Congressional Aide Tracker

Mr. Duke goes to Washington. Sixty-four of the members of the last Congress resigned, retired, were defeated, are now sitting in jail or have received pardons from pResident Bush. As last Sunday's Doonesbury cartoon featured above points out, many of them are on their way to fulfilling the grand Washington tradition of hiring themselves out as lobbyists to lean on their former colleagues. Ever since Grover Norquist and Tom Delay's 1995 "K Street Project" brought about the GOP takeover of K Street, its been hard to keep track of all the folks cashing in after public service. What often flies below the radar, however, are the huge number of congressional staffers who take the opportunity of their bosses leaving to join the lobbying corps themselves. They are prized by K Street not just for their insider knowledge of how Congress works, but also for the extensive contacts they still have with their former coworkers and subordinates as well as the lack of oversight and attention given them by anyone.

click to enlarge.

Now it's time to drag them into the sunshine, both Democrat and Republican alike. The Sunlight Foundation, CMD's partner in the Congresspedia project, has developed a cool distributed research tool to marry citizen brain power with a fancy new database to figure out who exactly is hiring these insiders, and they want you to participate. Like so many other participatory projects, many hands can make this formerly daunting task light work.

Once the results are in, the CMD staff will work with the participants to get the results entered into the SourceWatch profiles of the corporations and lobbyists, ensuring that professional reporters and citizen journalists alike will be able to use the information to perform some high-caliber muckraking on the DC influence scene. Even Craigslist's Craig Newmark is participating because, as he says, "This 'revolving door' thing is of great concern since some staffers, working for shadowy politicians, might do more damage as lobbyists."

Everything you need to know is at Sunlight's website. This is your chance to become vigilant citizens by participating in Democracy in an unprecedented way

Featured Participatory Project: Find the Newest Congressional Staffers-Turned-Lobbyists