July 2029, WASHINGTON, D.C. – Police closed K Street yesterday in a minute of silence for the man known as “the last lobbyist,” a relic of the legislative earmarks and Capitol Hill pork barrel ended a decade ago by historic reforms.
“Bill Foldes was unique,” said Felicity Creamcheese, the 19-year-old spokesperson for the KStreet Traders Association. “He was a classic American type like,I dunno, Al Capone and P.T. Barnum crossed with Sinatra and Paul Castellano. Like, everybody knew him. He was a big tipper. Whatever.”
William Henry Harrison (Bill) Foldes III (1946-2019) lobbied Capitol Hill on some of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most controversial issues, before being stopped by the 2019 Combined Legislative Special Law (COLESLAW).
All agree that he symbolized an era when earmarks — government spending for special interests and attached by lawmakers to unrelated legislation — cost the U.S. economy $20 billion a year or more.
Helen Thomas, the 109-year-old dean of the White House Press Corpse and a columnist for Hearse Newspapers,recalls the C O L E S L AW c o n t r o v e r s y a decade ago:
“The town was ruled by special interests, by pork-barrel princes who would hijack the public purse and cruelly, selfishly squander it on four-hour, gourmet lunches at the luxurious Palm Restaurant. I realized it all had to stop, over a tart Puille Fume and a perfect lobster salad that followed the house fois gras terrine that was always my signature starter.”
The 2019 reform gave the president an unstoppable line-item veto to cut pork from legislation, established rigid limitations on amendments and introduced harsh penalties for failing to observe strict registration and disclosure on lobbyists and their expenses.
More than 10,000 overt and covert lobbyists lost their jobs due to the act, and federal spending became 12 percent more efficient. Removing opportunities for earmarking reduced the budget-making process by two months.
Ten years on, controversy remains. “It was better before,”complained Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who led the grueling, six-month filibuster against reform in 2019. Born in 1917 and first elected to the Senate 1959, he is 112 years old. “Earmarks and pork barrels got more than 800 grade schools named after me,” Byrd said, “and 300 public restrooms— the kind that flush, which aren’t so common in West Virginia.”
The son of a congressman from Michigan (who died in a federal penitentiary in 2011), Foldes preferred less formal relations with government After leaving Dartmouth (sans degree) in 1978, he served for eight years as congressional liaison for the Ethyl Center, an industrial educational facility seeking to restore lead to gasoline, house paint and children’s toys.
In 1989 he joined the Thalidomide Foundation, working to repair the reputation of a much-maligned pharmaceutical product. As a legislative consultant to Congress during the Clinton and Bush administrations, he boasted that he diverted at least $10 billion a year.
He took particular pride in earmarking $850 million, split between Republican and Democratic donor groups and ironically attached to a bill on campaign finance reform. In 2016, anticipating change, he founded LOL (the Lobby of Lobbyists) in the Cayman Islands, but neither Foldes nor his fellow “Kings of K Street” regained power or prominence.
He died in a K Street restaurant freak accident, when two flaming entrees collided. He was well-known for his seersucker suits,merry demeanor and bottomless expense account. He will be buried in the family mausoleum in Lucreburg, Mich., just off the 3-mile-long Sen. Robert Byrd Highway & Public Entertainment Center, funded under The Blind Children’s Relief Act of 2018.
S.J. Masty is a former Washington,D.C., speechwriter now based in London as an international communication adviser.
