Here’s a look at Texas’ rampant revolving door: Mike Conaway He’s heard of some former members pulling in more than $1 million a year. Depending on their rank, committee assignments, and overall stature in Congress, former members can expect to easily triple or quintuple their $174,000 taxpayer salary, Holman said. “It’s a loophole-ridden policy.”įormer Congress members can command a high price for plying their wares on the private market. He just can’t pick up the phone himself,” Holman said.
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He can organize it, enlist the lobbyists, tell them who to call, and how to talk to them. “He can be part of the lobbying campaign.
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Former members are still free to immediately start lobbying executive branch agencies and can still play a significant behind-the-scenes role in congressional lobbying. While federal law prohibits former members of Congress from directly lobbying their old colleagues during a “cooling-off period”-one year for House members, two for Senators-this ethics provision means little in practice.
It’s really an abuse of their positions.”
Even though some may not actually become registered lobbyists, they’re all still hired for lobbying work. Firms are “hiring for their connections in Congress, to cash in on those connections on behalf of paying clients. “The revolving door is the most pernicious form of influence-peddling that we have not gotten control over yet,” Holman told the Observer. Several more have taken jobs and board positions at corporations, consulting firms, and industry trade groups. Since leaving office, the Observer found that four members have registered as lobbyists at the federal or state level, working for clients on matters that they were directly involved in while in Congress.
Holeman’s own research found that trips through the revolving door hit a high point in 2019, when nearly 60 percent of the 44 members of Congress who left office went to work for entities that seek to influence the federal government. “Sadly, it’s not unusually high,” said Craig Holman, an ethics expert at federal government watchdog group Public Citizen, of Texas’ revolving door rate. Of the 15 members of the Texas congressional delegation who’ve left office since 2018, the Observer found that at least half have taken positions at lobbying and law firms, consulting firms, industry trade groups, and corporations that aim to influence federal policy in Washington or state policy in Austin. With a record number of Texas incumbents leaving Congress in recent years-either by choice or by the ballot box-the revolving door is spinning at a ferocious pace. But Vela is just the latest member of Congress from Texas to make that well-trodden trek. His future employer’s office is just a couple of miles from the Capitol on K Street, the notorious lobbying corridor. “The timing now, with just nine months left in the term-I’m just ready to go,” Vela told Forbes. It wasn’t until a Forbes reporter unearthed Vela’s recusal that the congressman said he would resign in the next few weeks and go work for Akin Gump. Of its 66 registered lobbyists, 41 percent worked in the federal government-many as congressional staffers, including a former top aide to Vela who was hired last year. In January, he gave notice to the House Ethics Committee that-citing “negotiation or agreement regarding future employment”-he would recuse himself from any matter related to Akin Gump, which, as of last year, had more than 250 clients with lobbying contracts worth over $50 million, according to OpenSecrets. Vela, an outspoken moderate who was appointed vice chair of the Democratic National Committee by President Joe Biden, had apparently lined up the gig months ago. But last week, Vela made waves by saying he’ll resign his seat early to take a job with Akin Gump-one of the most well-connected lobbying and law firms in Washington, D.C. Brownsville Congressman Filemon Vela was already on his way out of office, having announced last year that he would not run again after five terms.
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