The Gilded Capital: Power/money connect: "Self-enrichment is everyday part of Washington life."

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The Politico: The Gilded Capital: Power/money connect
By: Jeanne Cummings
Jun 26, 2007


Last year, businesses and other advocacy groups spent $2.6 billion wining, dining and lobbying lawmakers to take their side in legislative disputes or to slip an earmark into a budget bill.
(Photo by AP)

....The old channels of private money that always coursed through a city dedicated to public power have in recent years overflowed their banks. In the process, an expectation of self-enrichment is fast becoming an everyday part of Washington life.

There are the staff hands and press aides who became multimillionaires a few years after leaving the White House for public relations and lobbying shops. There are the Capitol Hill assistants who know they can command ample six-figure salaries at trade associations and private firms in their late 20s or early 30s.

These sums are changing typical Washington career arcs. And they are transforming the professional culture of a capital city that historically has been defined by comfortable salaries but not by genuine wealth and its gilded accoutrements. Lobbyists and consultants who even a decade ago typically had distinctly upper-middle-class lifestyles now dine at trendy restaurants run by celebrity chefs (like BLT Steak, where the Japanese Kobe beef costs $26 an ounce), assemble modern art collections (Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta has one of Washington's best), wear suits tailored in London or Milan and, like Hillary Clinton pollster Mark Penn, own first homes in Georgetown and second ones by the Chesapeake.

Public disclosure records make plain where all that money is coming from.

In 1996, the entire political world, from candidates to PACs to interest groups, raised a total of $2.8 billion to spend on the presidential and congressional elections. In 2004, that same political world raised $4.3 billion to spend on them. This election cycle, the sum is expected by most experts to soar well past $5 billion, and for the first time, the two nominees in the general election are on track to raise and spend $1 billion all by themselves....

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0607/4653.html