{"id":1956,"date":"2006-07-31T10:26:38","date_gmt":"2006-07-31T16:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/the-favor-factory\/"},"modified":"2006-07-31T10:26:38","modified_gmt":"2006-07-31T16:26:38","slug":"the-favor-factory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/the-favor-factory\/","title":{"rendered":"The Favor Factory"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Favor Factory<\/a>
\nHow a top House Appropriations aide didn’t have to wait to lobby<\/p>\n

AS ONE OF THE top appropriations staffers to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R<\/em>-Calif.), Letitia White made a nice salary. Ms. White, who oversaw the dispensation of earmarks for Mr. Lewis, earned almost $118,000 in 2000 and nearly $125,000 in 2001. But the following year, Ms. White took a hefty pay cut: Her pay dropped to slightly over $113,000. An effort to save the taxpayers money?<\/p>\n

Don’t bet on it. The rules — such as they are — that require congressional staff members to wait a single year before lobbying their former committees apply only to those who earn a certain amount — in 2002, $112,500. Even though Ms. White was a bit over that limit, her pay cut, on an annualized basis, put her $80 below the cap — and cleared the way for her to join a lobbying firm and rake in $670,000 in lobbying fees during her first year in business. Why endure a cooling-off period when your former boss makes you a hot commodity?<\/p>\n

Ms. White’s lucrative trip through the revolving door was detailed by Paul Kane last week in Roll Call. The story reported how in March 2002, Ms. White and her husband went on a nearly $9,000, nine-day trip to Italy paid for by defense contractor General Atomics. The company received $6.1 million in two separate earmarks in the defense appropriations bill passed that year. Ms. White left the appropriations staff on Jan. 8, 2003; she joined the lobbying firm renamed Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton & White on Jan. 9. Name partner Bill Lowery is a former Republican<\/em> congressman from California who is one of Mr. Lewis’s closest friends. And guess who Ms. White signed up as a client on her first day? General Atomics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The company was just one of 16 clients — mostly defense contractors whose interests were overseen by Mr. Lewis as chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee — whom Ms. White secured that year. Those clients received about $22 million in earmarks in the next round of spending bills. That kind of success paid off: By 2004, Ms. White was reporting lobbying fees of almost $1.5 million.<\/p>\n

In a statement to Roll Call, Mr. Lewis, who now chairs the appropriations panel, said, ” I have always made every effort to carefully follow the rules of the House of Representatives in all aspects of my Congressional work. I am confident that any review will confirm this.” A spokesman for Ms. White said she consulted the House ethics committee about how to handle job negotiations and “recused herself from any official activity that involved a prospective employer or client.”<\/p>\n

This is just a piece of the increasingly disturbing picture emerging about the goings-on at the appropriations panel, which lobbyist Jack Abramoff memorably dubbed the “favor factory.”<\/strong> We’ll examine other aspects of the story in another editorial. Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed a number of Copeland, Lowery clients and examined the financial disclosure forms of Mr. Lewis and his staff. Whether crimes were committed remains to be determined, but this much is clear: There’s quite an odor emanating from the favor factory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Favor Factory How a top House Appropriations aide didn’t have to wait to lobby AS ONE OF THE top appropriations staffers to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), Letitia White made a nice salary. Ms. White, who oversaw the dispensation of earmarks for Mr. Lewis, earned almost $118,000 in 2000 and nearly $125,000 in 2001. But … Continue reading The Favor Factory<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}