Hmmm... K
The Hidden Columnists--Paul Krugman Edition (20 Jan 06)

Much has been made of the "K Street Project" aspect to the Jack Abramoff scandal lately, but I wonder if that is resonating with the American public. With Abramoff's guilty pleas to corruption charges, Jack-off-Gate (obviously, we need to have a better name here) is fairly easy to understand and get angry about. But when the K Street Project gets thrown into the mix, I'm guessing most folks' eyes just glaze over. Here's a little background from the Christian Science Monitor back in 2003:

Until the mid-1990s, the K Street corridor, where Washington's top law firms and trade associations are located, was a largely Democratic domain. But the 1994 GOP takeover of the House changed that, especially after Republicans began suggesting - often not so subtly - that the big lobby shops and trade associations start hiring more Republicans or risk disappointments on Capitol Hill.

"Ninety percent of the new top hires are going to Republicans; it should be 100 percent," says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, an antitax group. "It would be suicidal of them to go to a Democrat."

To encourage such a change of culture, Mr. Norquist and Tom DeLay of Texas, now House majority leader, launched what they call "the K Street Project" in 1995. They met regularly with lobbyists and business groups to discuss legislative strategy. They also circulated lists of lobbyists, noting ties and campaign contributions to Democrats.

Along the way, the tactics got rougher: In 1998, House Republicans held up a vote on intellectual property rights in a bid apparently timed to chasten the Electronics Industry Association for its plans to hire a Democrat as top lobbyist. The move drew a warning from the House ethics committee.

Which brings us to today's column by Professor Krugman--The K Street Prescription (full column available to Times Select subscribers)--which makes plain how government policy and planning have been hijacked by loyalty/fealty to the lobbying firms of K Street in regards to the recent Medicare drug benefit (fiasco):

But government works when it's run by people who take public policy seriously. As Jonathan Cohn points out in The New Republic, when Medicare began 40 years ago, things went remarkably smoothly from the start. But this time the people putting together a new federal program had one foot out the revolving door: this was a drug bill written by and for lobbyists.

Consider the career trajectories of the two men who played the most important role in putting together the Medicare legislation.

Thomas Scully was a hospital industry lobbyist before President Bush appointed him to run Medicare. In that job, Mr. Scully famously threatened to fire his chief actuary if he told Congress the truth about cost projections for the Medicare drug program.

Mr. Scully had good reasons not to let anything stand in the way of the drug bill. He had received a special ethics waiver from his superiors allowing him to negotiate for future jobs with lobbying and investment firms - firms that had a strong financial stake in the form of the bill - while still in public office. He left public service, if that's what it was, almost as soon as the bill was passed, and is once again a lobbyist, now for drug companies.

Meanwhile, Representative Billy Tauzin, the bill's point man on Capitol Hill, quickly left Congress once the bill was passed to become president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the powerful drug industry lobby.

Surely both men's decisions while in office were influenced by the desire to please their potential future employers. And that undue influence explains why the drug legislation is such a mess.

The most important problem with the drug bill is that it doesn't offer direct coverage from Medicare. Instead, people must sign up with private plans offered by insurance companies.

[...]

Thanks to Jack Abramoff, the K Street project orchestrated by Tom DeLay is finally getting some serious attention in the news media. Mr. DeLay and his allies have sought, with great success, to ensure that lobbying firms hire only Republicans. But most reports on the project still miss the main point by emphasizing the effect on campaign contributions.

The more important effect of the K Street project is that it allows the party machine to offer lavish personal rewards to the faithful. For a congressman, toeing the line on legislation brought free meals in Jack Abramoff's restaurant, invitations to his sky box, golf trips to Scotland, cushy jobs for family members and a lavish salary after leaving office. The same kinds of rewards are there for loyal members of the administration, especially given the Bush administration's practice of appointing lobbyists to key positions.