Even though he's in the ‘cooling off’ period, Kyl is lobbying on a proposed tax overhaul.
Lee FangFormer Senator Jon Kyl speaking in Phoenix, Arizona in 2012. (Reuters/Joshua Lott)
This post was originally published at RepublicReport.org
Need help navigating the proposal federal tax system overhaul? Covington & Burling, a major law-lobbying firm in Washington, DC, sent out a client alert recently announcing that former Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) stands ready to assist businesses seeking the best outcome of the legislative proposal led by Representative Dave Camp (R-MI) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).
If enacted, the tax overhaul expected this year will change billions of dollars in tax credits and rates.
Kyl, however, is barred from lobbying because he left the senate last year and is still within the “cooling-off period.” The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act extends the ban on former senators engaging in lobbying from one to two years, leaving Kyl off the market for lobbying until January of 2015.
But as we’ve covered, lobbying law is poorly enforced and ambiguously defined. Former staffers and lawmakers prohibited from engaging in lobby activity often flout the law by engaging in meetings with officials, often with the cover that they’re just doing so in order to collect intelligence, rather than “lobby.”
Shortly after he retired from office, Kyl joined the lobbying team of Covington & Burling, euphemistically titled the “Public Policy and Government Affairs”division. And the tax reform alert, which is embedded below, notes that Kyl is part of a team that is actively communicating with government officials on legislation now debated in Congress (emphasis added):
Covington’s Public Policy and Government Affairs and Tax practice groups—which include Senator Jon Kyl, former top Republican on the Senate’s Finance Subcommittee on Taxation; former senior Treasury officials; and Ed Yingling, former President and CEO of the American Bankers Association (ABA) — are conversant with the details. Many of our team members are in regular consultation with senior Members of Congress, Treasury and IRS officials, and staffs of the Congressional tax-writing committees and are able to explain the hundreds of pages of proposals.
See the alert below:
Lee FangTwitterLee Fang is a reporting fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. He covers money in politics, conservative movements and lobbying. Lee’s work has resulted in multiple calls for hearings in Congress and the Federal Election Commission. He is author of The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right, a recently published book on how the right-wing political infrastructure was rebuilt after President Obama's 2008 election. More on the book can be found at www.themachinebook.com.