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Case Bringing New Scrutiny to a System and a Profession    [

    The $4 Billion Industry That Is America's Guilty Secret
    By Rupert Cornwell
    The Independent UK

    Wednesday 04 January 2006

    Lobbying is Washington's grubby secret. Some say lobbying is part of the democratic process. Others claim it is legalised bribery, even corruption. But love it or loathe it, it is the way Washington works.

    Usually you hear little about the quiet meetings, the lavish lunches and junkets that lubricate American politics. But every once in a while something comes along to open the system to what it hates most: daylight. The case of Jack Abramoff, influence-peddler extraordinaire, is one of those somethings.

    Once Mr Abramoff claimed to have done nothing illegal, that his only sin was to have been too good at his job. But now his career is in ruins, a jail term of nine years or more beckons - an incarceration that would be even longer but for the plea bargain he reached yesterday with federal prosecutors.

    For Mr Abramoff only contrition is left: "Words will not ever be able to express my sorrow and my profound regret for my actions and mistakes," he said in court yesterday. As for the two dozen members of Congress and their aides reputedly under investigation, they can only tremble.

    If Mr Abramoff spills the beans, they may soon be contemplating a similar fate. This is potentially the biggest Congressional scandal of the modern era. It is largely (though not exclusively) Republican, and may mark the beginning of the end of the party's 11-year dominance of Capitol Hill.

    Lobbying per se is nothing new. The right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances" is enshrined in the first amendment of the Constitution. Back in 1913, Woodrow Wilson said Washington was "swarming with lobbyists ... you can't throw a brick in any direction without hitting one".

    But the 28th president cannot have imagined how access-peddling would blossom into a $4bn industry. There are 14,000 registered lobbyists, and as many again who are not registered. Between 1998 and 2004, foreign companies spent $620m (£350m) bending ears in Washington.

    Lobbying thrives in the US for two reasons. In the US the executive and legislative branches are separate. The former is headed by the President, the latter consists of Congress, which writes laws and appropriates money for government spending. Although George Bush's Republicans have majorities in both House and Senate, he has no direct control of the bills they consider. That power rests with dozens of powerful committee chairmen and ranking members, all with their fiefdoms, whose yea or nay is decisive.

    The other key ingredient is money, the colossal sums needed to fight election campaigns. In Britain, the curbs on such spending are strict. In America, by contrast, the sky's the limit. Total spending for the 2004 elections, presidential and congressional, reached $4bn.

    The summit of extravagance was the 2004 Senate race in South Dakota, one of the least populous and less affluent US states. The two candidates spent a combined $40m. In an average state, the cost of defending a Senate seat is $20m. This means an incumbent has to raise $9,000 every day of his six-year term. At which point, enter the lobbyists.

    The trade-off is simple. Corporate and other donors provide cash in a bid to secure the legislation they want. The intermediaries between the two sides are lobbyists. And the more people a lobbyist knows on Capitol Hill, the more effective he or she is.

    Unsurprisingly, ever increasing numbers of them are former legislators. The Washington-based pressure group Centre for Public Integrity, says almost 250 former Congressmen and senior government officials are now active lobbyists.

    Jack Abramoff and his ilk are key figures in Washington's power networks. And no network was mightier than the one embracing Mr Abramoff, the former House majority leader Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist, president of the arch-conservative Americans for Tax Reform, one of the most powerful special interests groups in Washington.

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    Case Bringing New Scrutiny to a System and a Profession
    By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Dan Balz
    The Washington Post

    Wednesday 04 January 2006

    The biggest public corruption scandal in a generation took down one of the best-connected lobbyists in Washington yesterday. The question echoing around the capital was what other careers - and what other familiar ways of doing business - are endangered.

    Jack Abramoff represented the most flamboyant and extreme example of a brand of influence trading that flourished after the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives 11 years ago. Now, some GOP strategists fear that the fallout from his case could affect the party's efforts to keep control in the November midterm elections.

    Abramoff was among the lobbyists most closely associated with the K Street Project, which was initiated by his friend Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), now the former House majority leader, once the GOP vaulted to power. It was an aggressive program designed to force corporations and trade associations to hire more GOP-connected lobbyists in what at times became an almost seamless relationship between Capitol Hill lawmakers and some firms that sought to influence them.

    Now Abramoff has become a symbol of a system out of control. His agreement to plead guilty to three criminal counts and cooperate with prosecutors threatens to ensnare other lawmakers or their aides - Republicans and possibly some Democrats. At a minimum, yesterday's developments put both sides of the lawmaker-lobbyist relationship on notice that some of the wilder customs of recent years - lubricated with money, entertainment and access - carry higher risks. In the post-Abramoff era, what once was accepted as business as usual may be seen as questionable or worse.

    "In the short run, members of Congress will get allergic to lobbyists," said former representative Vin Weber (R-Minn.), now a lobbyist for Clark & Weinstock. "They'll be nervous about taking calls and holding meetings, to say nothing of lavish trips to Scotland. Those will be out. For a period of time now, members of Congress will be concerned about even legitimate contact with the lobbying world."

    The initial impact of a scandal that earlier produced a guilty plea from Abramoff associate Michael Scanlon could be changes in the way lawmakers and lobbyists interact. In the longer term, said many lobbyists and others, Congress will be pressured to revisit and toughen rules on gifts and travel that lawmakers and members of their staffs may accept. Some former lawmakers said even bigger changes may be needed to restore public confidence in how Washington works.

    Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who with Weber's help effectively used issues of corruption to wrest control of the House from the Democrats in 1994, said the Abramoff scandal should trigger a broader review in Congress of the way politicians finance campaigns and deal with lobbyists.

    "I'm going to talk at length about the need for us to rethink not just lobbying but the whole process of elections, incumbency protection and the way in which the system has evolved," he said. "Which is very different from the way the American system is supposed to be like. I think Abramoff is just part of a large pattern that has got to be rethought."

    Emotions ran high on K Street yesterday when news of Abramoff's plea deal began to break. "The Abramoff scandal is causing a reexamination of what lobbyists do in town," said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "I wouldn't be surprised to see lawmakers become cautious in meetings with lobbyists."

    With an eye on November's elections, Republicans have sought to limit the damage to themselves by portraying the scandal as bipartisan, describing Abramoff as an equal-opportunity dispenser of campaign cash and largess.

    So far, the public has not identified corruption as solely a Republican problem. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in November asked Americans whether they thought Democrats or Republicans were better on ethical matters; 16 percent said Democrats, 12 percent said Republicans, and 71 percent said there was not much difference between the parties.

    But Republicans worry about two possibilities. The first is that Abramoff, known for his close ties to DeLay, mostly implicates Republicans as a result of his plea agreement. That could shift public attitudes sharply against the GOP. "People are uneasy about what else is out there," said one GOP strategist who requested anonymity to speak more candidly about the possible political fallout.

    Beyond that is a fear that the scandal and attention it could draw in the months before the election might further sour the public on Washington and Congress. As the party in power, Republicans know they stand to lose more if voters take retribution in November.

    Regardless of the electoral implications, the Abramoff scandal may force changes on Capitol Hill in the form of tough new lobbying disclosure laws that even some lobbying advocates say it is time to consider. "There will be a push for increased oversight and disclosure of lobbying," said Douglas G. Pinkham, president of the Public Affairs Council, a lobbyist education group. "There needs to be greater transparency and better enforcement."

    Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who co-wrote campaign finance changes a few years ago, have introduced separate proposals that would crack down hard on lobbying as now practiced. Their ideas will serve as the starting point for what is expected to be a vigorous debate.

    Some lobbyists reacted defensively yesterday, at pains to say that Abramoff was an exception to the way they do business. "The Abramoff style is so far afield from the normal course of business as to be irrelevant to me and probably most people in my line of work," said Joel Johnson, a Clinton White House official and now a lobbyist for the Glover Park Group.

    "The whole Abramoff matter is atypical," agreed Ed Rogers of Barbour Griffith & Rogers. "It is not a lesson of how business is done in Washington."

    John Jonas, a lobbyist at Patton Boggs, said he expects "less partying, less gifting, more awareness about compliance" with rules that have been "observed in the breach."

    As for the perception of lobbying as a profession, "it's confirmed everybody's worst fears about lobbyists - that they double-deal, that they're not aboveboard," Jonas said. "That hurts the legitimate practice of the profession."

    Gingrich said Republican leaders in Congress should take the initiative to reform lobbying and campaign finance, rather than hoping to slip quietly past the current scandal. "Things have to be done to really rethink where the center of the political process is," he said. "Right now, the center is a lobbying and PAC [political action committee] system center, which is not healthy."