The Road to Riches (and national ruin, if you ask me) Is Called K Street

[KamaAina]

I ran across this little gem by following a link from a Slate article. It is a little bit dated, from '05 -- but it provides a glimpse of the world of high-powered D.C. lobbying at its peak, when the repukes controlled Congress as well as the White House.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/21/AR2005062101632.html

The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since 2000 to more than 34,750 while the amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as much as 100 percent. Only a few other businesses have enjoyed greater prosperity in an otherwise fitful economy....

Lobbying firms can't hire people fast enough. Starting salaries have risen to about $300,000 a year for the best-connected aides eager to "move downtown" from Capitol Hill or the Bush administration. Once considered a distasteful post-government vocation, big-bucks lobbying is luring nearly half of all lawmakers who return to the private sector when they leave Congress, according to a forthcoming study by Public Citizen's Congress Watch....

Take the example of Hewlett-Packard Co. The California computer maker nearly doubled its budget for contract lobbyists to $734,000 last year and added the elite lobbying firm of Quinn Gillespie (that's former RNC chair Ed Gillespie -Ed.) & Associates LLC. Its goal was to pass Republican-backed legislation that would allow the company to bring back to the United States at a dramatically lowered tax rate as much as $14.5 billion in profit from foreign subsidiaries.

The extra lobbying paid off. The legislation was approved and Hewlett-Packard will save millions of dollars in taxes. "We're trying to take advantage of the fact that Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House," said John D. Hassell, director of government affairs at Hewlett-Packard. "There is an opportunity here for the business community to make its case and be successful."

Wow. So let me see if I've got this straight. The legislative aides who conduct much of the day-to-day business on the Hill, and in many cases our elected officials themselves, are really just auditioning for a chance to make Wall Street-style big bucks by lobbying for corporate interests -- and, pretty much by definition, against ours.

No wonder it always seems like we're banging our heads against a brick wall! I'd be interested to know if the influence of Big Lobbying has declined, or at least leveled off, since the Dems took back Congress. I'm not terribly hopeful, though...

How do other countries prevent the Gucci-clad hordes from running wild through their corridors of power? Do you often see, for example, British MPs hopping into a black taxi and heading to London's equivalent of K Street?

The Slate article itself is worth a read as well, if only for the rumor that disgraced ex-Sen. Trent Lott may be hooking up with John Breaux -- yes, the former Dem Senator who explored a run for La. governor this year -- to create yet another K Street startup.

http://www.slate.com/id/2178790