New Business Booming For Packwood Tax And Transportation Lobbying Brings Success

Former Sen. Bob Packwood collected $300,000 in lobbying fees in his first full year as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, and earned a similar amount in consulting fees.

That’s roughly 4-1/2 times the $133,600 annual Senate salary he was earning when he was forced from office more than two years ago.

“I can’t complain at all,” Packwood said in an interview last week.

The Oregon Republican lobbies primarily on tax and transportation matters, the same issues he focussed on as the influential chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Only the $300,000 in lobbying fees were reported to the Senate. He said he earned a similar amount in consulting fees, which are not required to be reported.

The single most lucrative client of Packwood’s Sunrise Research Corp. last year was a coalition advocating tax reform, American Business is Local Enterprise or ABLE, which paid him $140,000, according to records on file with the Senate Secretary’s Office.

The Georgetown-based firm collected $80,000 from trucking manufacturer Freightliner, $60,000 from Northwest Airlines and $20,000 from a New Haven, Conn.-based law firm, Bergman, Horowitz and Reynolds, with interest in tax matters.

Packwood quit the Senate in 1995 after the ethics committee recommended his expulsion on charges of sexual misconduct, soliciting jobs from lobbyists for his estranged wife and obstructing a congressional investigation into the allegations.

In the past year, he has emerged as one of the leading lobbyists pressing for repeal of the estate tax, “or the death tax, as we call it,” Packwood said.

Packwood said the consulting work covers a wide variety of topics.

“People call and ask, ‘If we were to testify as follows before the Senate Commerce Committee or Senate Finance Committee, what do you think the reaction would be?” Packwood said.