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You are here: Home / Politics / Cry Me A River

Cry Me A River

by John Cole|  November 10, 20068:02 am| 25 Comments

This post is in: Politics

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This is really breaking me up:

The hundreds of Republican staffers — not to mention more than a few Members — who will lose their jobs in the next few weeks are going to face a hostile marketplace on K Street as unemployed Republicans flood the market.

Tuesday’s election results sent at least 20 incumbents in the House and Senate packing and flipped control of the House to Democrats. It also flipped a decade-long trend of Republicans as the darlings of the lobbying sector. While GOP aides are flooding the town with their résumés, it’s now plugged-in Democratic aides whom companies and firms really have an eye for.

“It’s going to be more of a buyer’s market for Republican staffers and a seller’s market for the Democratic staffers,” said Mike Tongour, who runs Tongour Simpson Holsclaw, a boutique lobbying firm with no Democrats on the payroll. “We’ve had a couple of phone calls from Democrats who are thinking about leaving the Hill, and we’re interested in talking to them.”

Personally, I am not going to get too bent out of shape about unemployment for the folks who helped to bring the nastiness and stupidity of the last few years. At the same time, let’s hope the last vote was not just a switch of parties in DC.

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25Comments

  1. 1.

    skip

    November 10, 2006 at 8:24 am

    To hell with lobbying. I’m going down to Rayburn and sign on with the Select Committee of Prewar Intelligence. Tell the KBR guys to dig in at the NRA, and suggest the OSP boys who have dual citizenship to book seats on the next red eye to Tel Aviv.

    In the immortal word of Howard Dean: yee-haaah!

  2. 2.

    jake

    November 10, 2006 at 8:34 am

    Note to self: Be on the look out for pan handlers asking if I can spare 10 grand.

    But I’m sure these fine folks will just march over to the nearest Army recruitment center and sign on so they can finally do their part to win the war against terrorism. Really, it must have sucked for them, being stuck in a cushy office when they just wanted to get out and patrol the streets of Basra. Stupid cushy office! Or they can join the National Guard in their home town to defend American soil against the coming hordes of terrorists that the Democrat majority will spawn. I heard Pelosi is having a “Welcome Jihadist!” door mat made up special.

  3. 3.

    Bombadil

    November 10, 2006 at 8:43 am

    Screw ’em. Let them live on a minimum wage job for a few years. Make Democrats out of all of them.

  4. 4.

    OCSteve

    November 10, 2006 at 8:50 am

    I was about to post this:

    They should make out all right. After all, the Democrats pledge to raise the minimum wage.

    But I see Bombadil beat me to it :)

  5. 5.

    VidaLoca

    November 10, 2006 at 9:00 am

    At the same time, let’s hope the last vote was not just a switch of parties in DC.

    Bet your ass that the lobbying firms have been hard at work since Tuesday night, trying to make sure that that’s exactly all it was.

  6. 6.

    Zifnab

    November 10, 2006 at 9:33 am

    At the same time, let’s hope the last vote was not just a switch of parties in DC.

    That would be the tragedy of all this. If the Pelosi 100 Hours trainwrecks in the first five minutes on lobby reform. Hopefully, Dems have learned that they don’t need lobbiests to win elections and that the threat of jail (that every one of their colleagues across the isle will be happy to hang over them) is enough of a deterant to dump the system.

  7. 7.

    neil

    November 10, 2006 at 9:35 am

    From Eschaton:

    Tuesday, October 17

    Dare to Dream

    I’m tempering my optimism, but I do have this lovely vision of so many Republican Reps. and staffers being turfed out of their jobs that there isn’t enough wingnut welfare for them all.

    Yup.

  8. 8.

    Mr Furious

    November 10, 2006 at 10:40 am

    Get back to me after the Dem’s unveil their reforms…then we’ll see.

    Zifnab makes a good point. The Dems ascended into power in the teeth of a K-Street that was hostile to them. They should take note of the fact that they don’t need the lobbyists as badly as was once the case.

    Turn a firehose on the District. Clean it all up.

  9. 9.

    ChristieS

    November 10, 2006 at 10:59 am

    Pelosi needs to draw a firm damned line in the sand re: lobbyists. If you leave the Hill and join a lobbying firm, you are forbidden to approach the Congress for a MINIMUM of two years. I don’t care which party is in control.

    These damned staffers pad their resumes with a couple of years of Hill work JUST so they can get cushy lobbyist positions. Since in my own schizoid brain, I can understand the staffers building up a great network of contacts, I can’t blame them for it. What I don’t approve of is letting them jump from Congressman So-and-so’s office strait to K-Street and the next damned day be back in that Congressman’s office lobbying.

    IMO, that’s damned unethical even if it isn’t illegal, and it’s irrespective of political party.

    /rant

  10. 10.

    The Other Steve

    November 10, 2006 at 11:16 am

    The hundreds of Republican staffers — not to mention more than a few Members — who will lose their jobs in the next few weeks are going to face a hostile marketplace on K Street as unemployed Republicans flood the market.

    Here’s and idea…

    They can get a real job, like the rest of us Americans.

    I agree with the other commentors. Democrats have learned they don’t need corporate lobbyist PAC money to get elected, as long as they talk to the grassroots base. I gave $400 this year to about 10 different candidates, and about $2000 back in 2004. I’d never given money prior to that.

    Pelosi ought to push lobbying reform hard. Make it near impossible to contact anybody from congress outside of public hearings.

  11. 11.

    Steve

    November 10, 2006 at 11:17 am

    It also goes without saying that lobbyists don’t get to write the bills any more. I’m not sure how many people realize how truly insane that practice was getting.

  12. 12.

    Zifnab

    November 10, 2006 at 11:25 am

    It also goes without saying that lobbyists don’t get to write the bills any more. I’m not sure how many people realize how truly insane that practice was getting.

    That’s rather difficult to police. The entire job of a lobbyist is to say “This is legislation I’d like to see put into law.” How you draw the line from “This is legislation I’d like to see put into law” and “This is legislation I’d like to see put into law that you can present as a legally binding bill before the House/Senate” seems rather grey to me. How you keep Congresscritters from being “inspired” by a friendly conversation with their lobbyist buddies that just happens to come with a 40-page email seems beyond me.

    First and foremost they need end this ridiculous notion that sacks of money from corporations are protected by free speech. Secondly, that things purchased with money – lavish vacations, rides on private jets, cheap/free houses and office space, and other “perks” of doing business with lobbyists – are considered the exact same as the money itself. Then, if a lobbyist still wants to get his 40-page bill passed for free, he’s welcome to present it.

  13. 13.

    capelza

    November 10, 2006 at 11:27 am

    Pelosi mentioned in some interview (they are all blurring together for me at this point..the husband, who never said alot before the election is doing a wild happy dance..and flipping from CNN to MSNBC like a wildman..who knew?) that laws would be given enough time to be read before a vote from now on…It must have been an insane nightmare on the Hill for the pat years…

  14. 14.

    jcricket

    November 10, 2006 at 11:47 am

    Not sure if it would work, but I’d like Democrats to pass rules requiring “x days to review legislation”, “no multi-issue bills”, and more “daylight” into the bills origins. Pass laws that make it clear that the lobbyist “perks” offered to Congresspeople are money, not speech, and need to be disclosed or not accepted or whatever. Pass “PayGo” – Once Republicans have to justify any tax cuts with cutting spending, they’ll lose a lot more of those arguments (because the spending programs tend to be pretty popular). Require Congress to disclose who wrote the bill, their visitor logs, etc.

    Corruption and influence peddling thrive in secrecy and darkness. Cheney’s been fighting transparency and daylight kinds of thing for years, and it’s one of the worst things about the current Republicans.

    Make it much harder to do things like intentionally hide the real estimates for costs of bills from the GAO/Medicare administration, give more protections to whistle-blowers. legislate the elimination of partisan oversight of non-partisan/scientific organizations (see NASA, EPA).

    Basically it’s not enough for Democrats to pass their own bills, they have to make it clear that the Republican way of operating is/was bad for the Congress and bad for the country. The have to pass laws that make it easier for the public to see what’s going on and harder for this kind of corruption to mushroom out of control in the future.

    I’m not worried about this hurting Democrats because we shouldn’t be operating in secrecy and darkness either. We haven’t been, for a while, but I’m totally on-board with making it obvious if any Democrats are corrupt too. And there’s nothing bad about eliminating partisan oversight of NASA, the FDA, etc. We love the science.

  15. 15.

    Steve

    November 10, 2006 at 11:54 am

    That’s rather difficult to police. The entire job of a lobbyist is to say “This is legislation I’d like to see put into law.” How you draw the line from “This is legislation I’d like to see put into law” and “This is legislation I’d like to see put into law that you can present as a legally binding bill before the House/Senate” seems rather grey to me.

    There’s no policing involved. You simply don’t do it. The reason lobbyists show up with pre-drafted bills in the first place is because Republicans let them know that they were fine with rubber-stamping those bills. Back in the day, the notion of lobbyists actually writing the bills was unheard of, so it shouldn’t be hard to restore the protocols.

  16. 16.

    capelza

    November 10, 2006 at 11:54 am

    Oh I remeber something else she said….the intra-Congress conferences between the Senate and the House will now be open to the public…the GOP controlled Congress had banned the public, news…something like that.

  17. 17.

    Alan

    November 10, 2006 at 12:04 pm

    Are these the kind of brilliant staffers that, on a prayer breakfast high, type up memos to inspire Congress to intervene in a personal end of life case to, you know, win elections and to turn back the culture of death?

  18. 18.

    Pooh

    November 10, 2006 at 1:11 pm

    Well, they were all about cutting entitlements. Consider yourselves no longer entitled…

  19. 19.

    SeesThroughIt

    November 10, 2006 at 2:32 pm

    Basically it’s not enough for Democrats to pass their own bills, they have to make it clear that the Republican way of operating is/was bad for the Congress and bad for the country. The have to pass laws that make it easier for the public to see what’s going on and harder for this kind of corruption to mushroom out of control in the future.

    I absolutely agree with this. It’s not enough to pass legislation; the structural and institutional damage Republicans have wrought needs to be fixed.

  20. 20.

    Chuck Butcher

    November 10, 2006 at 3:34 pm

    What I’m trying to figure out is: if I were a lobbying firm just exactly what use I’d have for Republicans who’ve spent their time making the Party now in control miserable.

    Let’s not completely lose our minds and forget the one actual service that lobbying does provide, research. Now it certainly helps if competing thinking gets considered when looking at research…

  21. 21.

    Tsulagi

    November 10, 2006 at 4:09 pm

    Cut and run DeLay knew when it was time to change his residence from Texas to K Street. Before the stampede. He is an asshole and corrupt, but not totally stupid. However he better have locked in contract numbers because his worth took a huge dive on Tuesday.

  22. 22.

    r€nato

    November 10, 2006 at 6:51 pm

    Dear soon-to-be-out-of-work GOP staffers:

    Don’t cry… several states recently approved minimum wage hikes, and the Democratic Congress will likely implement a national minimum wage hike early next year.

    You’re welcome.

  23. 23.

    rachel

    November 10, 2006 at 8:57 pm

    Democrats have learned they don’t need corporate lobbyist PAC money to get elected, as long as they talk to the grassroots base.

    I hope the Dems (and Reps) will remember this election as the reason *why* they should court the grassroots rather than lobbyists. However, I have doubts they’ll remember it for long. Raising grassroots-money is to hunting rabbits as raising lobbyist-money is to hunting moose; you can’t do both, and there’s a hell of a lot more meat on the moose.

  24. 24.

    CaseyL

    November 10, 2006 at 9:15 pm

    Let’s not completely lose our minds and forget the one actual service that lobbying does provide, research.

    Subject matter research is what lobbying should be about, was supposed to be about, and I have no quarrel with lobbyists who do that.

    But that’s not what most lobbying is anymore, and it’s certainly not what K Street was all about. “Research” is at least supposed to be fact-based, not just a wish list of bills you want passed and an envelope full of cash to make sure they do get passed.

    And, while I don’t expect lobbyists advocating for their side to present fully balanced research, I do expect that a legislator using lobbyists for information on an issue to get information from all side of an issue. The legislator isn’t there to make his or her friends in the executive suite happy; s/he is there to enact legislation that balances the benefits to the lobbyist’s client with the benefits to the public. (Yeah, I know: Dream on, CaseyL)

  25. 25.

    r€nato

    November 11, 2006 at 12:46 am

    thing is, if I’m the CEO of MegaCorp, I can pay a fucking librarian a lot fucking less to do ‘research’ than I would pay a lobbyist to do ‘research’.

    I would pay a lobbyist the big bucks for ‘results’.

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