July 18, 2007 06:52 PM UTC

Will K Street's Counter to Populism Damage Dems in the West?

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• by: davidsirota

Yesterday, I wrote about how the reemergence of the populist wing of the Democratic Party bodes well for the party’s prospects in the Rocky Mountain West. Today, we find out that reemergence is being aggressively challenged inside of Washington, D.C.

In a story fit for The Onion, Roll Call newspaper reports that a group of Democratic Senate staffers-turned-lobbyists are putting together a new corporate fundraising machine to siphon as much cash as possible to the K Street-friendly Senators because – get this – doing Corporate America’s bidding inside the U.S. Senate supposedly makes it hard for these senators to raise money.

Leading the charge is Montana’s own Sen. Max Baucus (D). His former Senate Finance Committee chief of staff – the guy who left Congress after writing the Medicare bill and immediately became a drug industry lobbyist – is among those listed as a top organizer of the new PAC. Baucus himself is slated to appear at the group’s first Big Money fundraiser, which will also be headlined by Joe Lieberman’s former chief of staff-turned-Enron lobbyist.

So, just in case you were wondering why some senators like Baucus, who represents one of the poorest states in the country, could push job-killing trade policies that may threaten this region’s high-tech economy, or oppose a plan to use a tiny tax increase on millionaires to finance a plan to prevent a massive tax increase on middle class families, make sure to read this story – it makes everything clear (well, other than why a reporter would label people who oppose such a plan as “ideological moderates” rather than out-of-the-mainstream lobbyists in Senators’ clothing). It also will give you some sense of how Democrats, thanks to their tight connections to Washington lobbyists, may be their own worst enemy in this region.