Free Republic

Retiring lawmakers are likely to find a tough job market next year on K Street. Several lawmakers — many of them veterans with centrist bonafides — plan to retire after the 2014 election, making them prime recruits for lobby firms, trade groups and corporate boards. While corporate headhunters see a future on K Street for many of the retiring lawmakers, they warn that sluggish lobbying revenues and gridlock on Capitol Hill are depressing demand. “With revenues down, it's not going to be as fruitful. It will slowly pick up but we are still in a slump when it comes to...

Politicians like to say they hate lobbyists. This is false. They love lobbyists and they love being lobbied. What politicians hate is being lobbied in public, in earshot of their constituents.Keeping disagreements and policy debates behind the closed doors of Capitol Hill and K Street animates Democrats' fight for campaign finance restrictions. But it also lies at the heart of the Republican leadership's war with Tea Party groups.Take Byron Dorgan, the former Democratic senator. In his 2006 book he complained of “legions of lobbyists” bringing “barrels of political donations.” Dorgan's wife, Kimberly, has since 1999 been a lobbyist for the...

Lobbyists are minting money from the surge in government regulations. Top K Street officials say their regulatory work has accelerated in recent years thanks to the sprawling rule-making from the healthcare and financial reform laws. “We’re in this situation now, where we have this strong executive branch [that is] taking full advantage of being able to do whatever they want,” said Rich Gold, a partner at Holland & Knight. While revenue from traditional lobbying work has flatlined, K Street firms say their regulatory practices are thriving. Several lobbyists said federal agencies are increasingly “where all the action is.” The increase...

Fed up with conservatives who do not want comprehensive immigration reform and more government expansion, business groups like the Chamber of Commerce will seek to oust conservative lawmakers in Congress. “We are going to get engaged,” Scott Reed, a senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told Bloomberg News. “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.” The chamber reportedly "spent $35.7 million on federal elections in 2012," and they are researching which races they can impact in 2014. Finding candidates who support comprehensive immigration reform seems to...

How did the Republican Party become so splintered and so infused with hard-line conservatives? Don't blame redistricting. Don't chalk it up to anti-Obama fervor.Republicans have become an unruly bunch of scorched-earth conservatives because the Tea Party smashed the business lobby's monopoly on GOP fundraising.Here's a story of where the GOP used to be:Back in 2006, I asked a couple of conservative Republican congressmen to give blurbs for my book on corporate welfare. “My boss loves the book,” one of their top aides said, “but we’re not going to put his name on it." Why not, I asked. "Who do you...

Lawyers and lobbyists are accusing regulatory agencies of unnecessarily blocking access to websites during the government shutdown. "I can't help wondering whether this is a political call," a Republican telecom lawyer said. "Is it really necessary to completely cut off Internet access?" Agencies including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have entirely shut down their websites, preventing the public from accessing regulations, filings and other documents. Congressional Republicans have accused the Obama administration of “maximizing the pain” of the shutdown to increase Democrats’ leverage in negotiations. “It's a source of enormous frustration for those who...

've been having an argument with a friend of mine, a veteran Washington journalist, about whether it can really be true that where I live (an apartment building on the Upper West Side of New York, all of whose residents are Columbia faculty members), people arenÂ’t talking about This Town. My friend thinks IÂ’m playing the country bumpkin, but I swear it! This Town has a powerful infinity-of-mirrors quality: itÂ’s proudly, defiantly obsessed with a particular Washington subculture, which it persuasively portrays as being self-obsessed, and the subculture obsesses over This Town right back, because the book plays into the...

One college football tradition in Georgia will soon disappear: Letting politicians into the stadium for free. A new law taking effect next year bans lobbyists from giving Georgia’s politicians free college football tickets, a rite as well-established as Game Day beer and barbecue in the football-obsessed South. … Disclosure reports show that lobbyists have given Georgia politicians nearly $1,400 in college football tickets and related entertainment since the start of the season in late August. That’s just the beginning. … Many lawmakers get tickets in Georgia because the Legislature controls the $6.4 billion higher education budget, including the roughly $1.9...

Influence Peddling: Recall how Obama blustered about closing the revolving door of government and lobbyists? Well, ObamaCare has flung it wide open, as the people who wrote the law are now cashing in on their expertise. For years, Obama complained about "the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely" and use their time in government "to promote their own interests over the interests of the American people whom they serve." Now, the Hill reports how Obama's signature law is making former government officials fabulously rich as corporate lobbyists and consultants.

Welcome to The Hill's annual 50 Most Beautiful list! This year marks the 10th anniversary of the list and brings in a slew of new faces as, for the first time, White House and executive branch employees were eligible for consideration.

Nearly a hundred top Republican officials sent a letter to the House GOP on Tuesday urging lawmakers to pass a bill that legalizes illegal immigrants, arguing that the current system is already allowing them to stay and so it makes sense to register them and bring them into the system. The donors, led by former Bush administration Cabinet officials Carlos Gutierrez and Spencer Abraham, also said that immigrants are potential Republican voters who can be won over — if the party can be seen as welcoming to immigrants. “Doing nothing is de facto amnesty. We need to take control of...

First, Michelle Obama called for healthier school lunches -- and kids complained that the first lady's menus left them hungry. Now, the United States Department of Agriculture has green-lighted a pilot program to serve trendy Greek yogurt in school cafeterias in New York, Idaho, Arizona, and Tennessee. If all goes well this fall, Greek yogurt may became a staple in Washington's $11 billion school lunch program in some 100,000 schools. In one sense, it's an example of America's growing European Union-style nanny state -- not to mention crony capitalism and insider influence. Two of the biggest cheerleaders of Greek yogurt...

Congressman-turned-lobbyist Steve LaTourette, speaking for moderate Republicans, has attacked the free-market and the stridently anti-establishment Club for Growth as "a cancer on the Republican Party."It's K Street versus the Tea Party again in the bitter civil war within the Republican Party.The Club for Growth came up as the scourge of liberal Republicans. In 2000, the group got behind conservative state legislator Scott Garrett, who was challenging liberal Republican Marge Roukema for the second time in a northern New Jersey district.Roukema edged out Garrett in the primary, but the threat of another primary challenge, backed by a more powerful Club for...

People should understand the real reason we're here today. It's not "to help the poor," or because "Obamacare is the law," or because the reforms the House bill would supposedly require are so awesome. We are here because a politically powerful special interest stands to collect billions of dollars if this Legislature approves the Medicaid expansion — and it is willing do almost anything to make that happen. It's explained by the Medicaid expansion "1-2-3": 1. The medical services industry has become far more concentrated due to Obamacare, with a relative handful of big hospital corporations absorbing many formerly independent...

Harvey Whittemore, with his wife, Annette, on his right, jokes with his lead defense attorney, Dominic Gentile, during a news conference in Reno, Nev., on Wednesday, May 29, 2013, shortly after he was convicted of three federal counts of breaking campaign contribution laws by funneling nearly $150,000 to U.S. Sen. Reid, D-Nev., in 2007. Photo: Scott Sonner RENO, Nev. (AP) —Harvey Whittemore's lawyer says despite his client's illegal campaign fundraising conviction, the man prosecutors called "King of the Hill" in Nevada politics is a long way from prison.Whittemore, former head of a billion dollar development company, was convicted recently of...

Sen. Barbara Boxer says she is co-sponsoring the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act in part because, with 26 states trying to pass legislation requiring said labeling, it makes more sense to have a uniform federal law. California's junior Democratic senator has a point. It's probably better for the folks who keep affordable food on American tables to have one big gun pointed at their collective head than 26 guns. Except that most of these guns aren't loaded, including the big gun. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a farm bill provision, which was designed to protect states that require labeling for...

In a stunning sign of the political resurgence of bankers, Wall Street lobbyists not only have the ear of lawmakers, they have their pens as well. Rather than leaving it to members of Congress to draft legislation that softens financial regulations, bank lobbyists are helping to write it themselves, emails reviewed by The New York Times show. One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month was essentially written by lobbyists for giant Citigroup. After the House committee drafted a bill that would force regulators to exempt trades of certain types of derivative trading from the new...

A bipartisan group of 28 influential lawmakers have establish the first Sikh-American Congressional Caucus in the House of Representatives, with the objective of fighting hate crimes against the community and to work towards enlisting them in the army. Formally launched at the Capitol Hill yesterday, the first ever Sikh-American Congressional caucus is co-chaired by Congresswoman Judy Chu from the Democratic Party and David G Valadao from the Republican. Attended by eminent Sikh American leaders and organisations from across the country, the lawmakers also hosted a reception at the Capitol Hill in the evening. "Sikhs are suffering because many people do...

A few years ago, I wrote a book, "Jesus Wept" an American Story. The story, in part, was about Cherokee Chief John Ross, a 1/8th Cherokee blood, white, blue eyed greedy tyrant. The more time goes on, the more he reminds me of Barak Obama. He was put in power by Major Ridge and some other realistic Cherokees, who thought the tribe, which functioned under a constitutional government, would fare better in Washington DC if represented by Ross who would be identified more with the white leaders. And for a time, that seemed to work. Until Ross got the taste...

With Congress once again slouching toward immigration reform, it makes sense to look for who is lobbying lawmakers to shape the coming legislation. As it turns out, while Americans remain divided on immigration, the lobbyists are not. The Sunlight Foundation, a do-gooder government transparency and accountability outfit formed in 2006, on Monday released "Untangling the Webs of immigration Lobbying," a report examining the organizations that have led the charge for changing the rules on immigration to the United States. Sunlight dug through 8,000 lobbying reports filed since the last big push for immigration reform in 2007. Six-thousand seven-hundred and twelve...