When Congress is talking about axing special tax carveouts and cutting federal spending, you know you’ll have plenty of powerful businesses and labor unions using their lobbying clout to protect their subsidies.
That’s made the Supercommittee of great interest to those of us who follow lobbying. Knowing that some lawmakers are more receptive than others to lobbyists, and some are cozier with some industries than others, the makeup of the committee intrigues me. We now have the names of nine of the twelve members, and at least four of them have particularly strong ties to K Street.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.: You would be hard pressed to find a lawmaker more entangled with lobbyists and the revolving door than Baucus.
It seems that one requirement of being Max Baucus’s chief of staff is that your next job must be as a lobbyist. Some of K Street’s most powerful lobbyists are Baucus’s former chiefs.
Foremost among Baucus’s lobbyist buds is his former chief David Castagnetti is a partner at powerhouse lawfirm Mehlman, Vogel, Castagnetti, which, representing the biggest insurers and drug companies, played a central role in crafting ObamaCare.
Baucus’s top health-care staffer, Liz Fowler, came to his office from being the top lobbyist at Wellpoint, America’s largest health-insurance company.
Thirty-eight of his former staffers are in the Revolving Door database at OpenSecrets, making him second among sitting senators only to Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio: Last election season, I divided the incoming Republican Senate class into the K Street wing and the Tea Party wing. Portman was decidedly in the former.
Portman received more money from lobbyists than any other Republican politcian in 2010, and his job until the campaign was at a law/lobbying firm.
As former U.S. Trade Representative, Portman’s very close to business.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.: Murray raised more from lobbyists than even Portman last election, and through the revolving door, she is closely tied to McBee Strategic, a hub of the green-subsidy lobbying network.
But most importantly, she’s chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, making her the top fundraising official for Senate Democrats. Her right-hand man and right-hand woman in this task are lobbyist-bundlers Heather and Tony Podesta.
Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich.: Upton chairs the Energy & Commerce Committee, which is a festering hub of the revolving door. He is very tight with the cable industry, and has staffed up from K Street.
One journalist I spoke to told me that when pressed on why he supported the light bulb law in 2007, Upton said it was partly because industry backed it.
