peddling by former members of Congress. Former members of the House of Representatives are barred from making lobbying contacts with their ex-colleagues for one year. A two-year ban applies to former Senate lawmakers.
However, loopholes in the ethics laws diminish the impact of these modest "cooling off" periods. For example, former lawmakers can immediately turn around and lobby executive agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Federal Trade Commission or the Food and Drug Administration so long as they do not lobby Congress.
"The unexpected agreement between of left and right exposes a fundamental truth about our politics: Americans of all political stripes have a healthy distrust for concentrated power and want fundamental and far-reaching reforms to our corrupt political system."
Former lawmakers are also able to brand themselves as "strategic consultants" who advise registered lobbyists on strategies for approaching lawmakers, but do not make lobbying contacts with lawmakers themselves.
Nicknamed the Daschle loophole--after former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) who worked for several major Washington, D.C., law and lobbying firms for more than a decade but did not register as a lobbyist until 2016--this dodge is a common way to meet the technical requirements of the law while ignoring the law's intended purpose.
In 2013, after leaving the Senate to join Covington & Burling for the first time, John Kyl told the Washington Post that there is a "a huge amount of work that can be done" legally even while restricted by a two-year cooling off period. "I can provide my insights into the people and process on Capitol Hill for them to take advantage of in the lobbying they do," Kyl said at the time.
If Congress wants to impose a lifetime ban on lobbying, that would be great. But at the very least, lawmakers can develop effective policies to rein in the most egregious revolving door abuses, such as much longer "cooling off" periods for former members of Congress and the Executive Branch, and end to loopholes that render lobbying regulations next to meaningless.
The For the People Act (H.R. 1), which passed the House of Representatives in March, enacts sweeping reforms that would raise ethics standards at all levels of government. Importantly, H.R. 1 would define "strategic consulting" as lobbying for former members of Congress, subjecting this activity to the existing revolving door restrictions.
The legislation would also bar former executive branch officials from engaging in "strategic consulting" on behalf of a lobbying campaign as well as making direct lobbying contacts for two years after leaving government service.
No lawmaker should be cashing in on their public service and selling their contacts and expertise to the highest bidder. Retired or defeated lawmakers should not serve as chaperones for corporate interests who are trying to write federal policy in their favor.
The unexpected agreement between of left and right exposes a fundamental truth about our politics: Americans of all political stripes have a healthy distrust for concentrated power and want fundamental and far-reaching reforms to our corrupt political system.
I Let You Down: A Public Apology to Michael Moore
One would have thought that Bernie's fabulous primary campaign and the raising of the issue of healthcare as a human right would have helped advance the chances for single-payer reform. Not so far. The Democratic Party platform with its "most progressive platform ever" includes an agreed upon (by both Hillary's and Bernie's campaign) healthcare position that at its aspirational best falls far short of single-payer. Critical to me is the fact that even if that platform plank became real policy - a very long shot - it will be too late for people like me.
My Facebook status this morning says it best:
The clock is ticking for me and millions of others in my age group. As insurers fall away from the ACA exchanges, the remaining insurance plans will have sky-high, age-rated premiums few will be able to afford. 135 days from now. 135 days. I will be priced out of health insurance. Weeded out as too old and costly for the CEO's to risk covering. They are doing their jobs -- so we cannot really blame them, can we? Larry and I discussed options. None are good. Medicaid? Nope. I have to earn enough to keep the bills paid and that puts us above the meager income level for Medicaid. Thank god Larry is covered by Medicare so no worries there. (For my atheist friends I left the god lower case so as not to indicate any reliance on anything outside of myself to solve my own damn problem. Trust me, I know god is not helping me with this. This is a human created, intentional and well considered position our society has taken with regard to aging people and their healthcare access.) Between now and January 1, 2017, I will continue to fight like hell for single-payer, Medicare for all for the future. Tick tock, tick tock. We'll need a very prominent death or better yet thousands of prominent deaths of 55+ aged people who couldn't access care for lack of money and coverage to keep the pressure on, but I have no illusions. There is no change to the ACA and no plan currently under consideration that will stop the tick tock of the clock for millions of us 55-65 years old. We've already been marked as expendable. And maybe we are. After all, no one is seriously raising the issue aside from expendables like me, and who listens to someone already marked as unimportant? Oh, I will write about it, and I will squawk. People will roll their eyes and wish I would just shut up. Others will lecture me on my failings or on holistic medicine. All of their eye rolls and lectures will hit home. I am acutely aware of all of my flaws. I am not that ignorant. The system is a representation of what we as a society collectively value -- and trust me, it ain't me. After all, by my age if I had worked as hard as those CEOs worked or even as hard as many reading this message have worked, none of this would be happening to me, right? Right. I get it. I am a part of this sick, selfish, ugly mess of a system. And I will keep trying so long as I am relevant. Once my value to being part changing this mess is gone, there will be nothing left. Happy Friday, all. 135 days to go.
So, Michael, you may see more blogs from me, and maybe you will see some of the work my organization, Progressive Democrats of America, will be doing to keep pushing to move forward on this and other social justice issues. My goal is to help infuse more of our younger membership in political advocacy as our generation fades into the sunset. I am so very grateful so many younger people got involved with Bernie's campaign, as I know you must be too.
But, please do not see my impending collapse, my failure to actually make change happen as any reflection on your work to tell my story and the stories of so many others hurt by an unjust system. Having a nine-year run at pushing with every ounce of energy and intensity I could bring was pretty good, I would say. And you were always in the background, cheering and lifting those of us who kept fighting on. To my sisters and brothers who were in SiCKO with me, I am also letting you down by not ultimately being able to solve much of anything for any of us. That was never my intent.
I still value what I said in my Congressional testimony and what is entered into the Congressional Record from July 17, 2007:
I dedicate this testimony to my brave husband and three other Americans who gave me the courage to tell this story to millions and the conviction that it can do some good:
To my late father, Howard Boyles, who proudly served his nation in the United States Army during World War II and who told me that people have died to protect my right and responsibility to speak up; to Sen. Tom Daschle, who took interest in my family and who spoke up in spite of political consequences; and to an Eagle Scout from Flint, Michigan, named Michael Moore who restored my dignity and my voice on a movie screen in Manhattan and is keeping his Scout's promise to better his community and his nation.
Because my access to healthcare will be winding down before I was able to see the fight through to actually achieve healthcare justice, others with adequate health, adequate healthcare access, solid incomes, and with a conscience will no doubt carry on. I just wanted you know I tried really hard to do better. I thank you, Michael, and I am so very sorry I let you down. And the answer to that question posed by my own son finally comes. What do we do with people like me? This system is just plain kicking my ass.
Republicans Sabotaging, Not Governing. This Is Who They Are Now.
The Ugly (and Bloody) Side of D.C.'s Corporate Bipartisanship
The US Chamber of Commerce's Multimillion-Dollar Attack Plan
"Obamacare will be a nightmare for Florida seniors," a grim voiceover announces. "Did Bill Nelson consider the consequences when he cast a deciding vote for Obamacare?"
"Tell Jon Tester: the Washington way isn't the solution," another intones. "We need less government and lower taxes."
"Sherrod," a third asks, referring to Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, "what planet are you on?"
If you live in a state where a competitive race could help tip the balance in the Senate this fall, you've almost certainly seen ads like these, laden with menacing theme music, light on the facts and funded by the US Chamber of Commerce. The nation's largest business lobby is showcasing bold ambitions this year in an effort to build on gains made in the 2010 midterms, when at least $33 million of Chamber advertising helped push the nation dramatically rightward. The group began placing ads in swing districts as early as November 2011. Since then, it has rolled out a campaign aimed at influencing at least fifty House and eight Senate races, and according to Politico it has set a goal of $100 million in spending for this electoral cycle.
A Very Sick Country
That is so fitting.
More than that, it is also a reminder of just how sick this country truly is. Imagine that the lab returned the results from your battery of blood work tests, and all the indicators were screaming out "Danger!" and "Broken!". That's us, baby. Get this patient to the ER!
What a total disaster.
The first indicator of how unhealthy we are as a country - literally and figuratively - is the fact that we still don't have universal health care here in the wealthiest place on Earth. It's been more than century since the welfare state - a system in which the national government assumes responsibility, as an agent of the national will, for guaranteeing certain benefits and protections to its citizenry - was invented, and, unlike every other developed country in the world, the richest one still doesn't come close to having universal care for our public, including millions of children. It's a crime - there's no other word for it - of astonishing proportions . But it gets worse. We pay more than half-again per capita above the cost of the next most expensive system in the world, and still one-sixth of our population remains completely uninsured, with many more poorly insured. Nice.
By the way, it's worth noting that the guy who originally launched the welfare state was none other than the regressive and aggressive old Prussian chancellor himself, Otto von Bismarck. Golly, I don't mean to be critical or anything, but you know you're hurting when your country's politics are to the right of the "blood and iron" father of the German Empire. Just saying...
I'll hold my gauze-packed nose in a vise-grip and give Obama a little bit of credit for addressing the issue. But the way he went about it constitutes the original sin that will have brought us to the place of almost complete disaster after the rump Court finishes its ideological hijack. To begin with, Obama looked at the existing disaster of regressive health care policy - the joys of commercializing and profitizing the public's need for medicine - and then decided to promulgate the next most conservative option he could come up with, one which commercializes and profitizes medicine even more. He could have gone for single payer - that is, Medicare for all - which is only the system employed by just about every other developed country in the world, all of whom, naturally, are more highly ranked by the World Health Organization on delivery of health care. Yes, yes, I know. All the Obama apologists out there say this was politically impossible. Maybe that's true. But maybe it's not. The presidency is all about persuasion. If the punk Bush could sell the insane Iraq war, which in fact he did to an originally skeptical public, perhaps Obama could have talked sense to America about health care, and moved people enough to force action out of Congress. Or, short of that, he might at least have demanded that the public option be part of the legislation, the next best choice.
What he did instead was to pretend to care about a public option, in order to keep stupid liberals on board, while he cut a secret deal with the parasitic insurance industry guaranteeing their profits and promising there would be no public option in the bill. That isn't reckless surmise. Tom Daschle, Obama's political mentor and health care point man, wrote that the president did just that. Then he adopted a model for his plan that was so conservative it had originally been put forth by the Heritage Foundation, was a plank in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, and had already been implemented by Mitt Romney (who, in case you hadn't heard, is a Republican - though he can be whatever you need him to be, as long as you make him president) in Massachusetts, in addition to being blessed by that bastion of progressivism, the insurance industry. Hey, what's that old line about reposing with canines...?
Obama compounded his sell-out to the one percent by not selling his legislation to the ninety-nine percent. Polls show that most Americans don't understand the legislation - today, three years after the extended sausage-making process that produced it - and most favor repeal. What's astonishing about that latter fact is that, even though the bill is deeply flawed, it provides pretty much nothing but good news for American citizens. Opposing it - unless you're opposed to the 99 percent getting a fair shake (hmmm?, who could those opponents be?) or you're just dead-set on seeing this president fail (hmmm? again) - is like opposing free chocolate sundaes or bonus checks from your employer. When you can't sell Christmas to a six year-old, maybe you should get out of the Santa business, eh?
Obama appears to have also been the last person in America to understand the vicious nature of today's so-called conservatives. Generally, I think his incompetence as president is overstated. Too often, it's the excuse suckered liberals give themselves for the cognitive dissonance they experience when they look at how corporate and conservative and militant and statist their hero's actual policies are. But health care may be a case where this is an accurate portrait. I suspect he was actually dumb enough - as if he, like Sarah Palin, had simply not been paying the remotest attention to the government shutdowns, the impeachment of Clinton, the 2000 election, the Swiftboating of John Kerry and Max Cleland, and the rest of American history these last thirty years - to believe that he could find some moderate Republicans, compromise with them and get their vote. And I also think he is the most inept owner of the bully pulpit since George III. All during the year (year!) of legislating health care, this administration completely ceded the high ground, low ground, and everything in-between ground to the bellowing, foaming-at-the-mouth, blatantly lying (remember death panels?), corporate-sponsored, Koch Brothers-funded, Tea Party idiot right. And all during this last year they've done exactly the same thing while the four or six or ten Republican presidential candidates running at any given time have trashed the bill relentlessly, with nary a counter peep from Barack and his communications wizards. Gee, is it shocking under those conditions that the American public doesn't understand the bill, or that they oppose it? Is it such a leap to imagine that such public sentiments have given license (as if they needed it) to the same five hacks-in-black-robes who gave us Bush v. Gore and Citizens United to legislate from the bench as the most activist court in perhaps all of American history and strike down the legislation wholesale?
Which brings us to even deeper maladies being suffered by the body politic. This debacle demonstrates in full the degree to which the American political system is completely broken. But, alas, not in the way people think, which leads to the possibility (and, given the events of the last thirty years, the likelihood) that in the coming years we will simply compound our problems in response to these indicators, by simply going further in the direction of our systemic carnage, rather than running as fast as we can the other way. There are four main issues here, and none of them are peripheral or symptomatic - each of these go to the core dysfunctionality of the American political system. They are: the American presidential system, its electoral system, the extensive use of judicial review, and the kleptocratic ownership of the state.
Americans revere their Constitution, but they mostly don't know why. Just like we grow up Catholics or Mets fans or anti-communists, we just by-and-large think what we're told to think and do what we're told to do, never stopping to ask the big Why? questions. As a political scientist, I do admire certain feats of engineering embodied in the Constitution, and the clever solutions these provided to otherwise intractable problems at the time of the Founders. And as a citizen, I admire parts of the document - such as the Bill of Rights - very much, especially given the era from which they emerged.
However, one of the handful of most salient ideas of the Constitution is a bad one, as has becomes increasingly evident in our time for anyone who cares to look. This is the notion of separation of powers, along with the twin concept of checks and balances. I suspect most Americans don't even realize that you don't have to structure your political regime this way in order to have a democracy, and in fact, most democracies don't. They use a parliamentary system instead, rather than our model, which is referred to as a presidential system. What's the difference? Well, in a parliamentary system, you have one singular government responsible for governing. The executive function (prime minister and cabinet) emerges directly out of the legislative function (parliament) to which it is permanently fused, and, meanwhile, there typically is no judiciary with the power to speak to legislative matters. That means, quite simply, that the undivided government governs, unimpeded by anything other than the criticisms of the media and the opposition, and how its work plays with public opinion. It gets things done - none of the divided government plaguing the American system so badly today - and if the public approves, it gets another term. If not, it doesn't.
It's a simple straightforward concept that fully embodies the notion of responsible government, thus permitting accountability and, ultimately, real functioning democracy. Contrast that with the American system. Is there anybody in the US who isn't unhappy with the current government? Maybe that one guy in Nebraska, but he's been off his meds for years now. Or the woman in Florida with the sixty-seven cats. Otherwise, though, the remaining three hundred million of us are pretty much sickened by Washington. So what do we do? Well, throw the bums out, of course, and replace them with some new bums. But think about what that would mean today. We would be replacing a Republican House with a Democratic one, a Democratic Senate (with an insufficiently large enough majority to do anything) with a Republican Senate of the same gridlocked structure, and a right-wing Democratic president with a Republican president. Wow! That'd be a relief, eh?! What a difference that would make! What a prescription for boldly launching the future!
We are, of course, a million miles away from shredding the worshiped Constitution (and a change of this magnitude to such a core item would indeed represent something of a shred, starting with Articles One, Two and Three), and even further from possibly imagining that foreign people - let alone those squishy European bastards who inconveniently live healthier, happier and longer lives - could teach us anything about anything. But, that said - since we're just talking among friends here - one of the greatest gifts we could give ourselves at this point would be a parliamentary system and the gift of responsible government. Then, when we're not happy with any particular government we've got, we can make a change at the ballot box which might actually result in a genuine change of direction.
Assuming, that is, that there is an alternative to be chosen. If, on the other hand, you have an electoral system like ours, you can have parliamentary government and yet may still be left with only two parties to pick from. Worse still, on fundamental issues like foreign policy and the distribution of wealth in the society, the parties may be identical enough (or just owned enough) so as to offer no real choice at all. Hello! Can you say "America 2012"? There are a lot of systemic reasons for this duopoly we've produced in American politics, but the chief one is our use of the winner-take-all district model electoral system - which will tend to produce two dominant parties over the long-haul wherever it is employed - instead of a proportional representation system, which does not. Again, god forbid Americans should learn anything from anyone else, but if we did stoop that low, we might want to think about revising our electoral system (which would not require Constitutional amendment). It would do us a world of good, not only by giving us multiple and genuine choices at the ballot box, but also by injecting alternative ideas into our poverty-stricken political discourse.
Meanwhile, if we return to the separation of powers problem again for a moment, we encounter another severe problem which is a natural artifact of that system. If you're going to have separate branches of government, each with the capacity to check and balance against each other, that means your judiciary pretty much needs to have the power known as judicial review in order to be a meaningful player in that contest. This term refers to the capacity to strike down legislation produced by the other two branches. Again, this is - especially to the degree with which it is practiced here - a fairly peculiarly American idea. In most other democracies, parliament rules. Period, full stop. Not here.
Does judicial review makes sense? I can see two domains where it does, though often (like now) only in a theoretical sense: civil rights and civil liberties. Stupid and angry politicians, often reacting to the stupid and angry sentiments of the public, almost never fail to relieve minorities of their rights and deny individuals the human rights (little things like due process, and so on) they are otherwise entitled to possess. All too often, in short, it's just plain politically popular to be mean and bigoted and 'legally' violent, and democratically elected governments will readily oblige a lathered up public (when politicians aren't in fact whipping up voters themselves - remember McCarthyism? the war on drugs? gay marriage?). Who will stop them from doing this? Theoretically (meaning, only if they happen to be so disposed - just the opposite of our condition today with the regressive majority on the Supreme Court), courts populated by justice-seeking and principle-protecting judges will do so, judges who also happen to be insulated from the public wrath by lifetime terms. They can afford to stand on lofty principles when the political branches are assembled into a lynch party. There is definite wisdom to this concept, though no guarantees. Do you see Justice Scalia, for example, slapping down Congress for depriving African Americans or women of their Constitutionally-guaranteed rights? I rest my case.
Apart from those two areas, however, I would argue that the very notion of judicial review is a disaster, because it is profoundly undemocratic. That was perhaps never more evident than it is now, as the rump majority of this extremely activist Court is preparing to fully legislate from the bench - in full contradiction of their own fervently argued 'principles' of federalism and judicial restraint from previous cases no less - by overturning not just the individual mandate part of Obama's bill, but all of it. And apparently - judging from Scalia's comments - they'll be doing so without even reading the legislation, and certainly without understanding it. I see little difference between such a governing structure and the essence of monarchy. In both cases you have political decision-makers who have not been chosen by the public, serving life terms, making legislative decisions in secret, unaccountable and nonreplacable, making policy on high and dictating it to the masses without fear of consequence. What possible relationship does that bear to anything one could plausibly label as democracy? The question answers itself. It also therefore reminds us that the third major political malady infecting our system is the expanded and profoundly undemocratic notion of judicial review.
Notwithstanding these structural handicaps, the American political system has nevertheless been moderately successful at negotiating the rocky shoals of policy-making over the last two-plus centuries. There have been, to be sure, some glaring inadequacies and the occasional near-fatal meltdown. But people ultimately vote with their feet, and something chronically broken would ultimately be unlikely to have seen that many candles on its birthday cake. In that same two hundred year-plus time period, for example, the French have had five republics (along with several iterations of empires and monarchies). But after one false start (the Articles of Confederation), the American regime has remained more or less intact for more than twenty decades, though it is manifestly broken today. Calling the federal government dysfunctional would be an act of charity.
But there is one last peril that threatens American democracy today, to a degree not seen for at least a century, and to the extent that the term democracy itself becomes a rather dubious appellation for the system we live under. Let's just be honest, shall we? - if for no other reason than the refreshing novelty of doing so: Fundamentally, the representatives in our 'representative government' don't represent you and me. They represent the one percent. You can play all the games you want about how campaigns are funded, and spin all the tall tales you need to about how money 'only' buys access, not Congressional votes, but the real system of pay-to-play is transparently obvious to anyone willing to risk even a sidelong glance at the emperor's new clothes. It's just that simple and just that broken. The only place American representative democracy exists anymore today is in eighth-grade civics textbooks.
General governance mechanics are important, as I've noted at some length above, and there are campaign finance systems that are way better than others at promoting true democratic representation, to be sure. But at the bottom of the pile of political engineering problems lies human nature. If we allow greed to control our public sphere, we will wind up with a government representing the one percent and not the ninety-nine percent. Indeed, it will be a government very much intentionally governing at the expense of the ninety-nine percent. We will wind up with a political system that is completely dysfunctional, except for purposes of the wholesale transfer of wealth upwards. We will wind up with policies in every domain - from national security to tobacco policy to guns, prisons and taxes and far beyond - that reflects the needs of the special monied interests over the public interest. And we will end up with a health care system whose purpose is not to provide health, but rather to enrich insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.
Hey, what the hell am I doing, saying "We will..."? Strike that.
We have.
Welcome to America, 2012.
Here's to your good health.
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