Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is among the senators bringing lobbyists into government at high levels.
The revolving door between lobbying and government work has been set to spinning by the Republican takeover of the Senate. Lobbyists are taking big pay cuts to staff senators working on the issues they've been lobbying on; this work on the Hill will then set them up to go back to lobbying later on with their influence and networks solidified:
Nearly a dozen veteran K Streeters have been named as top staffers to GOP leaders or on key committees as lawmakers prepare to take the gavel in January.
For instance, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell named Hazen Marshall policy director earlier this week. Marshall, a former staff director for the Senate Budget Committee, has spent the last 10 years as a lobbyist at the Nickles Group representing dozens of clients like AT&T, Comcast and energy company Exelon.
Marshall in McConnell’s office is hardly alone. Mark Isakowitz, who has been downtown since the mid-1990s first at the National Federation of Independent Business and then at the boutique firm Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, is also making the transition to Capitol Hill. The Ohio native will be chief of staff to Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). Appropriations guru Jeff Shockey is taking another swing through the revolving door — he has done two previous stints working in the House — will this time be leaving S3 Group to become staff director to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on the House Intelligence Committee.
It's not that Democrats don't do this, too, though President Obama's stance against hiring lobbyists has put a damper on it. But Republicans are making a particular practice of it at this moment, bringing in lobbyists for some of the industries that have most aggressively sought to rewrite policy in their own favor and putting those lobbyists in a position to rewrite policy in favor of the industries they have lobbied for. In short, if you were outraged that Citigroup basically wrote the Wall Street bailout provision in the spending bill that passed last week, prepare for a lot more like that.