Congress protests 'revolving door' to Boeing while rushing through it

After eight decades of trying, Congress still can’t close a revolving door.

The revolving door swings when congressional staffers and the occasional elected official move into industries they regulated while in government. The practice, long ago identified as a source of deference shown to corporate titans, saw dozens of congressional workers move to Boeing. But, as regulators’ treatment of the company drew condemnation on Capitol Hill, Congress has kept the door spinning.

Even members of Congress with strong voting records on revolving-door restrictions for staff at federal agencies, including members of the Washington state delegation, aren’t immune from contributing to the flow. While congressional staffers must wait one year before representing a new employer on government business, they commonly swing through the revolving door.

Boeing alone has hired 315 people formerly employed by Congress since 2000, primarily into lobbying roles, a Seattle Times review of federal data showed.

The list includes 21 staffers from Washington’s congressional delegation, including past employees of Sen. Patty Murray (8), Rep. Adam Smith (5), Sen. Maria Cantwell (4), Rep. Rick Larsen (2), former Rep. Jennifer Dunn (2), and former Sen. Slade Gorton (2). Former Rep. George Nethercutt, former Sen. Warren G. Magnuson, former Rep. Brian Baird, former Rep. Doc Hastings, former Rep. Dave Reichert and former Rep. Jim McDermott each had one apiece.

Some of them worked for more than one congressional office before shifting to jobs in industry. Former Rep. Norm Dicks also lobbied for Boeing after leaving office.

Of Washington’s current delegation to Congress, Reps. Suzan DelBene, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Pramila Jayapal, Kim Schrier and Marilyn Strickland have had no staff members pass through the revolving door to Boeing, according to federal records. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Derek Kilmer, who are leaving office after this term, also had no staff pass through the revolving door to Boeing.

Murray’s spokesperson downplayed the significance of former staffers passing through the revolving door.

“The fact that over 30 years of service, eight of the hundreds of individuals who have worked for Sen. Murray have later gone on to work for one of the biggest employers in Washington state does not affect the senator’s longstanding commitment to ensuring the safety of the airline industry,” Amir Avin said.

Murray supported congressional reforms at the FAA following two crashes that killed more than 350 people in 2018 and 2019 — including the extended “cooling-off period” for former agency employees that requires two years to pass before they can represent their employer on government matters — and has voted against some political nominees who passed through the revolving door.

The revolving door phenomenon transcends branches of government and political party. Beyond Congress, White House cabinet officials and FAA officials have also capitalized on job opportunities with Boeing.

A cash crunch worsened by the Boeing Machinists strike forced Boeing to suspend paying most of the many lobbying firms it employs, including one operated by Dicks and another headed by former Rep. Dick Gebhardt of Missouri, Politico reported.

Boeing’s board has opposed expanded lobbying transparency measures, including those proposed by an activist shareholder, a Catholic clergyman.

Brother Robert Wotypka, whose investment in Boeing supported the soup kitchen he operated in Milwaukee and other charitable endeavors of the church, pushed for a clearer view into Boeing’s spending on lobbying the federal government. He argued Boeing’s reputation had “been seriously compromised,” calling the disclosures to stockholders “inadequate.”

He cited former National Transportation Safety Board chair James Hall, who said in a 2019 NPR interview that “all anyone has to do is look at the revolving door in Washington, D.C., in this agency, and the industry to realize there is a cozy relationship. Now the questions is: Is that cozy relationship having an adverse impact on the safety decisions being made?”

The Boeing board prevailed, and shareholders rejected the brother’s proposal.

Boeing’s deep relationship with government is evident on its board, which has included cabinet members, military leaders and elected officials.

In 2019, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley accepted a job on the Boeing board of directors, soon after leaving her post as United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration. Haley collected about $250,000 for her Boeing role.

When Haley was South Carolina’s governor in 2013, she signed legislation that granted Boeing $120 million in tax breaks and other concessions to pave the way for an assembly plant to open in the state. Haley’s salary as governor of South Carolina was $106,000, and less than $200,000 as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

By 2018, the year that she resigned the U.N. post, Haley and her husband were saddled with nearly $800,000 in credit card debt and loans, with another $1.5 million owed on a pair of mortgages, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

“I expect you will appreciate my sense that returning from government to the private sector is not a step down but a step up,” Haley wrote in her resignation letter to Trump.

Today, Boeing’s 11-member board includes two who passed through the revolving door. Stayce D. Harris is a former Air Force inspector general who attained the rank of reserve lieutenant general. John M. Richardson is a retired four-star admiral who served as chief of naval operations, the senior officer in that service branch.

Besides crafting laws to curb the revolving-door phenomenon, something even the law’s sponsor admits fell short, Congress has had ample opportunities to take a hard line on the issue, particularly when the Senate votes on political appointees who’ve worked in Congress or served as members.

But Congress has been reluctant to police its own when former members or staff who jumped to the private sector attempt to pass back through the door into government.

One stark example is ex-U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, who represented New Mexico from 1998 to 2009 and served on the powerful House armed services and intelligence committees. Then-President Donald Trump nominated Wilson as Air Force secretary in 2017. Wilson brought an impressive résumé to the job. She’s a pilot, an Air Force Academy grad, a former Air Force officer and a Rhodes Scholar who stood to become the first woman to lead the Air Force.

But Wilson also came with some baggage.

One day after leaving Congress, she entered into a consulting contract to provide “strategic advising” to Lockheed Martin, one of the Pentagon’s foremost contractors. Soon after, Wilson began working as a paid consultant to the consortium of contractors that operate Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Nevada National Security Site, outposts in the nuclear weapons program.

The Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office would later uncover that Wilson, who never registered as a lobbyist, had been unlawfully paid about $430,000 by the nuclear weapons firms. Congress had authorized the funds for nuclear weapons production; instead it was used to lobby for a noncompetitive contract extension worth billions of dollars.

The inspector general’s findings provided a rare glimpse into how government insiders leverage their relationships to benefit their corporate employers, to the detriment of the taxpaying public.

Wilson’s employers spent funds that Congress designated for maintaining the nuclear arsenal on an influence campaign hatched by Wilson to lobby for billions of federal dollars by targeting her Beltway connections.

Wilson instructed her clients to aggressively lobby Congress, but to keep a low profile. Energy Department contracting specialists described it to investigators as a “ money grab” benefiting Wilson. Lockheed Martin paid the Justice Department $4.7 million to settle the fraud investigation.

At her confirmation hearing, Wilson faced tense questions from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kristen Gillibrand and even her fellow Republican Sen. John McCain. Wilson responded, “the United States deserved my best work, and that’s what they got.” The senators’ tough questions notwithstanding, Wilson was confirmed with 76% of the vote. Washington Sens. Cantwell and Murray voted against confirming the former congresswoman.

If it had the will, Congress could pass laws to slow its own revolving door. To date, it has not.

In 2019, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., proposed legislation that would have imposed a lifetime ban on all members and employees of Congress passing through the revolving door to industry. It never got so much as a committee hearing.

“Members of Congress should spend their time in Washington representing the American people and not auditioning for high-paying lobbying jobs,” Bennet said in a statement when he introduced the legislation. Its objective, he said, was “to restore the American people’s faith in our government.”

Any steps Congress could take to reform post-government employment standards are likely to face similar headwinds from several directions — including its own ranks and the companies coveting its staff.