WASHINGTON – When Newt Gingrich was in office, he spoke highly of the people from his home district of Marietta, Ga. But apparently they don’t measure up as neighbors.
Gingrich, like so many former members of Congress, never actually went home to live with his constituents. He’s found a mansion in a Washington suburb more to his liking.
Too many ex-lawmakers stay in Washington, as if the Beltway were some magnetic field, renting themselves out as TV pundits or lobbying their old colleagues for money for the special interests that used to lobby them.
Another example is former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, who vowed to return to Kansas if he lost the 1996 presidential race. Kansans are still waiting.
When he’s not shilling for Viagra or Pepsi, Dole works in the Washington law offices of Verner Liipfert Bernhard & Hand – along with another former Senate majority leader, George Mitchell, D-Maine.
Former House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash., is now a Beltway lobbyist. So are former Sens. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, and Don Riegle, D-Mich.; and former Reps. Dave McCurdy, D-Okla., Vin Weber, R-Minn., and Bob Walker, R-Pa.
Remember Republican Bob Livingston, the 22-year veteran lawmaker from Louisiana? When he resigned his House seat in 1999, he moved his office just blocks away, where he started a lobbying firm called The Livingston Group.
And the list goes on.
A recent survey by the New York Times found that at least 22 percent of those who left Congress last decade are now Washington lobbyists. Overall, K Street boasts more than 128 ex-lawmakers.
And even if they don’t twist arms for a law or lobbying firm, they join a think tank or policy group, or find some other employment here. The number of ex-pols going into the media, from Gingrich to John Kasich to Bob Dornan, is frightening (as if we didn’t hear enough from them when they were in office!).
Whatever their reason for hanging around, at least four in 10 do.
Of the 589 listed as members of the Association of Former Members of Congress, 232 have Washington-area addresses. That should grow to 233 when Gary Condit finally steps down, or is booted out by voters (serial adulterers tend to feel more at home here in Hollywood on the Potomac).
The founding fathers would be appalled at Washington’s permanent political class.
“The representatives ought to return home and mix with the people,” so as not to “acquire the habits of [Washington], which might differ from those of their constituents,” asserted Roger Sherman of Connecticut, one of the Constitution’s signers in 1787.
Differ indeed.
Lawmakers are beholden to special interests over the general interest in part because some of those special interests used to be lawmakers themselves. It’s even harder to say no to old pals.
Short of term limits, increasing the amount of time ex-lawmakers must wait before lobbying their old colleagues might slow the revolving door.
According to existing rules, they have to wait just a year after leaving Congress before they can directly lobby on the Hill.
Raise the ban to five years, and make it a serious felony to break it, and departing lawmakers might think twice about staying behind in Washington to help ex-colleagues spend your money. In that department, they need no help.
In the meantime, do your country a favor and go home.
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