More Graft in Washington

This morning, the Washington Post printed a story about William Cohen, former Republican Senator from Maine and Defense Secretary under President WJ Clinton.

For those of you who don't know, Secretary Cohen retired from public office at the end of 2000, as President Clinton's term came to an end. Once he left office, he competed in the very legal lobbying sweepstakes. Secretary Cohen opened a D.C. firm and started selling his services.

What exactly are Secretary Cohen's services? Access. Secretary Cohen was able to guarantee (more or less) access by his clients to powerful decision makers in Washington who would create legislation benefitting Secretary Cohen's clients.

Folks, this is the game. This is exactly why politicians spend millions of dollars to get a job that "only" pays $200,000 per year. I've always had a problem with the math, but like in finance, you must consider the net present value of your investment.

First, the millions you spend to become a federal politician generally aren't your own millions of dollars (but Secretary Cohen actually went into significant deficit spending to serve the public interest). The big payoff, though (unless you are as blatant as Rep Jefferson of Louisiana) is when you can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for introducing your new client (i.e. Lockheed Martin) to your good buddies still in Congress.

Do you want to know why these guys don't want term limits? It is because their lobbying would have less of an impact on people they never met.

The unfortunate part is that everything these guys are doing is legal, if not seriously unethical.