They were the pioneers of a high profile business. Politicians held strategy sessions with them, while the public saw them as the source of all evil in politics. In the last decade lobbying in Washington boomed like no other business. Expenses skyrocketed from $1.5 billion to approximately $3.5 billion by the end of the decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Over the course of the past decade forty-three lobbying firms found themselves ranked in the top twenty firms in terms of lobbying revenue. In this expansion some firms maintained their status, some fell from their perch, others rose to prominence, while a few succumbed to some of the most memorable lobbying scandals in recent memory.
In the interactive map below you can track the growth and decline of the top lobbying firms of the last decade (the arrow button at the bottom allows toggling between zoom, select, and pan):
Winners
Patton Boggs has perennially found itself in the upper echelons of Washington lobbying. Since 2003 Patton Boggs led all firms in revenue, topping off at $42.3 million in 2007.
The Podesta Group has seen its revenues grow rapidly since Barack Obama was elected to the White House. Revenues at the Podesta Group have nearly tripled since 2007. It's good to be the most well-connected Democratic lobbyist when the Democrats control all levels of government as they did from 2009-2010.
Brownstein Hyatt broke into the top five in lobbying revenues in 2009 and remained there in 2010. The firm jumped from out of the top twenty in 2005 and built a strong business over those years. A big piece of the firm's lobbying growth has been a multimillion dollar contract with the private equity investment firm Apollo Management.
Losers
PMA Group's close ties to top defense appropriator John Murtha made themgo-to lobbying firm for companies seeking defense earmarks. The firm was in the top twenty every year until it was felled by a major corruption scandal. Numerous congressmen were implicated in a campaign contribution-for-earmark scheme. The firm's head Paul Magliocchetti wound up pleading guilty to three charges of falsifying campaign contributions. The firm closed in 2009 after Magliocchetti's indictment.
Greenberg Traurig rode the lobbying roller coaster like no other lobbying firm in the 2000s. The firm jumped into the top twenty in 2001 after hiring the most famous lobbyist at the time, Jack Abramoff. Abramoff brought a personal lobbying revenue of approximately $6 million with him from Kirkpatrick & Lockhart. Greenberg Traurig's revenue shot up quickly to more than $25 million in 2003. The next year Abramoff came under investigation by the Department of Justice. An internal review led Greenberg Traurig to fire Abramoff. The firm's lobbying revenue dropped rapidly after Abramoff's departure and subsequent guilty plea and imprisonment.
Cassidy & Associates had been at the top of the Washington lobbying game for a long time. While the firm has not fallen out of the top twenty, or even top ten, in lobbying revenue, it has lost its perch at the top of the profession. As Congress enters a period of budget cuts and anti-earmark fervor Cassidy, the firm that literally invented earmarks, may have more to worry about in the current decade.
(Data made available by the Center for Responsive Politics.)
Download the .csv of the data used in the map.
Late last week, PMA lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced to 27 months in prison and a $75,000 fine after pleading guilty to making illegal campaign contributions. For five years, Magliocchetti illegally used corporate funds from the once powerful PMA lobbying firm to reimburse friends and colleagues who made contributions to political candidates. Magliocchetti’s illicit generosity helped him secure earmarks from Members of Congress for many of his clients.
Some small measure of justice is served by Magliocchetti’s sentence, but if there were real time online reporting of lobbyists’ activities, perhaps it wouldn’t have taken five years to detect his scheme. Or, perhaps the scrutiny that comes with more frequent, detailed disclosures would have had a deterrent effect—Magliocchetti might have been less likely to commit a crime had he thought he risked being caught.
Sunlight is embarking on a campaign to improve lobbyists’ disclosures. (Check it out here, and sign up if you want to learn more.) Among the changes we propose is a requirement that lobbyists identify, in real time, who they are meeting with and what they are asking for. Such disclosures will, we believe, improve the democratic process and the ongoing policy dialogue by providing the public a clear idea of the issues that are hot on Capitol Hill and the interests that are lobbying in support or opposition to them. In the Magliocchetti case, such disclosures might also have quickly uncovered, or even prevented, the corrupting influence of Magliocchetti’s money laundering scheme.
In case you needed a dose of the absurd for your Monday take a look at the case of ex-lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti.
On Friday an announcement was made that Magliocchetti, the former head of the now-defunct PMA Group, would plead guilty later this month on charges that he organized the widespread fraudulent donation of campaign contributions to members of the House Appropriations Committee. The PMA Group was an earmark powerhouse, backed by Magliocchetti's long ties to his former boss the now-deceased former appropriator John Murtha.
A coterie of lawmakers on the appropriations committee were lavished with campaign contributions from PMA Group lobbyists and clients, as well as the fraudulent contributions organized by Magliocchetti. These lawmakers also provided a number of earmarks to the clients of the PMA Group. The lawmakers tied closest to the PMA Group's earmark lobbying include, but are not limited to, Murtha, Pete Visclosky, Jim Moran and Bill Young.
Earlier this year the House Ethics Committee dismissed ethics complaints against members of the appropriations committee stating that no member or staffer had acted inappropriately in awarding earmarks to campaign contributors. The independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) seemed to signal their disagreement with the ethics committee when they sent the details of their investigation to the Department of Justice for further action.
Now we have the lead lobbyist in the conspiracy to funnel campaign contributions to appropriations committee members pleading guilty and possibly providing information to the Department of Justice. Politico reports, "there is specualtion that [Magliocchetti] may assist prosecutors looking into how lawmakers awarded hundreds of millions in spending earmarks to defense contractors."
A lobbyist will plead guilty to, essentially, bribing a number of lawmakers to win contracts for his clients. He may then turn around and provide information to the Department of Justice on how he traded contributions for earmarks, despite the ethics committee in Congress having already exonerated the lawmakers of all ethics charges in relation to the investigation.
And so the mind-boggling self-policing by Congress continues.
Paul Magliocchetti, the former head of the now-defunct lobby shop, PMA Group, was indicted on charges that he "made hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to boost the firm's influence, power and prestige," according to the Washington Post.
The Sunlight Foundation blog and the Sunlight Reporting Group have been following this investigation over the past few years. You can read the coverage here and here.
Wondering why the House Ethics Committee exonerated every single lawmaker touched by the PMA Group campaign contributions-for-earmarks scandal? They didn't interview anyone:
The Feb. 26 ethics committee report concluding that no House Members colluded with the PMA Group lobbying firm to exchange earmarks for campaign contributions indicated that the committee had been investigating the matter since the spring of 2009.
But Roll Call has been unable to locate a single Member of Congress or company that was interviewed or asked for documents by the ethics committee, and a variety of sources said they believe that the committee did virtually no additional investigation beyond the draft reports on seven Members that were produced by the independent Office of Congressional Ethics.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the line was thin between earmarking and fundraising in these member offices:
In detailing how the lawmakers approached their earmarking, however, the ethics report and accompanying reports by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) made clear that the wall between grants and donations in their offices was in many instances very thin. Key individuals in their offices played at least some role in both activities, starting with the lawmakers and typically including staff members responsible for reviewing and making preliminary earmark decisions.
The above image is of the Connecticut legislature hard at work. I spot one game of free cell, one game of solitaire and one guy reading ESPN.com. This may be why they don't allow computers on the floor of the House or Senate. Then again, you can always play crossword puzzles during committee hearings.
The New Republic has an excellent profile of Rep. John Murtha and the city of Johnstown, PA. This is one of the better pieces about the scandals swirling around the powerful Defense Appropriations Chair. This section stood out to me:
After much trial and error, in the mid-1980s, Murtha and Johnstown’s civic and business leaders finally arrived at an effective economic rescue strategy: leveraging Murtha’s position on the defense appropriations subcommittee to build a defense industry in Johnstown. For Murtha, it was a perfect solution--resolving the tension between foreign policy and local politics that had come to define his career. And it turned out to be a pretty good deal for Johnstown as well. “I remember being at some kind of party around 1983, and I met the head of economic development for the Pittsburgh region. And I said to him, ‘What would you do if you were running economic development here?’ ” recalls Mark Pasquerilla, who was then working for his father Frank, a shopping mall and hotel magnate and the richest man in Johnstown. “And he said--I remember this quote--‘I’ll tell you one thing that I would do: I’d grab onto Murtha’s coattails so tight, and I’d never let go.’ ”
The party may be over, but the investigation is just beginning. The House Ethics Committee confirms that it is investigating lawmakers involved in the PMA Group contributions-cum-earmarks scandal embroiling the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
Lawmakers just filed their personal financial disclosures and we're already seeing problems. Rep. Marion Berry under reported the value of property he owns in here in Washington. Sen. Chris Dodd, facing serious questions about his personal finances, asked for a 90-day extension to file his report. Nearly one-in-five senators were like Dodd and could not file their report on time. This included serial late-filer Sen. Bob Corker. Has this guy ever filed a report on time?
The Hill reports on one of those personal financial disclosures, those of Rep. Don Young. Apparently, Young has spent $1.3 million defending himself in an investigation into his relationship with the oil services company from Hades, VECO. Has there ever been one company that got so many politicians sent to jail or placed under investigation?
Last week, I posted about the relationship between PMA Group fanboy Rep. Pete Visclosky's campaign contributions from clients of the lobbying firm and the earmarks they received from the congressman. One thing I noted was Visclosky's regular use of the word "Indiana" -- his home state -- in the Congressional Record. This is what his word usage looks like over the last ten years:
Do regular earmarkers like Visclosky use their state name more than any other word in the Congressional Record? Do they talk about their district more than any other word? I'll be taking a look and will let you know soon.
It comes as no surprise that Indiana Democrat Pete Visclosky's favorite word to say in Congress is "Indiana." While staying out of the spotlight in Washington, he has been a champion for his Northwestern Indiana congressional district, bringing home millions of federal dollars to create jobs and win fans. Since the decline in manufacturing, new jobs have become essential for this Rult Belt region and Visclosky, from his position on the House Appropriations Committee, has sought to get as big a piece of the federal pie as he can for his constituents.
This hard work bringing home federal dollars has made Visclosky a national news name as his connection to a lobbying firm, the PMA Group, which represented many of the recipients of federal money earmarked by the congressman, has brought him under investigation by the FBI. In the past two weeks, Visclosky's offices and campaign committess have been subpoenaed and he has reliquished control of the Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee to Rep. Ed Pastor.
All of this is due to the connection between campaign contributions flowing from the PMA Group and their clients to Visclosky's campaigns and the millions of dollars in earmarks to PMA Group clients that Visclosky secured in his post on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
After studying campaign contribution data for 1998-2008 (compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics) and earmark data for FY2008 and FY2009 (from both Taxpayers for Common Sense and Legistorm), the connection between those PMA Group clients that contributed money to Visclosky's campaigns and the earmarks they received is clearly evident. The visualization below -- created by our terrific designer Kerry Mitchell -- shows how connected the earmarks are to the receipt of campaign contributions. Click on the image for a larger version:
Note: Due to the lack of earmark disclosure prior to 2007, earmark data is only reliable for the last two fiscal years -- FY2008 and FY2009. Thus, while showing ten years of campaign contribution data, we cannot show ten years of earmark data. There is little doubt that the earmark numbers would be dramatically higher had there been earmark disclosure prior to 2007.
The offices of Indiana Rep. Pete Visclosky were subpoenaed last week regarding his efforts to secure earmarks for the PMA Group, the defunct lobbying group whose offices were raided by the FBI earlier this year. Visclosky has now stated that he will step down from his post as Chair of the House Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee. He will follow in a long line of lawmakers who stepped down from their committee posts when they found themselves under investigation.
Rep. Alan Mollohan stepped down as Chair of the House Ethics Committee after the FBI launched an investigation into his earmarking and personal finances. Mollohan also recused himself from all decisions related to Department of Justice funding in his role as Chair of the Commerce, Justice, & Science Appropriations Subcommittee. The investigation of Mollohan is ongoing.
Rep. Bob Ney stepped down from his post as Chair of the Committee on House Administration after being pressured by party leaders. Ney eventually resigned from Congress and pled guilty to corrupt activities that involved Jack Abramoff.
Rep. John Doolittle left the House Appropriations Committee after his house and offices were raided by the FBI. Doolittle retired from Congress and the investigation, related to the Abramoff scandal, is still underway.
Rep. Don Young refused to step down from his post as ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee despite an ongoing investigaiton into his connections to Alaska oil companies. After the 2008 election, Young finally stepped down after it was clear his party would oust him in a vote. The investigation of Young is still ongoing.
Rep. Rick Renzi stepped down from his post on the House Intelligence Committee after his house and office were raided. Renzi retired from Congress after he was brought up on a 35-count indictment.
Sen. Ted Stevens stepped down from his commmittee posts after he was brought up on a seven-count indictment. Stevens would be convicted on all counts, but that conviction would later be thrown out by the Justice Department due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Some lawmakers haven't been so keen to remove themselves from their coveted positions. Rep. Jerry Lewis did not step down when he was Chair of the House Appropriations Committee despite being under investigation. Lewis is still the ranking member on the committee and still earmarking to the clients of the same lobbyists that got him in trouble in the first place. Rep. Charles Rangel is still the Chair of the House Ways & Means Committee despite an ongoing investigation.
The calculation of stepping down is usually a measure of political viability for the party and the individual lawmaker under investigation. In Visclosky's case, this is a powerful PR move for him. Will it pay off? The record of what happens to those stepping down from committee posts doesn't look so promising.
