Trump’s Cabinet Already Has More Ex-Lobbyists Than Obama Or Bush

Lee Drutman was quoted in a Citizen Truth piece discussing the high number of lobbyists that have staffed the Trump administration.

In the Department of Agriculture, multiple former Dow chemical employees oversee agricultural policy, such as former Dow lobbyist Ted McKinney, the USDA undersecretary for trade, Ken Isley, the head of the Foreign Agricultural Service, and Scott Hutchins, a deputy undersecretary at the USDA. Trump has also nominated a former Monsanto executive to oversee the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is a former pharmaceutical lobbyist and was CEO of Eli Lilly when the company raised drug prices and doubled the price of its insulin.

Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin formerly worked for Goldman Sachs and has been broadly criticized for abusive and fraudulent practices during his time as CEO of mortgage lender OneWest.

The acting head of the Labor Department, Patrick Pizzella, and nominated secretary Eugene Scalia, are both corporate ex-lobbyists. Both have been deeply criticized for their anti-labor history.

“An administration staffed by former industry lobbyists will almost certainly favor industry over the general public, because that’s the outlook they’re bringing to the job,” Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the political reform program at the think tank New America, told the Washington Post.