SIGNALCAST: Welcome to SignalCast, the
podcast from Signal Group. Signal's a bipartisan communication and advocacy
firm located in Washington, D.C. As always, I'm your host Andrew Deerin,
Creative Director at Signal, and for today's show, we're sitting down with our
own Charlie Moskowitz for a little Q&A on how companies large and small can
navigate the at-times treacherous waters of congressional oversight. Congress'
oversight authority derives from its implied powers in the Constitution, public
laws, and House and Senate rules. It's an integral part of the American system
of checks and balances.
Charlie, first of all, welcome to the SignalCast studios.
CHARLIE
MOSKOWITZ:
Thank you for having me.
SC: Awesome. You just came off an
almost decade stint on the hill, toiling in the strange world of oversight
including drug pricing investigation and everyone's favorite punching bag, the
cable industry just to name a few. Let's start by explaining where an
investigation comes from.
MOSKOWITZ: Sure. The first thing to
understand is that an investigation can pretty much start from anywhere. It
could be a whistleblower who knows a lot about your company and where the
bodies are buried. It could be something as simple as a member had a bad flight
going home after a long week, or it could be something where there's already
some meat on the bone, a 60 Minutes report that they saw or an official
government document like a GAO report or an IG report.
SC: I obviously try to avoid as many
congressional oversight inquires as possible, but there is a saying that I've
heard before that when it comes to oversight. You don't have to out run the
bear, you just have to out run your friend. Take me through what that means.
MOSKOWITZ: It's important to be cooperative
when you realize that you are the target of an investigation, when you get a
subpoena or you get a letter asking for a response from Congress. Typically,
there are multiple companies getting investigated at one time. They're not just
going after you. They're looking at your industry as a whole or the biggest
players in your industry, and so that's really to suggest that you don't
necessarily have to give them everything, but it's important to make sure that
you are more cooperative than the least cooperative company that's under
investigation.
SC: If your firm does find itself in
the committee sights, what are a couple things they should keep in mind?
MOSKOWITZ: Be proactive, be proactive, be
proactive. There are a couple of different ways to do this but realize that the
investigation is being done by two staffs. For the Democrat and Republican
staff of a committee, there are anywhere from six to eight to ten on the Senate-side
more members that are on that committee that can help you understand where the
investigation is among the committee staff. They can be your allies if there is
a hearing later. And on the House side, the committees have 40 and 50 members,
so you really have an opportunity to go out there and talk to a lot of
different members and get your story out there before the committee releases
its report or its findings and make sure you're getting your side of the story
told.
SC: So let me pick your brain a
little since you have obviously a good bit of insider information from the
committee side of things. Does it matter if a committee is united? It seems to
me that disagreement would be a good thing for a company being investigated.
MOSKOWITZ: Yeah, absolutely. Like any
political campaign, if you have a wedge that you can drive between the two
sides, all the better. The united front from the Democrats and Republicans on a
committee is going to mean that you don't have too many allies up there. But to
the extent that you can figure out whether this is being driven by one side or
the other, and you can get the other side to really understand where you're
coming from and understand that these guys are on a witch hunt, you're going to
find yourself with a lot more allies and be able to get your story out there
and really lessen the blow of whatever it is that they end up producing.
SC: What advice then would you give
to a company that is currently under investigation but clearly has some
cleaning up to do?
MOSKOWITZ: You should do as much of that
cleaning up as you can before the committee comes out with its report or its
hearing. Take steps well in advance of whatever final product that they're
putting out to remediate whatever issues that you have. But even at the 23rd
hour, if you can take a few cosmetic steps so that you can go either into the
hearing or to the press the next day after a report comes out and say,
"Hey yeah, we know we did something wrong but look, we're trying to be
good stewards. We are taking steps already and we're going to keep looking into
this and figure out how we can make things right". That will take a lot of
the wind out of the sails of the investigation.
SC: Give us a parting shot, a
parting thought.
MOSKOWITZ: One thing that I think is really
important to understand is that these steps are small and the resources are
scarce. Once they go down the road of an investigation, they've chosen to
investigate you and your company, your industry over any number of other things
that they could be doing with their time, they're going to find something. The
worst thing you can do is turn your back on them and hope they go away. They
won't.
SC: It's like the IRS.
MOSKOWITZ: Yes. Exactly.
SC: Well that will do it for today's
show. My many thanks to Charlie Moskowitz for acting as our oversight tour
guide, if you will. We hope you found some of his insights helpful. You can
reach him at cmoskowitz@signaldc.com. You can also check us out on the web at signaldc.com. For our entire production staff,
I'm Andrew Deerin and we'll see you next time.
