LUCRATIVE JOB OFFERS FROM LOBBYING FIRMS

[Lee] “Drutman also suggests a number of ways to increase the capacity of Congress to research and write legislation, work now being undermined by lucrative job offers from private lobbying firms. One would be to improve the salaries and working conditions of staffers, including more acknowledgment of their work. A second is to make use of the expertise of faculties of local universities, which might provide formal credit to young faculty and students who work with congressional staffers.

“To me, the more promising possibility is federal funding of a corps of research consultants who would be available to policymakers when they need them. This would be the equivalent of public policy defenders. Thus policymakers would have access to less biased research.”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” a review of Lee Drutman’s The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.