There isn't even the apperance of ethics in Washington anymore.

What can you say. When they say that they aren't in it for the money, they are actually in it for the money...Read their lips....They are moving....they must be lying.

what do you expect them to do? start a completely different career? after they leave office, they still need to support their families. I don't understand how this is newsworthy. .

Avni Patel,

first thank you for illuminating blatant greed something that always deserves illumination. tom delay's and newt gingrich's intimate relationship with K street really boosted the control of the unelected government. lobbiests write the laws, they wouldn't let some elected official screw up the wording.

if you are wealthy enough to win national public office that wealth is still there when you "retire". not to mention a lavish retirement package by almost any standard. it's not feeding your family it's about the big bucks you came here for in the first place. those ex congressmen immediately join the abramoff/gingrich slease and slither dance.

the work of lobbiests is quite obvious in the recent time/warner draft of a bill to delete magazine mailing rate discounts by the post office except for them. carefully worded to exclude any competion from virtually any one else. or the FCC's need to jack up the royalty payments for non profit internet broadcasters. that is just a non competion clause for clear channel and compadres, engineered by lobbiests right out of the FCC who else?

Funny how nobody complained about lobbying when it was mostly democrats. There were lots of articles about how "clever" Clark Clifford was, but never one about how sleazy he was. Most of the big wheels in the Clinton/Gore administration were lobbyists before and after, but of course that was "public service".

Corrosive cynicism is fashionable and "proves" that you are smart and haven't been "fooled".

The reality is that the media as well as rival lobbying firms, interest groups, and partisan rivals, and, finally, ambitious and hungry prosecutors, will ensure that true corruption will be exposed and its practitioners humiliated. As a result, most lobbying is legitimate and honest as well as inevitable.

You can't have government with modern assumptions without big government, and you can't have big government without lobbyists. You can't say "there ought to be a law" every time something makes you mad or a business does something you don't like, without consequently making government involved in every concievable facet of human activity. And with government big so sprawling and complex, normal people across the country with jobs and lives can't keep up with it and spend their waking hours in DC protect their livelihoods from arbitrary ruination from the politicians or bureaucracy. That's what a lobbyist is for: he represents you in front of the politicians and bureaucrats, the legislative and executive branch, just as a lawyer does in front of a judge and jury.

Naturally a retired senior politician or bureaucrat would make the best lobbyist, just as a retired IRS official makes the best tax adviser, a retired prosecutor the best defense attorney, etc.

Microsoft tried to ignore Washington DC and just do business, and then got badly burned by rivals pushing their agendas in the bureaucracy and in Congress. Now Microsoft has a huge lobbying operation. They have to.

Don't like it? Cut back on government's size and scope.