Posted August 4, 2008 by Conor Kennedy

Getting A Foot In The Revolving Door

One of the biggest perks of being a Member of Congress is choosing the laws that govern one’s own behavior.  Unfortunately, that perk creates huge conflicts of interest over the content of congressional ethics legislation—the laws that affect the personal lives of our Senators and Representatives.  One such conflict surfaces when it comes to new “post-employment restrictions” -- limitations which force former public servants and their aides to wait a given period of time before they can return to Congress as paid lobbyists. 

Last year, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (HLOGA) proposed extending Congress’s “cooling-off periods” (another name for post-employment restrictions) from one year to two years.  House Members fought off the “Closing The Revolving Door” provision, claiming they had properly dealt with the revolving door problem by imposing new disclosure requirements for job negotiations.  While the House is not solely to blame (after all, neither chamber took measures sufficient to affect the revolving door problem in a meaningful way), it was rather disingenuous for House Members to keep the “Closing the Revolving Door” title on the provision while gutting its substance. 

As it stands, K Street lobbying firms gobble up veterans of the popularly-elected branches for two major reasons: social capital and human capital.  Though definitions vary, social capital is generally the capacity to leverage one’s interpersonal connections to influence others to act, in part through generating favors.  Human capital is the set of talents, abilities, and proficiencies an individual develops as she gains expertise.  Under current law, former staffers and politicians can translate both forms of capital into favorable congressional action for their clients.  In lobbying their former colleagues, they (1) make calls on behalf of their clients to old political allies and (2) leverage both their nuanced understanding of the political process and their credibility as resourceful, accomplished policy experts to earn additional influence.  

The problem with the revolving door—that is, the reason revolving-door legislation is included in ethics legislation in the first place—concerns only social capital.  Beginning one year after leaving the Hill, former representatives and former staffers can contact their old political allies on behalf of the highest bidder and get a callback by the end of the day.  The basis of the post-employment restrictions in statute – on the books for decades – is that as each term passes, Congressional coalitions rise and fall, challengers unseat incumbents, and the political and social dynamics of each chamber gradually shift, thus decreasing the value of a former public servants’ contacts (i.e., her social capital) over time.  In contrast, disclosure requirements merely alert the public about a practice which most Americans do not have the time or interest to fully contemplate.  On balance, post-employment restrictions are far more likely to have the desired impact of solving the problem.

As for human capital, it is a completely different situation when, after a term or two, a former public servant throws her hat back in the ring as a lobbyist and regains her former clout because of what she knows, rather than who she knows.  Furthermore, this second situation casts serious doubts on the assumption that interdependence between Congress and lobbyists is inherently detrimental.  After all, political policymaking is an industry best served by political and policy expertise. If experts gain clout as lobbyists unaided by their political connections, the whole country benefits from their experience and competence.  When former politicians and staffers gain close ties with current politicians and staffers because they understand voting patterns, because they know the best way to word legislation, or because they have a well-developed sense of how to garner political will, it facilitates the legislative process and produces more effective laws. 

On many fronts, HLOGA was a positive step forward, but there is still much work to be done before we can say that social capital (not human capital) is off the K Street market.  For the good of the country, and more directly for the sake of institutional integrity, Congress again needs to step up its self-policing efforts.  The revolving door provisions in HLOGA should be revisited in the next Congress.  First and foremost, the House should extend its cooling off period to two years, but there are other, stronger reform proposals worth examining as well. 

First, any new post-employment restrictions should track each chamber’s term schedule.  That is, each ex-legislator’s cooling-off period should start at the beginning of the next new term, thus eliminating the current incentive for lame-duck House Members to leave their posts early so as to expedite their transition into lobbying careers.  Second, an extension of the House’s cooling off period is more likely to pass if accompanied by another extension to the Senate’s.  HLOGA demonstrated that securing House support for any new measure requires a reasonable prospect of a significant impact on both chambers.

As the 110^th Congress comes to a close, Representatives and Senators can look back at HLOGA, dust off their hands, and wait for the next once-a-decade scandal to break before taking further action, thus selling HLOGA’s legacy short and disappointing the voting public’s raised expectations.  On the other hand, they could begin the 111^th Congress determined to build on HLOGA’s accomplishment and make an effort to truly slow the revolving door, thus renewing America’s confidence in its elected institutions.  In the end, the choice is unavoidable—and the right choice is obvious.