Slowing the revolving door
Many civic-minded men and women hope to make their mark on public policy by going to work on Capitol Hill. But Peter S. Roberson may have accomplished as much by leaving it.
Roberson spent a little less than three years working for the House Financial Services Committee before taking a job in January as a lobbyist for IntercontinentalExchange, a company that operates marketplaces for commodities and financial products. It stands to gain enormously from a bill that Roberson helped write to overhaul financial industry regulations, including a new requirement that derivatives be traded through marketplaces such as IntercontinentalExchange. House rules forbid Roberson from lobbying the Financial Services Committee for a year, but Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) did not consider that stricture strong enough. Instead, he banned the committee’s staff from having any contact with Roberson for as long as Frank remains chairman. It’s not exactly the nuclear option, but it’s close. And it was the right thing to do, which makes us wonder why it’s the exception and not the rule.
Roberson’s effort to capitalize on his (brief) tenure with the committee highlights two problems endemic to the so-called revolving door between government and lobbying firms. When people are rewarded with lucrative positions in an industry they oversaw, it casts doubt on the integrity of the legislation or regulations they helped draw up. That’s especially true in Roberson’s case -- the bill that the House passed just weeks before his departure will drive a significant amount of new business to his new employer if it becomes law. Meanwhile, the lofty sums commanded by former Capitol Hill insiders tilt the legislative playing field in favor of the interest groups and corporations that can afford them.
The watchdog group Public Citizen calculated in 2004 that one out of every six senior congressional staff members went directly into lobbying after leaving Capitol Hill. It may be that only a fraction of such moves are as egregious as Roberson’s; nevertheless, the frequency with which the revolving door spins is reason enough to adopt tougher ethics rules. In particular, the House should lengthen and broaden the ban on former staff members lobbying on issues related to bills that they or their former employers worked on. And it should abandon the artificial distinction between contacting members and aides directly (which is banned for a year) and other lobbying activities (which are not). The influence-peddling business will survive with less ready access to people like Roberson. And congressional aides won’t starve if they can’t peddle their Rolodexes.
