Editorial: Trolling for the Spoils of Office

6 Apr 2008 // The platinum standard for revolving-door enrichment in Congress remains former Representative Billy Tauzin. The Louisiana Republican secretly negotiated a $2-million-a-year job as the pharmaceutical industry’s chief lobbyist about the same time he was drafting the Medicare drug benefit program.

An embarrassed Congress agreed three years ago that there ought to be a law. But the vaporous substance of the “reform” enacted is becoming clearer as more and more lawmakers forsake Congress for the lucrative afterlife of lobbying.

The latest is Representative Albert Wynn, Democrat of Maryland. He lost to a primary challenger in February and promptly announced that he would retire in June — the sooner to become a high-paid partner in a Washington lobbying powerhouse. Mr. Wynn leaves constituents the choice of having no representation for six months or holding a costly special election. He solemnly promises recusal from any legislative conflicts in his final months on the Energy and Commerce Committee. It would be far better if Representative Wynn showed the ethical fortitude to quit the committee outright, since it will be a magnet for Citizen Wynn’s lobbying.

The congressman, of course, says he cleared his hurried departure with the House ethics committee, that bastion of laissez-faire. Beyond blessing his leap for the gold, the panel has been offering egregious interpretations of the post-Tauzin regulation against negotiating for a private career while still in office, finding that sending out an inviting résumé hardly violates the rule. As for the increasing number of lawmakers cunningly hiring others to do their job search? Hey, no problem. The required notice to the ethics committee at the start of job searching does not have to be announced to the public.

In the ethics reform debate, stronger prohibitions were rejected after members openly worried about their post-Capitol rewards. “What you are telling me is, I cut off my profession,” one whined. Not hardly, it turns out.