CNN news 2013-01-26 加文本

cnn news 2013-01-26

Millions of Americans of course watched president Obama lay out his vision for the country yesterday. Keep them honest though, even as he spoke, another big Washington power player was already gearing up to advance its agenda, not lawmakers, not administrators, not judges or journalists, lobbyists, an army of influenced paddlers and access seekers and opinion shapers are gearing up for a battle, to block bills or change them, insert loopholes or widen them. We're talking about Republicans, Democrats, you name it. Now you might like some of what they're doing, but chances are you won't be crazy about this.

A Congresswoman who just got reelected, but she to leave, is leaving already, taking what she learned in Congress to get paid big dollars, leaving the people who elected her, basically high and dry.

Drew Griffin tonight is "Keeping them honest".

She maybe the perfect example of what Washington critics called the revolving door symdrome.

"Congresswoman? Congresswoman Emerson, Drew Griffin with cnn."

Which could explain why all we got from Congresswoman Joe Ann Emerson was the slam-door treatment. The southeast Missouri Republican is quitting Congress. Not because she lost, in fact she just won her last election to her tenth term by a landslide. She is quitting, because she landed a job back in what you might call the real family business. The politics of influencing Congress.

Follow the lineage, in the 17th, Joe Ann Emerson, a Washington D.C native, married a lobbyist named Bill Emerson. When the lobbyist Bill Emerson went on to become Congress man from Missouri, Joe Ann went on to become a lobbyist for the restauranr industry. When he died of cancer in 1996, she took his seat and she served nine terms since then. And while the combined Emersons were spending 32 years in the Congress, they were rasing two daughters. Both of whom who are now registered lobbyists. Now Congresswoman Emerson goes back to a trade association, directing a team of lobbyists.

"It's the personification of the revolving door."

Kathy Kyle with the Sunlight Foundation says it's a revolving door of lobbyists and politicians and staff members and big pay off jobs that eroded Americans' faith in a system, that seems to be driven by special interst access and money.

"What people do see is that there is a network of individuals who don't necessarily have the public interest at heart, they have special interests at heart, and those, when people have the impression that those special interests are dominating Washington and the way things work here. It reduces people's faith in their government, and it probably should."

Technically speaking, Joe Ann Emerson is not becoming a lobbyist, at least not yet. She's named the new CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperated Association. She will direct a group that has a staff of lobbyists that's spent 3.5 million dollars handing out campaign contributions in the last election. And has spent many more millions lobbying Congress, her predecessor was paid 1.6 million dollars a year, that predecessor, the former Congressman himself and a registered lobbyist. Glenn.