By T.W. Farnam,
Nearly 5,400 former congressional staffers have left Capitol Hill to become federal lobbyists in the past 10 years, according to a new study that documents the extent of the revolving door between Congress and K Street.
The data published by the online disclosure site LegiStorm found close to 400 former U.S. lawmakers also have made the jump to lobbying.
"But it's easier to say why it's a bad situation than how it can be fixed. Perhaps the public would be well-served by funding a pleasant retirement community for exhausted staffers. In the end, it would probably be cheaper for the taxpayers to create the Institute for Government Expertise than to let Exxon hire those same former staffers to secure billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies. But it's not going to happen. Which means the revolving door is going to continue to revolve.
