TIME: The Lobbying Game: Why the Revolving Door Won't Close

[PhilipShore]

TIME
The Lobbying Game: Why the Revolving Door Won't Close
Feb. 16, 2006

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1160453,00.html

Before Jeffrey Shockey worked for one of the most powerful committees in Congress, he was a lobbyist at one of the more successful boutique lobbying firms in Washington. Before that, you guessed it, he worked for one of the most powerful committees in Congress. In fact, Shockey, 40, has breezed so smoothly through the revolving door between Congress and the lobbying world that, critics say, it's hard to tell where one job begins and the other ends.

At a time when the excesses of the Jack Abramoff scandal has prodded Congress to at least go through the motions on lobbying reform, the dizzying merry-go-round of staffers like Shockey show just how hard it is to really change the way things are done on Capitol Hill. Granted, many lobbyists chase pork and members of Congress regularly exchange favors with webs of family and ex-aides. But Shockey's straddling of K Street and Capitol Hill is particuarly poignant and visible — even if, as in most cases, his lawyer and spokesman say it is all perfectly legal.

It's the revolving door that helps perpetuate the cozy world of lobbying for such favors as earmarks — the suddenly controversial system by which the House and Senate Appropriations Committees dish out tens of billions of dollars in pork from the $843 billion a year in discretionary spending they doled out for this year. President Bush and new House Majority Leader John Boehner are now calling for reform of the clubby earmark game. But Appropriations Committee members and the many other pork enthusiasts in Congress have long staved off such change — partly because constituents have seldom got mad at their own representatives for bringing home the bacon.

Shockey's career is a case study in how the game works. When he left Capitol Hill for the lobbying world in 1999 — after spending more than eight years working for Rep. Jerry Lewis, a Republican from California who had chaired key subcommittees — many of his new clients, including muncipalities, hospitals and lesser-known universities, were from Lewis's district. After years of getting paid to represent them on the Hill, he was now getting paid a lot more to represent them on the Hill.