WELLS: Legislators should return home, not lobby

Published 2:10 pm Tuesday, December 31, 2024

The founders of our great nation envisioned our government being one made up of citizen legislators who governed and then returned home to live among their constituents and under the very laws they passed. 

In many cases, those founders never truly expected politics to be a career, although shortly after the approval of the U.S. Constitution and the establishment of the first government under it, many of those early elected officials, some of the founders among them, made careers out of politics and public service. However, many of those men would go home to live in their native states and take up their chosen profession or live the rest of their days in retirement with their families, friends, and neighbors. 

Now, as we are more than a month past the November general election, and the dust has begun to settle, winners and losers have emerged. There were quite a few hard-fought races that ended up fairly close across the nation. Among the tight U.S. Senate races was the one in Montana where incumbent John Tester saw a tough challenger in Tim Sheehy, the founder of Bridger Aerospace, former Navy Seal and aerial firefighter. When all the votes were counted, Sheehy unseated Tester by roughly 43,000 votes out of almost 600,000 cast. The election itself was contentious and oftentimes unpredictable. Both men were good candidates, and Montanans had a difficult choice, but what stood out the most was not the result, but one of the candidate’s concession speeches.
Shortly after Election Day, Tester saw the writing on the wall and conceded to Senator-elect Sheehy. In his concession speech, he did the usual by thanking his family, staff and supporters, as well as wishing Tim Sheehy all the best as the new senator from Montana. However, it was something he said to which most paid little attention but certainly got mine. He said, “…I’m also blessed because I’ve got a great family. I’m gonna be able to go back to the farm, and maybe enlarge it a little bit and really focus on production and agriculture and helping my son work on a few cars, hopefully not too hard.” 

Tester pretty much went against the grain when he said that. Normally, this would not be considered earth-shattering or too dramatic a statement, but in what has become the tradition in Washington, much to the chagrin of the founders, Tester is somewhat of an oddball. He was a farmer, butcher and music teacher before taking up the mantle of public service, which included time on his local school board, eight years in the Montana State Senate (three of which were as president of the Montana Senate), and his 18 years in the U.S. Senate. Although there are other examples of public servants like Tester who decided to return to their homes and rejoin their professions and communities, that number seems to be shrinking. 

Tester himself, along with Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner, sponsored legislation in 2019 to ban members of Congress from becoming lobbyists. The current ban is one year for Representatives and two years for Senators after officially leaving Congress. Tester’s bill, titled “Close the Revolving Door Act of 2019,” would ban current members from ever becoming lobbyists. In addition, it would increase the current statutory staff restrictions on lobbying from one to six years, ban lobbyists from joining congressional staffs or committee staffs they have lobbied for six years, create a website for tracking and reporting lobbying activities publicly, and a few other items concerning fines for violations and required reporting standards. As of the writing of this column, the bill was read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. No action has been reported on the bill since according to www.congress.gov. Moreover, U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn of Iowa has proposed legislation to extend the current ban from one to three years for Representatives and a six-year ban for Senators after they leave Congress. The bill was introduced in the U.S. House in March, 2023 and referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. No action has been reported on the bill since.
Perhaps we will see some movement on these issues in Congress as the mood changes in Washington; however, that chore will be, as my grandmother used to say, “a tough row to hoe.” 

It seems that members of our Congress become acclimated to the culture of Washington and do not wish to leave the sphere once their time is up. 

As of 2023, more than 460 former members of Congress are currently employed by lobbying firms, many of which remain in Washington or close by and no longer live in or connect with the districts or states they represented. While not all lobbying efforts are bad, and we all know some good changes come about through lobbying efforts, it appears that a trend is there, and our founder’s ideas of what it means to be a citizen legislator has somewhat been forgotten.  Many would argue for term limits, which is a horse of a different color, as the old saying goes, but along with that discussion, there really should be room for batting back and forth the idea of stymieing this trend of turning from legislator to lobbyist.

 If you want a stronger, more knowledgeable take on this issue, just visit former Sen. Tester. You can find him on his farm or under the hood of his son’s car back in Big Sandy, Montana.

—Dr. Jeff Wells is a resident of Baldwin County and a contributing columnist.