House Speaker Paul Ryan will have many career opportunities ahead of him when he leaves Congress in January. There’s one field he shouldn’t consider: lobbying.
A House Speaker cashing out to K Street wouldn’t be unusual, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. Ryan should eschew the lobbying lucre for two reasons: First, it will certainly involve him trashing his purported conservative principles. Second, the revolving door is a corrupt and corrupting institution that has fostered the distrust and disillusionment currently plaguing this country.
Ryan rose from a young stalwart of the conservative movement to speaker of the House. His record as speaker includes passing a large tax cut (which became law) and a partial repeal of Obamacare (which died in the Senate). If he becomes a K Street lobbyist, he will be monetizing that reputation as a conservative, and putting it to work, almost certainly for the cause of big-government corporatism.
Ryan knows well Big Business’s agenda in Washington. During the Obama administration, Ryan penned an op-ed headlined “Down With Big Business.” In it, the future Speaker lamented “crony capitalism.” Ryan wrote, trenchantly, “Erecting barriers to competition is a key to maintaining advantage and market share. With Washington leading the way, it makes sense for the big boys to redirect their resources to their lobbying shop and government affairs office.”
So Ryan knows the game. Is he going to play it? If he follows his predecessors, he will.
Ryan’s immediate predecessor John Boehner is now a “senior strategic adviser” at the K Street law/lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs. Boehner is not a registered lobbyist as of this writing, which limits the lobbying contacts he can make. But Boehner nevertheless works in the policy shop of a lobbying firm, and some of his former congressional staffers are lobbyists there.
Boehner may or may not yet be hustling for bigger government to benefit his firm’s clients, but he’s certainly not out there banging the laissez-faire drums. He notably told a crowd of insurers (major insurers are among his firm’s clients) that Obamacare was here to stay.
The GOP speaker before Boehner was the now-disgraced former Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert began his stint as a Regulatory Robber Baron even before he entered the private sector.
While still a sitting member, Hastert testified before a House committee in favor of the law that would effectively ban traditional incandescents, forcing customers to buy more expensive bulbs. Hastert name-checked one bulbmaker, Polybrite International. “Polybrite International, a company based in Illinois, makes Light Emitting Diode light bulbs that look and feel the same as bulbs we put in our homes,” he told a House Committee. “These bulbs are 100 percent green.”
Hastert then resigned from Congress early. Three months later, while he would have still been a member of Congress, Polybrite hired Hastert, and later Polybrite was a lobbying client of Hastert’s.
Hastert, a lobbyist at K Street firm Dickstein Shapiro, lobbied for the ethanol mandate and other green-energy boondoggles.
The speaker before Hastert (if you don’t count Speaker-designate Bob Livingston, who resigned in disgrace before taking the office and who now runs his own K Street lobbying firm) was Newt Gingrich. Gingrich never registered as a lobbyist, but he lobbied, nonetheless. And he lobbied for bigger government to enrich his Big Business clients.
While in the pay of the drug-industry’s main lobby group, Gingrich persuaded Republican congressmen to pass the Medicare prescription drug benefit that the drugmakers wanted. Three former Republican staffers told me that Gingrich was petitioning GOP congressmen to support the bill.
Also, when Gingrich worked for Freddie Mac, the government-created and backed mortgage-subsidizer, he worked for the company’s lobbying shop.
Beyond the conservative objections to the revolving door, there’s a basic moral one. When our statesmen, as a rule, monetize their public service to the benefit of private interests, it creates an insular ruling class and gives truth to the charges of self-dealing insiders enriching one another. It makes the average American rightly believe government is not of or for or by the people.
Our statesmen have a duty to ensure our form of government both appears and is what it was created to be. Sometimes living up to one’s duty means leaving money on the table.
