I recently made a mistake that turned into an object lesson on the limits of technology but also – and more importantly – on the limits of government openness. Earlier this year, in trying to figure out how many House staffers had gone on to become lobbyists over a two-year period, I naively relied on the ability of computers to match names. We have some sophisticated matching software, but it is not perfect. As a result, my recent post, “Almost 400 House staffers registered to lobby in last two years” improperly identified a number of staffers as lobbyists because they had the same name or almost the same as a registered lobbyist when, in fact, these were two different people.

The good folks at Legistorm noticed this for us, and so we decided to do an internal Sunlight audit, and our capable intern Breanna Edwards, under the supervision of our reporting team, provided it, using the Center for Responsive Politics’ Revolving Door website, LinkedIn, and official lobbying reports.

Of the 377 House staffers we originally identified as having gone on to lobby, Breanna was able to be certain or almost certain that 219 (58%) were indeed matches. She also identified 21 (6%) as almost certainly false positives (that is, the name match was correct, but it was clearly a case of two people with the same name). The remaining 137 matches our computers identified (36%) could not be confirmed definitively either way, at least just based on those three sources.

Breanna explains the challenges:

We decided to go about this project in a simple and straightforward way, using three tools: the Center for Responsive Politics' “Revolving Door”, LinkedIn and lobbying reports. I put all of the names through these three tools in almost all instances to be thoroughly sure of my results, though sometimes two out of the three tools, or at the very least one of the tools did not necessarily yield any results.

Center for Responsive Politics' Revolving Door is a neat tool that records which federal employees have become lobbyists, consultants and strategists, usually providing information on where they worked, the positions they have held for their employers and how long they were there. It's a really easy tool to use. One simply has to enter in the subject’s name into the given field and see if there is a record. If they did have a detailed record, that made my job easier. However, this database isn't completely foolproof. Sometimes the information Sunlight had did not match what CRP had, sometimes they only had parts of the information I was given, sometimes they didn't have any information on the subject at all. If the Center for Responsive Politics' information didn't exactly match what I had, or if there was something in the information that I was unclear about, my next step was to double-check LinkedIn.

The great thing about LinkedIn is that people self-advertise a lot there (of course, that is how it was meant to be used) and so there was little doubt that the individuals I was looking for would definitely put most, if not all of their employment history on there.  The trouble of course, is actually finding them and being sure that it was exactly the same person. I found some individuals with ease and, as expected, they gave the information I needed which was a green light. Among other individuals there were multiple people to choose from, all with some part of the employment history I was looking for, but none with the exact sequence I was looking for. I either took that to mean that we were looking at completely different people, or, if it was so blurred I could not tell, marked it as uncertain. In other cases, I just simply could not find the individual. That was when I turned to the lobbying reports.

 Though they sometimes gave some great results, the lobbying reports were the absolute last resort, Only people who make a certain salary are even listed on lobbying reports, which severely limits the number of individuals who even turned up in the search. Another issue: Even when these individuals were listed, a good number of them either did not know how to fill out the form correctly or chose not to fill it out correctly. So while I did manage to procure a few confirmations using this method, the reports really did not help that much.

The main problem was names. The funny thing about names is that there are only so many of them. There are few unique names, as names are not identification numbers. The fact that many individuals with the same or similar names seem to have worked in the same or extremely similar offices did not help our effort. It was nearly impossible to distinguish these people. Other times they simply did not appear, but of course, just because they were not in any databases, didn't mean that the information we had was false. All these factors made us unable to confirm  some of our findings.

 

The takeaway lesson ought to be clear: it’s much more difficult than it should be to match congressional staff names with lobbyist names. To do this kind of research, we are at the mercy of what individuals choose to report, especially when they have relatively common names.

This makes it very difficult to have a good understanding of how the revolving door works. There are good reasons the public might want to know which lobbyists have insider connections, and who they are using those connections to help. There are also good reasons the public might want to know which offices have former staff working for various outside groups that are trying to influence legislation.

 

A simple solution Here is a simple proposal to improve transparency and disclosure around the revolving door:

1. Lobbyist registration forms list the names of lobbyists working on a particular issue.  In order to be able to determine whether they have spun through the revolving door, each lobbyist should be identified by a publicly accessible unique identification number.

2. Upon registering, each lobbyist should also be required to list every position that he or she has held as a federal, state, or city employee. Currently, registrants are required to list all “covered” legislative and executive branch positions their lobbyists have held for the last 20  years only when the registrant begins representing a new client, but not on subsequent forms.

Doing this would create a simple, searchable, and centralized way to identify which lobbyists formerly served in government, and which didn’t. There is no reason why it should be as difficult as it currently is to verify whether individual public employees have gone on to become lobbyists.

Of course, there is much more to do on the issue of lobbying reform. We support the Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act, introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley as well as the Real-Time Online Lobbying Disclosure Act. For a full list of our lobbying reform proposals, click here.

   

NOTE: It has been brought to our attention by LegisStorm that our list of staffers who became a lobbyist has a number of errors caused by false positives resulting from our process of matching staffer names with lobbyist names. We are investigating. Any reporting based on this post should be double-checked by contacting the offices involved.

The revolving door is alive and well in Washington. In less than three years, at least 377 House staffers employed in personal and committee offices have left Capitol Hill to become registered lobbyists, a Sunlight Foundation analysis of U.S. House disbursement data and federal lobbying records finds.

More than two in five former House staffers who registered as lobbyists went to one of Washington’s many lobbying firms. One in five went to lobby for a for-profit corporation, and another one in five went to lobby for a business or trade association. In other words, corporate America is capturing the lion’s share of former Hill staffers’ expertise. A large number also represent state and local governments and universities in their work for lobbying firms.

These lobbyists come from all rungs of the House hierarchy. The 377 staffers who left to lobby included 50 legislative assistants, 32 chiefs of staff, 26 legislative directors, and 22 staff assistants.

Many lobbyists came from committees as well. The Committee with the clearest path to K Street was the Financial Services Committee, where nine of 71 staffers (12.7%) went off to lobby within two years, followed closely by Judiciary (9.0%) and Oversight and Government Reform (8.7%).

Congress’s loss is the private sector’s gain. When House offices lose staffers who have built up experience and relationships in Congress, private interests gain both their policy knowhow and their political networks. Meanwhile, the House offices often find themselves relying on the expertise of their former staffers who are now in the employ of private interests.

Recently, we noted that the average House office had a retention rate of 64.2% over a two-year period. Although the majority of departing staff do not move to K Street, 377 staffers is still a significant number.

For a complete list of all the staffers who registered to lobby, what office they worked in, and where they went to lobby, click here.

 

WHERE STAFFERS GO ON K STREET

More than 80% of former Hill staffers who leave to lobby take jobs at Washington lobbying firms (41.5%), individual corporations (21.3%) and business and trade associations (19.1%).

By comparison, fewer than one in ten go to work for a non-profit advocacy group. Only a single former House staffer went to work for a labor union, though a few do represent unions as part of their work with Washington lobbying firms. Some (5.1%) went to work for occupational associations, such as the American Dental Association or the International Association of Fire Chiefs; another nine went to work for institutions, mostly universities.

It's important to emphasize that this analysis is limited to registered lobbying. If former House staffers joined advocacy organizations but did not register as lobbyists, they will not show up in these tabulations.

Figure 1. Where staffers who become lobbyists go to lobby

graphic by Ali Felski

If we look at the employment destinations by position in the House, we can see some different career paths. While 56.2% of chiefs of staff who became lobbyists joined Washington lobbying firms, only 30.8% of legislative directors and 23.1% of legislative assistants who registered as lobbyists did so for a lobbying firms

Legislative directors who go downtown are about equally likely to wind up in a lobbying firm, a corporation, or a business or trade association. Legislative assistants are most likely to wind up in a business or trade association.

Non-profit advocacy, meanwhile, did not attract a single chief of staff, but it did attract two of the 26 legislative directors going to lobby and five of the 52 legislative assistants.

Generally, work in a lobbying firm offers individuals the opportunity to make the most money, though it also generally requires the most work. Some individuals prefer the stability or predictability of a corporation or a trade association, where one does not have to shift between multiple clients and does not have to hustle for new business.

 

Figure 2. Where staffers who become lobbyists go to lobby, by position

graphic by Ali Felski

 

REPRESENTATION BY SECTOR

What types of interests do these former staffers represent? In order to answer this question, we added up the number of lobbying contracts that mentioned these staffers.  State and local governments top the list, with 295 contracts, followed closely by pharmaceutical companies at 263, education (mostly universities) at 261, computers/internet at 226, and electric utilities at 192.

Table 1. Sectors former House staffers represent

Certainly, there are different ways to cut these numbers. Telephone utilities, for example spent $253 million on contracts that included these lobbyists, as compared to state and local governments, which spent $38 million, although there were many more contracts involving state and local governments.

A LOOK AT WHO GOES TO BECOME A LOBBYIST

Among the staffers who left, about two-thirds (243) previously worked in member personal offices. Of these individuals, 60.5% (147) came from Democratic offices, as compared to 39.5% (96) from Republicans. Much of this disparity, however, has to do with the fact that the Democrats lost 63 seats in the 2010 mid-term elections, putting hundreds of Democratic staffers out of work.

Among the 147 Democratic staffers who left to become lobbyists, 63 (43%) worked for members who were defeated or retired in 2010.Of member staffers-turned-lobbyists, 32% (77) came from offices where members were defeated or retired; the remaining 68% (166) worked for members who are still in office.

Table 2. Partisanship and member status of staffers turned lobbyists

 

three members of Congress sent at least four staffer to the ranks of registered lobbyists since 2009: Michael A. Arcuri (D-NY, 5), Adam Putnam (R-FL, 4), and Laura Richardson (D-CA, 4). Arcuri and Putnam are no longer in Congress. Both Arcuri and Richardson were on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Putnam was on the Financial Services Committee.  Table 3 shows the members at least three staff  who became lobbyists.Almost 40% (177) of the House offices in 2009 had at least one staffer become a lobbyist by 2011, and 11% (49) sent at least two individuals to become lobbyists. 

Table 3. Members with highest rates of staff going to lobby

 

COMMITTEES

Some committees are more likely to generate future lobbyists than others. Perhaps not surprisingly, the House committee with the highest percentage of former staffers going to lobby was the Financial Services Committee, where nine of 71 staffers (12.7%) went off to lobby. The Financial Services Committee handled the Dodd-Frank bill, which will continue to generate major lobbying activity for years as financial regulatory agencies work their way through the approximately 400 rulemaking the bill calls for. The Judiciary (9.0%) and Oversight and Government Reform (8.7%) had the next highest rates. Appropriations sent the most individuals to lobby (11, out of 145 staffers)

Table 4. Rate of staffers becoming lobbyists, by committee/leadership offices

 

POSITIONS

Certain positions were more likely to lead to future work as a lobbyist than others. The 377staffers employed in the House in 2009 who left to lobby included 50 legislative assistants, 32 chiefs of staff, 26 legislative directors, and 22 staff assistants.Of the 25 most common staff titles, the titles most likely to lead to staffers becoming lobbyists within the 2-year period were “Counsel” (11.2% became lobbyists), “Legislative Director” (8.9% became lobbyists), and “Legislative Counsel” (8.8% became lobbyists). Eight percent of both the chiefs of staff and the deputy chiefs of staff employed in mid-2009 became lobbyists. Interestingly, as we noted in our recent analysis of House operating budget cuts, salaries for "Counsel" positions had suffered the most between 2009 and 2011, down 5.8%. There is probably some connection.

Table 5. Rate of staffers becoming lobbyists, by selected positions

 

CONCLUSIONS

The revolving door continues to spin. Since July 2009, almost 400 individuals employed as House staffers at the time have left to become registered lobbyists, primarily working for lobbying firms, corporations, and business associations.In many respects, Congress continues to operate as a farm team for future lobbyists. Staff build up contacts and policy and political expertise. Then they often go “downtown” and cash in, taking their expertise and networks with them.

Though a certain flow of personnel from Congress to K Street is inevitable, Congress ought to do more to hold onto experienced staff. Recently, we explored retention rates among House staff, and we found that offices that paid their staff more had slightly higher retention rates, though Hill salaries lag behind private sector comparisons.When staff leave to lobby, their former offices must find somebody new and usually less experienced. And offices who lack staff with policy expertise and political relationships often must rely more on outside lobbyists, who are only too happy to fill the gap.For a complete list of all 378 staffers, what office they worked in, and where they went to lobby, click here.

METHODOLOGY AND DATA

These results are based on a comparison of House disbursement data from the third quarter of 2009 with public lobbying records. One challenge in conducting this analysis is that we are matching on names, and sometimes individuals register as lobbyists under different name permutations than they were listed on the Hill. We do our best to correct for this, but there are limitations. We also note that because certain names are more common than others, there is always the possibility of false positive matches.

Additionally, since our data on staff come from the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives, we are dependent on what the House reports. We must in good faith disclose that the underlying data are messy. At best, the data are approximate, and higher levels of confidence in it can only come when the House of Representatives makes a better effort with respect to how it normalizes and releases the data to the public. To dig through the data yourself, visit our House Expenditure Reports Database.

Special thanks to Daniel Schuman and Alison Rowland for their help on this analysis.

UPDATE: Jennifer Taylor, a legislative assistant in Rep. Pingree's office, shares a name with Jennifer Taylor, a lobbyist at Van Scoyoc & Associates, resulting in a false positive. The text of this post has been corrected to reflect this. As noted above, our analysis is limited by the quality of the data published by the House disbursement reports and the Senate Office of Public Records. We regret the error and encourage anyone with clarifying information to contact us.

MPAA head lobbyist Chris Dodd threatened Congress and the President last week, suggesting that lawmakers should remember that they've been bought, and that if they want to continue to enjoy their piece of the entertainment industry's largesse, they should mind their leash:

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."

The corruption here is blatant -- Chris Dodd thinks that his industry's contributions should be able to purchase congressional results. This isn't just money in politics buying access, or systemic corruption, or some theoretical statistical link -- Chris Dodd is threatening the Congress with his industry money.

That money buys votes and affects public policy is nothing new. Boehner wasn't handing out tobacco industry checks on the House Floor in 1995 as party favors, after all. But donors' influence over specific public policy decisions are usually left unspoken, or at least not publicly aired. Chris Dodd's sense of influence entitlement has strayed outside the bounds of normal Washington discourse, and perhaps thankfully so. Dodd is doing a fantastic time of demonstrating everything that's wrong with the system.

On top of the sweetheart mortgage treatment Dodd enjoyed as Senator, he parlayed his position as former Senator to become head of the MPAA, where his connections won him a high salary and influential position. His public pledge to forswear lobbying and related revolving door restrictions weren't even a speed bump on Dodd's path through the revolving door, since directing a team of lobbyists and managing political contributions don't count as lobbying under the law. (Common sense, of course, dictates otherwise -- he's a lobbyist.) Cashing in on connections is often par for the course, as is avoiding lobbying disclosure -- both are de rigueur for former Members of Congress looking for lucrative careers.

But as MPAA head Dodd's signature legislative effort (SOPA and PIPA) ran off the rails, Dodd decided to flex his campaign finance muscles, and threatened his former colleagues to get in line.

And that's where things get weird.

Because Senate Democrats have repeatedly told us that they are interested in protecting the integrity of our elections, and that public service and representation should be protected from the undue influence of money in politics. In fact, here's Senator Chris Dodd, talking about the Citizens United decision:

 "If corporations -- foreign as well as domestic -- are allowed even greater and more direct influence over our elections, our democracy as we know it will cease to exist. I won't stand for that. I urge my colleagues, and the American people, to join me in defense of democracy by supporting this amendment and other interim steps to mitigate the damage done by this decision."

Senator Dodd was concerned about corporations having greater direct influence over our elections, but as MPAA head, Dodd feels empowered to dictate public policy to elected representatives, and strongarm them into passing it.

But this shouldn't be awkward just for Dodd.

In his remarks, he's both threatening and imploring his former colleagues to stay on his side, and to understand that it's his job on the line. In other words, we paid you off, and if you want more industry money, you better toe the line. And by the way, we're friends.

This should be extraordinarily awkward for the rest of the Senate, and especially Dodd's colleagues.  Remember, Dodd was first elected to the Senate in 1980, and had various leadership and committee positions throughout his career. This isn't a one off backbench house Member. If a Senator with three decades of tenure behind him can do an about face and use campaign cash to dictate public policy, what about the rest of the Senate?

It's shocking to see Senators who usually rail against money in politics ignore the public threats from their former colleague. I haven't seen any public response at all from sitting Senators, while the public perception of the institution is taking yet another hit. While a public White House petition is calling for an investigation of Dodd, the rest of the Senate (and House) have just quietly ignored his threats, at least in public.

That shouldn't be enough. If the former colleague of all these Democratic Senators is going to accuse them of being bought, and threaten to withhold support, the least they can do is deny the influence of the MPAA's money on their actions. If it's not okay to publicly bully Congress with industry money, then somebody should say so.

And if we don't act, this is only going to get worse. All these outside influencers now have tools at their disposal to credibly threaten to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars supporting or opposing candidates, while covering their tracks, if they so choose. If a Senator who has publicly committed to protecting the integrity of representation is willing to bully Members with his industry cash, we can expect this is just a small piece of the action.

We should pass lobbying reform, get real disclosure for super PACs, strengthen ethics enforcement bodies, and follow the money as best we can. And maybe we should be glad when the influential have such hubris that they tell us what they're really up to.

 

Here’s a riddle: What do you call it when someone earns millions of dollars from corporate clients, uses his relationships with the most influential officials in government to pursue those clients’ interests, and even has offices on K Street?

Answer: If you are Newt Gingrich, not a lobbyist.

The Washington Post reports that corporate clients paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the current leader in the Republican primary in exchange for him providing “access to top transformational leadership across industry and government” through his for-profit “think tank.” Apparently they got what they paid for. According to the Post, “Gingrich also bragged about his success in pushing conservative policies and legislation in Washington during his political exile.”

We’ve written many times before about stealth lobbyists, often former Members of Congress who crawl around Capitol Hill and the White House advocating on behalf of fat cat clients, but who skirt disclosure under the lobby laws by claiming they only provide “strategic advice” or spend less than 20% of their time lobbying.

And we’ve advocated—dare I say lobbied—to change all of that.

The specter of Newt Gingrich, former non-lobbyist lobbyist, occupying the White House should galvanize calls for lobbying reform. It’s problematic enough when a former Member of Congress provides his clients with access to his friends and colleagues in the House or the Senate. But if Washington’s revolving door should swing that person into the White House, corporate interests who once paid handsomely for strategic advice will have a direct line to the leader of the country.

The Gingrich example is at the top of the list of why we need a new approach to lobbying disclosure. The most influential people in Washington can easily skirt the rules currently in place. Everyone who is not in that top tier of influence peddlers—including all of the registered lobbyists who follow the rules—should recognize the failure of the current system and work to change it by ensuring that if someone is paid to lobby, they register and report as a lobbyist.

The congressional debt committee, commonly referred to as the super committee, has been a popular topic in the news since it was created by the Budget Control Act of 2011. We have been tracking lobbyist ties and campaign contributions to members of the committee since August. The Washington Post published an interesting report in early September announcing that many of the super committee members had ties to lobbyists.

The Washington Post article uses GE as a case study to discuss the almost 100 registered lobbyists who are former employees of super committee members and are now "representing defense companies, health-care conglomerates, Wall Street banks and others with a vested interest in the outcome of the panel's work."

While this article involved some heavy duty investigative journalism, many of its major claims can be substantiated by publicly available data.

The article states that Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) "has employed more than a dozen currently registered lobbyists." The Center for Responsive Politics' "Revolving Door" tool allows investigators to search for individuals by former employee or by former employer. A search for "Murray, Patty" as "employment" returns 18 people who have formerly worked for the senator. Clicking on an individual record shows the individual's former position as well as their new employer and title. Digging into the 18 people returned by the initial search gives us 16 former Murray staffers who may currently be working as lobbyists. (See the end of this post for a full breakdown of the 16.)

1. Douglas Clapp, a former Aide to Murray, now works as the director of Washington state's Washington, DC office.
2. Rick Desimone, Murray's former Chief of Staff and former Vice Chair and Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is now an Executive Vice President at McBee Strategic Consulting.
3. Carrie Desmond, a former Legislative Assistant to Murray, now works at Lockheed Martin's Washington Operations organization.
4. Christy Gullion, a former Northwestern Regional Director for Murray, now works as chief federal lobbyist for the University of Washington.
5. Shay Michael Hancock, a former Legislative Assistant to Murray, is now a Senior Vice President at the lobbying firm Denny Miller Associates.
6. James Jones, Murray's former Speechwriter (as well as Sen. John Kerry's former Communications Director), now works as a Manager of Integrated Communications at Exxon Mobil.
7. Joy Langley, a former Legislative Assistant to Murray, now works as the Assistant Director of Government Affairs at J Street.
8. Dale Learn, a former Senior Legislative Assistant to Murray, is now the President of Gordon Thomas Honeywell's Governmental Affairs.
9. Justin LeBlanc, former Senior Staffer to Murray, is now the President of LeBlanc Government Relations.
10. Eric Masten, former Legislative Assistant to Murray, now works as a Public Policy Associate at the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.
11. Ben Lee McMakin, former Legislative Director to Murray, is now the Managing Director of Government Issues at Van Ness Feldman.
12. Heather Meade, former Deputy Scheduler/Assistant to the Chief of Staff for Murray, is now the Senior Manager at Washington Council Ernst & Young.
13. Nate Potter, former LA to Murray, is now a Federal Affairs Consultant for Gordon Thomas Honeywell.
14. Casey Sixkiller, former Policy Advisor to Murray, is now a Senior Advisor at SNR Denton's Indian Law and Tribal Representation practice.
15. Karen Waters, Murray's former Deputy State Director, is now a Senior Vice President at Strategies 360.
16. Todd Webster, Murray's former Communications Director, launched his own strategic communications firm, Webster Strategies.

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"The News Without Transparency" shows you what the news would look like without public access to information. Laws and regulations that force the government to make the data it has publicly available are absolutely vital, along with services that take that raw data and make it easy for reporters to write sentences like the ones we've redacted in the piece above. If you have an article you'd like us to put through the redaction machine, please send us an email at mbuck@sunlightfoundation.com.

Yesterday's Legistorm report on congressional staffers-turned-lobbyists provides more support for the theory that Congress is turning over its work to special interests. It adds to a mountain of evidence that includes an expanding pay gap between House staff and their private sector equivalents, fewer policy staff in Congress, and significant new cuts in staff positions and pay.

Looking at a decade's worth of data, Legistorm found that "5,400 people have been both lobbyists and received paychecks as staff from the legislative branch in the past decade." The report adds that it's likely that at least 2,900 former staffers are currently lobbying, with 605 current congressional staff having served as lobbyists in the past decade. These numbers are likely low, both because the number of federally registered lobbyists does not include many people who lobby and data available for the study was incomplete (missing "perhaps hundreds of potential staffer-lobbyist matches.")

Having inside connections is a big help to the bottom line for staffers-turned-lobbyists, according to two research papers. Lobbyists who are connected to members of Congress get paid more than those who are only experts. In addition, lobbyists who worked for a US Senator "suffer a 24% drop in revenue -- around $177,000 -- when their ex-employers leave office." In Washington, who you know is more important than what you know.

That influence is only magnified when Congress cannot effectively evaluate claims made by lobbyists. Unfortunately, Congress has been shrinking its pool of experienced staff for over two decades. According to my review of data going back to 1979, "there are fewer House staff and fewer legislative support agency personnel now that at any time in the recent past." House personal office, committee, and leadership staff are at 87% of their 1979 levels. Committee staff alone are at 62% of their 1979 levels, having eliminated 755 positions. Major legislative support agencies have suffered tremendous losses, and are at 65% of their 1979 staffing levels. GAO, the investigative arm of Congress that looks at the public purse, is at 60% of its 1979 staffing level; CRS is at 80%. While government has grown more complex, there are fewer congressional staff to provide oversight, and they cannot help but rely upon the army of lobbyists whose influence has expanded to fill the vacuum. It's no wonder that $3.51 billion was spent on lobbying in 2010.

The reduced congressional capacity to handle influence has an effect on decision-making. For example, a recent look at lobbying during the financial crisis found that mortgage-lending companies that lobbied prior to the financial crisis engaged in riskier lending practices and were more likely to be bailed out.

With these institutional factors at play, it's no surprise that staff are leaving to go to the private sector. A review of two decades of staff salary surveys shows that the leading factors that drive out staff are unpredictable work hours and low pay. The high turnover rate and youthful median staff age puts Congress at a disadvantage when dealing with the Executive branch or the private sector.

This trend is only going to accelerate. The House Appropriations Committee has adopted what it called "the largest ever two-year reduction for the legislative branch." For upcoming fiscal year 2012, which starts on October 1, the House Appropriations Committee has endorsed a 6.46% cut to the House of Representatives, which on top of the FY 2011 cuts decreases the House's budget by 10.4% over two years. By way of example, the amount of money available to each personal office for a Member of Congress will be reduced by around $90,000. Since most office costs are fixed and staff pay is already effectively frozen, this likely will translate into staff reductions and pay cuts. Put another way, if you add up all spending for the legislative branch, including expenditures for security, all the support agencies, the visitor center, and so on, the proposed 2012 budget is $4.38 billion. By contrast, the total federal budget is $3.82 trillion. That's a small amount of money when compared to its responsibility to set the direction for the entire government.

Tomorrow, the Senate Appropriations Committee will markup its Legislative Branch Appropriations bill, determining how much pain to mete out to Senate personal, committee, and leadership offices. At the same time, it will determine whether to agree to the House's huge cuts to the Government Printing Office (16%), the Library of Congress (8%), Government Accountability Office (6.4%), and other important legislative support agencies. The future of many staff now includes earlier retirement, furloughs, and a bare minimum of resources.

All of these problems are compounded by Congress's lack of introspection about the work that it does and our inability to track these exertion of influence by special interests. It's true that there are important ongoing legislative efforts to close these lobbying disclosure loopholes, most notably the Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act, and a broad consensus about what to do about lobbying. And there are some efforts to make more congressional information publicly available, so that the public can figure out what's going on. Unfortunately, we are far from where we need to be if we want an effective Congress that capably balances its dual roles as policymaker and agent of the people.

In the most recent, and possibly most repugnant, turn of the revolving door, FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker will join Comcast just months after approving the Comcast/NBC Universal merger. The move spurred the New York Times to call for expanding the definition of lobbying. We agree. While Baker’s hiring may be a done deal, the lobby laws need to be changed so that we know who she is lobbying, about what, and when.

Rules put in place by the Obama administration mean that Baker will not be allowed to lobby anyone at the FCC for two years. That’s a sliver of an exclusion that leaves her plenty of opportunities to spread the Comcast/NBC message inside the beltway. The day after she starts, this well-connected, high-ranking administration official can start lobbying Congress on any issue, including the Comcast/NBC merger.

The current laws do next to nothing to inform the public about the ways Baker will wield her power on Capitol Hill. Sunlight is calling for changes in the current Lobbying Disclosure Act that would require her and others like her to report the names of the offices she lobbies—whether in person, on the phone, in writing or email—and link the names with the specific issues on which she sought government action. We would require that reporting to happen in real time and online.

We may not be able to close the revolving door, but we can find out what happens whenever people pass through it.

Merchants, retailers, and their trade associations have arrayed a team of former government officials turned lobbyists in one of 2011's biggest lobbying battles as banks and credit unions seek to overturn part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. According to data compiled from the Senate Office of Public Records and the Center for Responsive Politics, merchants and retailers lobbying in support of debit interchange fees rules employed 124 lobbyists with previous government experience.

The Federal Reserve has proposed rules to set limits on the amount that banks can charge retailers every time a customer uses a debit card for a purchase, known as debit interchange fees. These fees, set by electronic networks, including VISA and MasterCard, provide big profits to banks and diminish returns for retailers, often leading to rising prices for consumers.

Retailers lobbied hard to get a limit on interchange fees included in the Dodd-Frank bill and succeeded when retail ally Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., offered an amendment, which was adopted, to the bill requiring the Federal Reserve to write rules governing the fees. The Fed released their rule earlier this year. Much to the dismay of banks and electronic network operators the Fed rules capped interchange fees at 12 cents per swipe, or a more than 70 percent reduction in fees.

Banks and their allies--payment networks and credit unions--have swamped Capitol Hill with lobbyists and the retailers and merchants, including Wal-Mart, have done the same.

Major members of the Electronic Payments Coalition, the chief organizing vehicle for the banks opposed to the fee rules, have hired 118 former government officials to lobby and made at least $500,000 in political action committee (PAC) contributions to members of Congress.

Retailers and merchants have largely organized through the Merchant's Payments Coalition. Organizations listed as members of the Merchant's Payments Coalition, all of whom are trade associations, accounted for half of the 124 revolving door lobbyists hired by retailers and merchants. The other half come from supporting companies including Wal-Mart, Home Depot, 7-11, and Best Buy.

Below you'll find a table listing all the revolving door lobbyists affiliated with the retailers and merchants. These are all lobbyists who were specifically listed as lobbying on debit interchange fee rules on their lobbying disclosure forms for 2010 or 2011. Revolving door lobbyists affiliated with the Electronic Payments Coalition can be found here.

The Justice Department just indicted Doug Hampton, a former aide to Sen. John Ensign, for lobbying Ensign's office prior to the conclusion of the one year cooling off period after leaving his congressional position.

This guy is a modern day Job: His boss sleeps with his wife, then helps him circumvent lobbying laws to get clients because Ensign felt bad about cuckolding him, and then Ensign is let off the hook and he gets indicted.

Why the Justice Department won't charge Ensign is beyond me. Ensign helped Hampton violate the lobbying statute with full knowledge that Hampton was not supposed to be in contact with Ensign's office.

--Former Rep. Steve Buyer registered his first client with his own eponymous lobbying practice. Last week his firm, Steve Buyer Group, registered to lobby for McKesson Corp., one of the nation's biggest healthcare companies. The registration states that Buyer will provide "general consulting for the Pharmaceutical Prime Vendor Contract," which is a contract with the Veteran's Administration. Buyer will be able to use both his knowledge of the VA and his contacts there from his time as chairman of the House Committee on Veteran's Affairs.

--Former Rep. Ron Klein signed up with Holland & Knight's Public Policy & Regulation Group. Klein won't be eligible to lobby his former colleagues in the House for another year.

--Former Sen. Larry Craig's lobbying shop New West Strategies registered to lobby on behalf of Murray Energy. The registration shows that New West will lobby on greenhouse gas legislation, which would likely focus on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) decision to implement regulations limited emissions.