Elizabeth Warren poses as the scourge of special interest lobbying. But, in Tuesday night’s debate, she lavished praise on a revolving-door corporate welfare lobbyist because that lobbyist was a pro-abortion Democrat.
Warren attacked Michael Bloomberg for funding Pat Toomey’s 2016 reelection in Pennsylvania. Toomey has supported gun control, but Warren blasted him as “anti-choice” and “right-wing.” “And I just want to say, the woman challenger was terrific,” Warren said, praising revolving-door corporate welfare lobbyist Katie McGinty.
McGinty was a lobbyist at the K Street firm Troutman Sanders. She was only registered for a few days, but, even aside from that, her career path had a clear pattern: work for the government, then exit and use her connections to enrich special interests that pay her big bucks.
For instance, McGinty was President Bill Clinton’s top environmental adviser, during which time the Clinton administration cracked down on chlorofluorocarbons. McGinty then left and went to work for a leading chlorofluorocarbon emitter, inhaler-maker GlaxoSmithKline, pleading for ways out from under those limits.
Then, McGinty did it again. I wrote about this during the 2016 campaign:
As soon as she left the Rendell administration, McGinty took a spot on Iberdrola’s board. Iberdrola paid McGinty $100,000 a year in quarterly payments. The company cut her last $25,000 check on Jan. 14, 2015, less than a week before she became Gov. Tom Wolf’s chief of staff, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
In 2014, Iberdrola subsidiary Gamesa had closed its Rendell-subsidized plant in Cambria County.
There’s more. McGinty subsidized an ethanol company and then joined its board and made big bucks.
McGinty’s practice of putting the government to work for whoever can pay her enough is exactly what Warren pretends to oppose. But, in real life, Warren finds it “terrific.”
