Zombie Lobbyists Occupy Washington

They come creep­ing from the K Street salons, mon­ey drip­ping from their lips. They skulk the halls of pow­er, bemoan the pain of reg­u­la­tion on the steps of Capi­tol Hill. Their shrill howls for the brains of our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives cut the D.C. night.

They are lob­by­ists. On any giv­en day, more than 10,000 of them swarm the nation’s cap­i­tal – twen­ty-six for each U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tive and sen­a­tor. They are the emis­saries of this nation’s wealthy and immor­tal – cor­po­rate citizens. 

These beasts have man­aged to abro­gate the laws of life and death. While the actors on the stage of elect­ed gov­ern­ment blur by the pop­u­lace in nev­er-end­ing cam­paign the­atri­cals, cor­po­rate lob­by­ists are not bound by elec­toral cycles – they are imper­vi­ous to term lim­its, impeach­ment and sane regulation.

Elect­ed offi­cials and their staffers pass from the life of pub­lic ser­vice into the walk­ing death of the cor­po­rate sec­tor, and many join the lucra­tive ranks of the lob­by­ist. Once bit­ten by the mon­ey bug, few escape its taint.

A cor­po­rate pledge for the people

On Sep­tem­ber 23, 2010, the U.S. House GOP lead­er­ship stood proud­ly behind soon-to-be Speak­er John Boehn­er (R‑Ohio) in the ware­house of Tart Lum­ber Com­pa­ny in Ster­ling, Va., and deliv­ered a promis­so­ry let­ter to a lion­ized Amer­i­can elec­torate. The U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Repub­li­can Con­fer­ence ​“Pledge to Amer­i­ca” proclaimed:

Voic­es in and out of a gov­ern­ment whis­per that our stand­ing as the world’s leader of democ­ra­cy and eco­nom­ic growth is end­ing. The Amer­i­can peo­ple do not accept these coun­sels of timid­i­ty, fail­ure and despair. … Leg­is­la­tors in Wash­ing­ton have imposed an agen­da that doesn’t reflect the pri­or­i­ties of the peo­ple. What’s worse, the most impor­tant deci­sions are made behind closed doors, where a flur­ry of back­room deals has sup­plant­ed the will of the people.

Beside Boehn­er, law­mak­ers present includ­ed Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R‑Calif.), cur­rent House major­i­ty whip, and Eric Can­tor (R‑Va.), cur­rent House major­i­ty leader.

Speak­ing from his podi­um before the nation’s assem­bled press, Boehn­er waved the ​“Pledge to Amer­i­ca” over his head and assured the pub­lic that the soon-to-be House Repub­li­can major­i­ty had heard Amer­i­cans’ grum­blings of discontent. 

“Across Amer­i­ca, the peo­ple see a gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton that isn’t lis­ten­ing, doesn’t get it and doesn’t care. Today that begins to change,” Boehn­er said. ​“This new gov­ern­ing agen­da, built by lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple, offers plans to cre­ate jobs, cut spend­ing and put the pow­er where it belongs: in the hands of the people.”

The Pledge echoes for­mer Speak­er Newt Gin­grich and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist’s 1994 ​“Con­tract With Amer­i­ca.” It promis­es to accom­plish the same objec­tives – decreased tax­a­tion, reg­u­la­tion and gov­ern­ment (defense spend­ing except­ed) – by per­ma­nent­ly extend­ing the Bush tax cuts, repeal­ing the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, aka ​“Oba­macare”), remov­ing Fan­nie Mae and Fred­die Mac from gov­ern­men­tal con­trol and sup­port, and reduc­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing through mas­sive cuts to pub­lic programs.

Most iron­i­cal­ly, the Pledge pays lip ser­vice to end­ing the ​“back­room deals” that have come to define the polit­i­cal cul­ture of Capi­tol Hill. This clichéd dis­dain is laugh­able giv­en that Bri­an Wild, the chief archi­tect of the Pledge, is a con­gres­sion­al staffer and cor­po­rate lob­by­ist who has got­ten rich by ​“supplant[ing] the will of the peo­ple.” Good gov­ern­ment advo­cates will argue that Wild must be dizzy from spend­ing the past 12 years pass­ing through the revolv­ing door that con­nects the back­rooms of gov­ern­ment with the board rooms of K Street. But this ​“revolv­ing door” metaphor fails to describe what is actu­al­ly tak­ing place with Wild and others.

Yes, mem­bers of Con­gress and their staffers – Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats – go back and forth between gov­ern­ment offices and lob­by­ing firms. But while the fis­cal enti­ty that writes their pay­checks is ever-chang­ing (hence the image of a revolv­ing door), their alle­giance to the immor­tal cor­po­ra­tions, on whose dime they toil, nev­er wavers. 

CASE STUDY 1: Born Bri­an Wild

Accord­ing to reports on file with both the U.S. Sen­ate Office of Pub­lic Records and the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Bri­an Wild – the Pledge crafter who was also respon­si­ble for mon­i­tor­ing the con­cerns and ideas voiced in the GOP’s online forum ​“Amer­i­ca Speak­ing Out” – was a reg­is­tered lob­by­ist for the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce from 1999 to 2005. He also served simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Chamber’s Office of Advo­ca­cy and Grass­roots Programs.

Wild lob­bied against bills to raise the fed­er­al min­i­mum wage, against the Patient’s Bill of Rights Act and against envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­to­ry leg­is­la­tion. He also lob­bied for tort reform bills aimed at asbestos-relat­ed claims and in favor of bills to make it more dif­fi­cult for debt-sad­dled cit­i­zens to declare bankruptcy.

As chief of staff for Rep. Pat Toomey (R‑Pa.) from 2001 to 2004, Wild slid eas­i­ly between the roles of lob­by­ist work­ing for the Cham­ber of Com­merce and staffer on Capi­tol Hill work­ing direct­ly with mem­bers of Con­gress. (Toomey left office in 2005 for the pres­i­den­cy of Club for Growth of Wash­ing­ton, D.C., which oper­ates as both a cor­po­rate think tank and polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee. In 2010, backed by Club for Growth, Toomey won Arlen Specter’s Penn­syl­va­nia Sen­ate seat.)

Between June 2004 and Octo­ber 2005, Wild worked as deputy assis­tant for leg­isla­tive affairs to Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney.

Between 1999 and 2005 – the years Wild was a reg­is­tered lob­by­ist for the Cham­ber, a staffer for Toomey and Cheney, and the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Chamber’s Office of Advo­ca­cy and Grass­roots Pro­grams – the Cham­ber spent more than $227 mil­lion to lob­by both hous­es of Con­gress, the White House, the Office of the Vice Pres­i­dent and fed­er­al agen­cies. The Cham­ber was con­cerned about pri­vate con­trac­tors work­ing in Iraq, ​“home­land secu­ri­ty,” defense, immi­gra­tion, health­care, labor, finan­cial indus­try reg­u­la­tion, tort reform, ener­gy pol­i­cy, tax­a­tion, appro­pri­a­tions and for­eign trade policy.

Wild left the office of Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney in 2005 to work as a lob­by­ist with the Nick­les Group, which was formed ear­li­er that year by for­mer Sen. Don Nick­les (R‑Okla.), who chaired the Sen­ate Bud­get Com­mit­tee from 2003 through 2004, and three of his for­mer senior Sen­ate staffers. Dur­ing his time with Nick­les, Wild lob­bied for notable cor­po­rate cit­i­zens such as Exxon Mobil, Anadarko Petro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion, South­ern Com­pa­ny Ser­vices, Com­cast, Pfiz­er, Bris­tol-Myers Squibb, Hoff­man-La Roche, Mon­san­to and Amer­i­can Inter­na­tion­al Group.

Wild left Nick­les in April 2010 to work as ​“senior advis­er for leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tives” and ​“pol­i­cy and com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor” for then-House Minor­i­ty Leader Boehn­er, lend­ing his Cham­ber-honed grass­roots advo­ca­cy skills to the Repub­li­can sweep of the 2010 midterm elections.

A month fol­low­ing Boehner’s swear­ing in as speak­er of the House in 2011, Wild announced that he would be join­ing the lob­by­ing firm of Mehlman Vogel Castag­netti, Inc. (MVC). MVC found­ing part­ners include Bruce Mehlman, a for­mer gen­er­al coun­sel and advis­er to the House Repub­li­can Con­fer­ence; Alex Vogel, a for­mer chief coun­sel to for­mer Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Bill Frist (R‑Tenn.); and David Castag­netti, who worked as a con­gres­sion­al liai­son for Sen. John Kerry’s (D‑Mass.) 2004 failed pres­i­den­tial campaign.

As a prin­ci­ple at MVC, Wild cur­rent­ly lob­bies on behalf of clients such as America’s Health Insur­ance Plans, Ascen­sion Health, Humana, Astrazeneca Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Mer­ck, SLARS Coali­tion (“Stu­dent Loan Auc­tion Rate Secu­ri­ties Coali­tion” – an orga­ni­za­tion of investors hold­ing asset-backed secu­ri­ties derived from bun­dled stu­dent debt), the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute, Koch Indus­tries Pub­lic Sec­tor, Wal-Mart and Cor­rec­tions Cor­po­ra­tion of America. 

While Wild was at Nick­les, the group lob­bied against fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions pro­posed in PPACA and relat­ed laws, such as a ban on deny­ing cov­er­age to indi­vid­u­als for pre-exist­ing med­ical con­di­tions, and against the for­ma­tion of a fed­er­al­ly-admin­is­tered health insur­ance pro­gram – the elu­sive ​“pub­lic option.”

But the Nick­les Group did not lead the oppo­si­tion to the reforms con­tained in PPACA. Nick­les is small-fry – just one of a mul­ti­tude of lob­by shops fund­ed by cor­po­rate interests.

A game changer

Accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Sheila Krumholz, more than $3.6 bil­lion were expend­ed in fed­er­al cam­paigns dur­ing the 2010 midterm elec­tion cycle. This was a 28-per­cent increase from the $2.8 bil­lion spent in the 2006 cycle.

Some of this increase, she says, can be attrib­uted to the ​“hydraulic the­o­ry of mon­ey in pol­i­tics,” which holds that mon­ey is like water under pres­sure – if there is a way to inject itself into the sys­tem, it will. 

One new inlet for this mon­e­tary pres­sure – and antic­i­pat­ed in the 2012 elec­tion cycle – was cre­at­ed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 deci­sion in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v. the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion. Accord­ing to ​“Fad­ing Dis­clo­sure,” a Sep­tem­ber 2010 report by Pub­lic Citizen’s Tay­lor Lin­coln and Craig Hol­man, Cit­i­zens Unit­ed expand­ed an exist­ing dis­re­gard for elec­tions law and cam­paign finance dis­clo­sure. Pub­lic Cit­i­zen found that dur­ing the 2006 midterm elec­tion cycle, near­ly 100 per­cent of elec­tion­eer­ing groups report­ed the sources of their fund­ing, as required by law. Dur­ing the 2008 elec­tion cycle such report­ing had fall­en to less than 50 per­cent (thanks, the report says, to changed Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion rules). By the begin­ning of the gen­er­al elec­tion report­ing peri­od after the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing in 2010, it stood at a mere 32 percent.

The Pub­lic Cit­i­zen report notes that this break­down in donor report­ing took place pri­mar­i­ly among right-wing inde­pen­dent groups, such as Toomey’s Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, a 501©4 non­prof­it found­ed by bil­lion­aire David Koch in 2004. The report goes on that an increas­ing num­ber of these inde­pen­dent groups are incor­po­rat­ing as 501© enti­ties, which are sup­posed to be heav­i­ly restrict­ed in their polit­i­cal activ­i­ty and are not required by law to dis­close their donors – as opposed to 527 non­prof­it groups, which can engage in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty but must dis­close their donors. 

As an exam­ple of this sort of activ­i­ty, Lin­coln and Hol­man cite Amer­i­can Cross­roads and its affil­i­ates, which were found­ed by GOP oper­a­tive Karl Rove and Ed Gille­spie – über-lob­by­ist and for­mer chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee (RNC).