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Subject: Incoming Clinton Targets The 'Revolving Door'. . . <By Stephen Barr=Washington
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 04:42:06 EST
Message-ID: <22.1992Nov12.044207@AmeriCast.com>

Incoming Clinton Targets The 'Revolving Door'. . . <By Stephen
Barr=Washington Post Staff Writer=

On election night in Little Rock, Ark., before he spoke of the
challenges of health care, welfare or the economy, Bill Clinton
reaffirmed his commitment to curbing the influence of special in-
terests. It was an overt gesture to supporters of Ross Perot, who
harshly criticized foreign agents and lobbyists during the
presidential campaign.

Now, by deciding to make ethics one of its first initiatives, the
Clinton transition team has put back into play a long-running
Washington debate over whether existing laws adequately cover
public servants and whether tighter rules would hamper the new
administration's recruitment of top-notch professionals.  Aides
to Clinton said yesterday that he plans - possibly as soon as to-
day - to issue ethics guidelines for his top administration offi-
cials, perhaps the toughest standards ever set during a transi-
tion. To Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who has worked since the
mid-1980s to slow the "revolving door," Clinton's decision to
quickly deal with the issue is a "result of this election," which
showed that "the public wants action."

The president-elect, aides said, will impose a five-year ban on
top appointees from his administration lobbying their agencies
after they leave government service and a lifetime ban on lobby-
ing on behalf of foreign governments.

The debate over ethics intensified in the post-Watergate years,
and one of the more recent laws, the 1989 Ethics Reform Act, car-
ries a series of provisions aimed at slowing the revolving door -
Washington's symbol for the seemingly never-ending movement of
federal officials into the private sector, where former officials
trade on their government expertise.

The law, for example, provides for a lifetime ban to keep any
former executive branch employee from making a "communication" or
"appearance" before the government on matters that the employee
worked on as a federal official.

But it leaves many gray areas open for navigation. Since the law
covers specific parties linked to particular matters, it remains
possible for a federal employee who handled a "general" rule-
making decision to leave the government and then approach his
former agency on the application of the rule to his new employer
without triggering the lifetime ban.

This provision of the law also does not prohibit former federal
workers from playing a behind-the-scenes role, such as giving ad-
vice to his or her new employer on a case that the employee knows
about or handled.

The current law also prohibits senior officials from lobbying
their former agencies for one year, and a recently passed amend-
ment increases the ban to three years for any person who becomes
a U.S. trade representative after Oct. 6 of this year.

Regardless of how tightly Clinton draws his guidelines, a sam-
pling of the responses to news of his forthcoming initiative re-
flects the divisions in Washington's political culture.

"The Democratic Party is essentially a party of government; the
Republican Party is essentially a private-sector party. That's
simplistic, but true," said Stuart E. Eizenstat, a lawyer and
domestic policy adviser in the Carter White House.  "Democrats
put a higher premium on government service, and Republicans are
less likely to do so, since their people value the private sector
more than the public sector," he said. Because of their party's
traditional attitude, and because they have been out of power for
the last 12 years, "Democrats are willing to put up with many
more restrictions on post-employment."

On a pragmatic level, though, professionals at mid-career, facing
college expenses for children and conflict-of-interest worries,
may find that post-employment restrictions tilt them against
government service, according to Mark A.  Abramson, the president
of the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government.  "It's
hard, in general, for people from corporations to interrupt their
careers, because of the corporate climb," he said. "Government
pay is still going to be a pay cut for someone in the prime of
their career. You don't want to overload the system with disin-
centives."

S. Linn Williams, a corporate lawyer who spent two years as a
deputy U.S. trade representative in the Bush administration,
said, "I think the country needs people who understand the prob-
lem. If you basically take yourself out of appointing people who
have experience . . . then where are you going to get them? I
suppose you can get them from Capitol Hill or from academia . . .
but that is an awfully limited selection."

Fred Wertheimer, the president of Common Cause, which seeks to
overhaul campaign finance laws, said Clinton's proposals will be
"a very important first step." But he added, "If there is going
to be change, there has to be a fundamental reform of the cam-
paign system. . . . The role of money is central to the power of
Washington lobbyists." Clinton's proposals, he said, don't appear
to deal with lobbyists "who have already gone through the revolv-
ing door."<Staff researchers Mark Stencel and Lucy Shackelford
contributed to this report.<02:20 11-12C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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