Sen. Conrad Burns will work for lobbying firm

[rsmith6621]

By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Former Sen. Conrad Burns, defeated for re-election last year, has a new job at a lobbying firm in Washington.

Burns will work for his former chief of staff, Leo Giacometto, at the firm Gage. Gage has lobbied for various Montana interests and several national technology companies, often making headlines for its connections to Burns and his staff.



http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/01/10/news/state/23-burns.txt

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I though Burns said he was a Big Sky kind of guy?????

[bluewave]

1. New Constitutional Amendment: ex politicians may not hold lobbying jobs

Or any other jobs after leaving office. This is in return for their ridiculous pensions/health care. Don't like it? Too bad. You were elected to serve, yes SERVE, the country.

[onenote]

6. missed the sarcasm smilie

Ex politicians may not hold any job...interesting. And silly.

[bluewave]

8. Nope. I say this: if you're interested in serving the American people

you will be satisfied with a six figure pension and a gold-plated health care program. It's far more than most Americans will ever see.

You can hold any job you want, just not receive any compensation.

[onenote]

9. well, let's make sure only the super rich run for office

[bluewave]

11. Many right now are super rich. The non-rich ones right now sell us out

to get super rich. People genuinely interested in service will not care.

Don't our military guys get minimum wage for risking their lives? If that's good enough for them, 150K per year + full benefits is good enough for congressmen.

[onenote]

16. yeah, that Feingold guy. What a super rich sell out he is.

[bluewave]

17. You said it, not me. Denying that Feingold is the exception to the rule

is equivalent to denying reality. Kucinich, Feingold, and others are the exception.

[onenote]

22. so feingold (non-rich) is going to sell us out to get rich?

and the super rich (like Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards) don't represent us?

I don't really think you think that Feingold etc is looking to get rich and sell us out. But why should they be denied the right to earn more than some arbitrary fixed amount after they retire or in the event they are defeated and why should the taxpayer foot the bill? While I have problems vis-a vis the first amendment with limiting their ability to serve as lobbyists (after an appropriate cooling off period), that at least makes sense. But if Feingold wants to write a book and get a big advance or if some other member of Congress who loses wants to become the President of the American Red Cross and get paid $450,000, why shouldn't they.

[onenote]

10. you should try educating yourself before posting

"six figure pension" -- want to provide a citation for that?

The amount of a congresscritter or senator's pension will vary depending on a host of factors, including length of service, age at retirement, salary at retirement, etc. In theory, you are right that it a member of Congress could conceivably be entitled, at retirement, to a "six figure pension" -- but to do so that member probably would have to be retiring after so many years of service and at such an age that taking another job really isn't an issue.

For most members of Congress, the pension is considerably less than 50% of their salary at retirement. In fact, in 2002, there were 411 former members of congress/senate receiving pensions and those pensions averaged between 42K and 56K, depending on which pension plan they participated in.

Now that's a nice piece of change, but not substantially different than what some folks manage when they retire from the public sector. Frankly, a lot of military folk do pretty well with their pensions. Should we bar anyone who served in the military from working too?

[bluewave]

12. And many make far more than that.

http://www.fa-ir.org/alabama/corrupt/Congressional%20Retirement%20Benefits.htm

Anyone falling below a limit should be upped to six figures in return for our democratic process back. Why are you defending people who deprive us of representation?

[onenote]

18. I"d love to see how ntuf came up with its estimate

Schroeder in particular is an unusual example. She was elected at a relatively young age (33), served for a pretty long time (24 years) but retired at an age (56) where her life expectancy was at more than 20 years. To get to $4.18 million, you'd have to assume she was getting a pension of nearly $200K for 20 plus years, which is interesting since that is more than 100 percent of the Congressional salary at the time she retired or any time in the 10 years since she retired.

By the way, someone with a pension of $40K/year (nice but hardly unheard of in the private sector for someone working at a job that pays over $100K for 20 plus years) would make $1 million over 25 years. Not chump change.

And why am I defending people who "deprive us of representation"? Because I'm not. I happen to think that they folks I voted for, like Jim Webb, will represent me. And if Jim Webb retires after one term, I don't think he should be denied the right to earn money for his talents...if writes a book he should be able to sell it, if he becomes a commentator or columnist, he should be able to receive payment for it. Frankly, if he decides to become a painter, a poet, or a bricklayer, he should be paid if someone wants to pay him. That makes more sense to me than putting him on a $150K dole at the taxpayer's expense, especially if his pension after one term would probably be less than $35K (not counting whatever pension he might be entitled to for getting his ass shot at as a combat vet).

[bluewave]

19. Again, why don't we just up it for all to a lucrative minimum and solve the problem?

Wouldn't cost much compared to Conrad Burns lobbying for war, pork, etc.

[bluewave]

13. Yes, we should bar former generals and colonels from lobbying.

Numerous articles have been written about "the game" as it's described in the military. Advancement for the sole aim to retire and lobby our government for unnecessary defense contracts. Not only does it deprive us of representation, it deprives the military of dedicated/competent leadership. High level military personnel won't criticize the Iraq war because they fear it will mess up their lucrative post-military pork/warmongering lobbying.

[onenote]

14. the proposal was to bar politicians from being paid for ANY job

not just lobbying.

[bluewave]

15. The problem is that they'll get around the "lobbying" tag.

They'll take a salary of $250k with a b.s. corporate title like "coordination officer," then go have dinner at K street with "friends." They'll lobby and disguise it as catching up with friends.

IMO, it would be worth the hundreds of millions it would cost to up their pensions to $150k so we can save tens of billions in unnecessary spending and wars.

Clinton passed lobbying tax reform back in iirc 98. There's a giant loophole that makes the law useless.

[LeftishBrit]

20. Surely that would just mean that politicians would be even more reluctant to retire, and more

fearful of defeat, than they are now? Or at best that people would only run for office if they were ONLY interested in politics, so that prohibitions against other jobs would not be a hardship for them.

I think there needs to be some restriction on the amazing power that lobbyists seem to have in America (it's bad enough in other countries but not quite that bad!) but preventing people from taking other jobs after leaving office would only exaggerate the present problems of entrenchment of politicians IMO.

[bluewave]

21. Any effective "lobbying reform" will be knocked down by SCOTUS

They've already ruled that $$$ = "free speech." Anything less will have loopholes. Always have, always will.

[Independent_Liberal]

2. Surprise! Surprise!

:)

[Skidmore]

3. Boy, that's gotta be tough...

working for your former employee. How the mighty have fallen. Gives a whole new meaning to incestuous.

[Hand]

4. Looks like Tester was right!

During their debate, he told Burns, "Conrad, something changed after you got to Washington and started hobnobbing with the special interest groups..."

Burns denied it thusly: "I'm still married to the same woman..." :rofl:

[LSK]

5. will he give away our plans???

:rofl:

[AndyA]

7. No surprise here.

And he knows where all the bodies are buried. Should give him a bit more leverage in shoving through his agenda, eh?