Yesterday, The Hill reported that AshBritt, the debris-removal company that won a controversial $500 million no-bid contract from the Army Corps of Engineers, hired Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, to lobby for the company shortly before winning the contract.
It seems like every day there's a new example of how the revolving door between industry and government is spinning out of control. Like a Cuisinart, it's spinning so fast that just about every moral and ethical concern gets shredded.
Not to mention the law. But too often it's legal. And that's why a coalition of 18 groups (including ours) has formed the Revolving Door Working Group to clamp down on the rampant cronyism and corporate influence-peddling that is epidemic in Washington.
Check out the new site for details. and the group's recommendations, some of which have been included in the Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act of 2005 (S. 1398) introduced by Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and the Special Interest Lobbying and Ethics Accountability Act (H.R. 2412) introduced by Rep. Meehan and 80 other co-sponsors.
The rules on the revolving door are riddled with loopholes. Not only is the "cooling off period" (time ex-government employees must refrain from engaging their former employer on behalf of corporate paymasters) too short, but if a bureaucrat goes to work for an different division of the same company that dealt with the government, well that's usually considered okay.
There are three types of problems that the coalition believes needs to be addressed:
* The Industry-to-Government Revolving Door, through which the appointment of corporate executives and business lobbyists to key posts in federal agencies establishes a pro-business bias in policy formulation and regulatory enforcement;
* The Government-to-Industry Revolving Door, through which public officials move to lucrative private sector roles from which they may use their experience to compromise government procurement, regulatory policy and the public interest; and
* The Government-to-Lobbyist Revolving Door, through which former lawmakers and executive-branch officials use their inside connections to advance the interests of corporate clients.
The reaction to all the scandals and indictments in Washington can push some of the necessary reforms forward. When Bush and Cheney were elected, they touted their experience in the private sector (even though the Harken and Halliburton record suggests that was a dubious claim). But this MBA administration has since gotten away with putting an ex-oil industry CEO in charge of a secret energy policy that not only benefits the Enrons of the world, but threatens national security by failing to reduce our dependency on oil. So many other regulatory rollbacks and failures and crony contracting have occurred in part because the hinges have come off the revolving door.
Time to screw them back on and bolt it shut.