The Center for Responsive Politics has released a preliminary analysis of second quarter campaign finance reports filed earlier this month. All of the nation's congressional candidates raised a total of $168.5 million and spent $73.6 million of that money.
Some interesting findings: On average, Democratic candidates raked in roughly 37 percent more than Republican candidates, $146,858 compared to $106,793. Out of the total amount raised, 77 percent went to currently seated lawmakers.
Legendary rainmaker Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., raised the most with $3.5 million, he is up for re-election next year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is a close second having raised $3.3 million.
Stay tuned for the Center's upcoming analysis on what the campaign finance data indicates, including how much the health care industry and finance sectors gave to lawmakers.
UPDATE@5:24 pm on July 31 to update DLA Piper lobbying figures. Due to a data entry error by the Senate records office, the firm's first half figures were incorrect .
Podesta Group, the lobbying firm founded by Democrat Tony Podesta, showed the biggest percentage gain in lobbying fees among the top 25 firms on K Street during the first half of 2009, according to lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Senate Office of Public Records and analyzed by National Journal.
For the first half of this year, Podesta's fees were $11.8 million, up 63 percent, compared with the first half of 2008. The second fastest growing firm on K Street was the Breaux Lott Leadership Group, which posted fees of $5.2 million, up 53 percent from the first half of 2008. The firm was founded by former Senators John Breaux, D-La. and Trent Lott, R-Miss.
Law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs pulled in the most lobbying income of any firm, posting first half lobbying revenue of $18.4 million, down 10 percent from the first half of 2008. Patton Boggs partner James Christian said the decline was related to the tough economy but business has been picking up this year as Congress wrestles with big issues like energy, financial services and health care reform,
Almost every top 25 law and lobbying firm posted a decline in lobbying fees for the first half of the year. Only the law firms Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber, Holland & Knight, K & L Gates and Venable bucked that trend and posted gains in fees. Lobbying firms Cornerstone Government Affairs, Ferguson Group, McBee Strategic Consulting, Washington Council Ernst & Young also reported gains in income.
(Photo above of Tony Podesta courtesy of Creative Commons)
Click on the jump below to get our list of the top 25 firms for the first half of 2009.
Continue reading Podesta Group Growing Fastest On K Street.
The 10th annual Camp Baucus -- a three-day fundraiser in Montana for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' leadership political action committee has it all -- or does it?
Starting today at the posh Big Sky Resort there's fly-fishing in three nearby rivers, golfing on an Arnold Palmer-designed course, horseback riding and hiking, family fun and gorgeous scenery. Indeed, all that will be missing is the senator himself. Baucus will be staying in Washington, an aide confirms, to tend to faltering bipartisan negotiations over health care reform legislation.
By staying away, Baucus will also miss the protest awaiting fundraiser attendees -- who are forking out $2,500 per individual and $5,000 per PAC. Gene Fenderson of Helena, a retired labor leader and co-founder of Montanans for Single Payer told the Great Falls Tribune that protesters will line the road to resort holding signs with slogans that read "Buy Back Baucus" as well as large scale faux checks that read "Max -- A seat at the table. What does it cost? $4 million. Buy Back Our Senator!" The figure is an apparent reference to $3 million Baucus' PAC and campaign committee already collected from the health and insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008, and which has kept flooding in this year according to The Washington Post.
Less than 10 percent of the money came from Montana. Fenderson argues that it's inappropriate for Baucus to hold an upscale fundraiser with lobbyists from the health care sector while the committee is drafting a bill.
Baucus aides told The Washington Post that he adopted an internal office policy of refusing contributions from health care PACs that would continue until after Congress passes a reform bill. But the paper found in a later look at Federal Election Commission files that the policy didn't appear to exclude contributions from individual lobbyists or executives with health care connections.
Continue reading No Camp for Baucus.
Rep. Ed Markey, D, Mass., chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, has launched an investigation into reports of forged letters sent to the Hill to derail the energy bill.
Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., received several letters from Charlottesville, Va.-based organizations on faked letterhead urging him to vote against the cap and trade legislation, DailyProgress.com reported today. "This fraud on Congress shows that some opponents of clean energy have resorted to forgery and theft to block progress," Baucus said in a statement. "My select committee will immediately begin an investigation of the extent and scope of this activity."
DailyProgress.com reports that the letters came from non-existent individuals at several organizations, including the Hispanic advocacy group Creciendo Juntos and a local Virginia chapter of the NAACP. The publication also traced the letters back to the grassroots advocacy shop Bonner & Associates in Washington.
Bonner officials have not returned a call for comment but we will update this story if and when they respond.
Long-time Washingtonian David Bass announced the launch of his new public relations and public affairs firm, Raptor Strategies. Raptor's clients include energy, media, insurance and international groups.
Out of the gates with an attitude, the firm's motto is "New Times Demand New Strategies." Specifically, it's about precision in message delivery. Bass told National Journal that he will operate from a deep and abiding respect for traditional journalism with a keen awareness of the utility of 'new' media.
Bass got his start in Washington as a legislative intern in the Senate before moving on to the media world, where he worked at National Journal, The Weekly Standard, Campaigns & Elections, The Hill and The Washington Times.
Before launching his own firm, Bass held top positions at Luntz Maslansky Strategic Research and Qorvis Communications.
"What once took decades [in Washington], can now be solved with a patio table and a few properly chilled beers," jested Bass. Jokes aside, the communications veteran characterized today's policy-based Washington as being in a state of flux with, "every industry scrambling to understand and react."
Expect the announcement of a senior executive at Raptor in the coming weeks, he said.
(Photo courtesy of David Bass)
Top lobbying stories from this week's National Journal: (subscription)
From this morning's Earlybird:
• Blue Dog Democrats, "who have become key brokers in shaping [health care] legislation in the House," have "set a record pace for fundraising this year... surpassing other congressional leadership PACs in collecting more than $1.1 million through June," the Washington Post reports. "More than half the money came from the health-care, insurance and financial services industries, marking a notable surge in donations from those sectors compared with earlier years, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity."
• "A Republican lawmaker who is President Barack Obama's pick to become the next secretary of the Army endured a tough grilling at Thursday's confirmation hearing from Sen. John McCain," The Hill reports. "Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.), the former ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, fended off questions from McCain, the Arizona Republican and Obama's opponent in last year's presidential election, about campaign contributions from a defense-lobbying firm that is now under investigation for possible campaign finance violations."
Want to know the what and where on the latest fundraiser for your lawmaker? Well, Under the Influence has added a new feature to help you keep track. We have added a box linking to the Sunlight Foundation's Party Time blog (www.politicalpartytime.org), which has a rolling list of fundraisers. You can find that box by scrolling down the right-hand side of the blog. You can see updates throughout the day.
The fundraiser list is put together by a team of people managed by Nancy Watzman (her photo is to the right), who works from Denver for Washington, DC-based Sunlight, a nonpartisan nonprofit foundation devoted to increasing transparency in the political process. Sunlight's funding comes from a variety of sources. (The major funder is the Omidyar Network, the philanthropy of Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pamela.You can see all of Sunlight Foundation's funders here: http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/funding/)
Watzman, who has been at the foundation for just over a year, has a background in following money and politics, having worked at such groups as Public Campaign, the Center for Responsive Politics, and the Center for Public Integrity. She has also written for numerous publications, including Harper's,The New Republic, and The Washington Monthly. She is the co-author of "Is That a Politician in Your Pocket?: Washington on $2 Million a Day" (Wiley Books, 2004).
Under The Influence's Bara Vaida interviewed Watzman to introduce her and Party Time to our readers.
Under the Influence: How did you come up with the idea for Political Party Time?
Watzman: My colleague Bill Allison kept a stash of fundraising invitations that a lobbyist source had been giving him for years. They were in a pile in his office. Anybody who covers money and politics in Washington, DC knows that these invitations are ubiquitous. They come in by the hundreds over e-mail and fax machines to lobbyists around town all the time. They are an essential piece of how Washington works, but are largely unknown outside the Beltway. With the technical whizzes at the Sunlight Foundation, we saw a way to create something that to our knowledge had never been done before: gather all these invitations on a website and create a searchable database based on the information they contain.
How much time does it take to create your database?
It's a pretty labor intensive affair. We collect our invitations from a number of anonymous sources. We process them so we can provide electronic images of the invitations on the website. Interns then spend many hours doing the data entry. It's a lot of work to keep up with the flood of invitations.
Where does your information on the fundraisers come from?
Over the years we've developed lobbyist sources who are willing to give us the invitations. Many lobbyists are sick of getting so many of them and are happy to provide them to us, as long as their names are not attached. We also ask the public to send us any they come across through our website: http://politicalpartytime.org/upload/. Anybody who is reading this, please send us your invitations! We know we only get a portion of the events that are happening, which is frustrating. However, in just the year we've been in operation, we've collected more than 5,500. Still, we'd love to get more.
In reading about all these fundraisers, is there anything that has struck you?
The relentless nature of the fundraising that goes on. Lawmakers are constantly at it. And as you look at many of these over time, you see the same names showing up again and again as hosts for various events. It's a very inside game.
Continue reading Shedding Sunlight Through "Party Time".
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., want the FCC to consider probing allegations of retaliation by AM and FM stations over pending bills that would require over-the-air radio to pay performers for songs they broadcast, CongressDaily reported Wednesday.
Read the story here:http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/07/radio-bill-prompts-advertising.php
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attacked the health insurance industry today for opposing a public option as part of health care reform, calling the companies "villains" and "immoral."
"They have been doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening," Pelosi, D-Calif., said. "The public has to know that. They can describe their arguments any way they want, but the fact is they don't want the competition."
A spokesman for the insurance industry responded by calling Pelosi's words mere "political rhetoric" and saying the industry has offered concessions other than a public option.
"Countless physicians, hospitals and employers, and millions of concerned citizens agree that a government-run health care plan will dismantle employer-based coverage, bankrupt local hospitals, and break the promise made to the American people that those who like their health plan can keep it," America's Health Insurance Plans' spokesman Robert Zirkelbach said in a statement.
His complete statement after the jump.
Continue reading Insurers Counter Pelosi's 'Political Rhetoric'.
Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign, and actor Sam Waterston. (Credit: Beth Sussman)
When he's not playing politically minded Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy on "Law & Order," actor Sam Waterston is a political advocate himself. Waterston brought his clout to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to promote publicly financing congressional campaigns, an issue he has worked on with a coalition of organizations.
Waterston met with 26 members of Congress -- including Reps. John Larson, D-Conn., Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Robert Brady, D-Pa. -- about the Fair Elections Now Act, which the House Administration Committee met about today. The bill would give congressional candidates public funding if they first acquire a set number of small donations in-state. House candidates would receive $900,000 to be split 40-60 between the primary and general after raising at least $50,000 from 1,500 in-state contributors in donations under $100 each. The funding for candidates for Senate would vary depending on the size of the state but would follow a similar formula.
NationalJournal.com's Beth Sussman spoke with Waterston on Wednesday. Edited excerpts follow.
NJ: What were you doing to promote this bill on the Hill today? Were lawmakers receptive to your message?
Waterston: We met with a whole lot of congressmen and women and did a TV interview for a local television station. We did a webcast for Congressman Larson and another webcast for Common Cause....A lot of people we met were already co-sponsors of the bill. I would say to a person they all were fed up with the current system as it impacted their own lives and careers -- the amount of time it took, how demeaning it was to the process to not only have to win votes, but also to have to curry money favors.... But the real benefit of this bill, of course, would be for all the rest of us, because 25 percent of our representatives' time is now going to raising money, and they would have one-quarter more time to devote to the things that we elected them to deal with. We would be able to be confident that we were getting their best judgments and that their votes reflected their best judgments based on the issues and not because somebody had corrupted their vote with money.
NJ: Why is this a piece of legislation that lawmakers should be focusing on right now?
Waterston: It bears on all the other things they're trying to deal with. Health care legislation is being affected or appears to be being affected by the influence of insurance companies and large health care businesses. The financial rescue plan, if it turns out that more government help is needed -- will people's response to that be affected by the fact that there appears to be or there was influence both in the creation of the situation that required the rescue and then in the rescue itself and then in the regulation afterwards? Energy, fisheries policy -- you go up and down the list, there is a lot to do, and it would clean out the pipes a little bit if money were not such an issue -- big donor money. It would open up this wide avenue for small donor money, which would surely give us more democracy.
Continue reading Waterston Pushes Public Finance On The Hill.
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "Rep. Pete Sessions -- the chief of the Republicans' campaign arm in the House -- says on his website that earmarks have become 'a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people.' Yet in 2008, Sessions himself steered a $1.6 million earmark for dirigible research to an Illinois company whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps," Politico reports. "What the company did have: the help of Adrian Plesha, a former Sessions aide with a criminal record who has made more than $446,000 lobbying on its behalf."
• "The AFL-CIO sought to slow momentum on one idea to finance healthcare reform that has been gaining supporters on Capitol Hill by expressing misgivings about a proposal to tax insurance companies that offer the most expensive plans," The Hill reports. "The tax on so-called 'Cadillac' health plans has been seen by Democrats as a compromise that would allow them to to raise revenue for healthcare reform and reduce healthcare spending by discouraging very generous insurance plans without capping the currently unlimited tax exclusion for workplace health benefits."
• "One of the largest sources of campaign contributions to Senate Democrats during this year's health care debate is a physician-owned hospital in one of the country's poorest regions that has sought to soften measures that could choke its rapid growth," the New York Times reports.
• "Natural-gas companies are ramping up their lobbying efforts against a House climate change bill they believe is too generous to the coal industry," The Hill reports. "An alliance of gas producers and pipeline companies formed in March is taking out ads in Washington publications, including The Hill, and staffing up with lobbyists to tilt the Senate version of climate change legislation more in the industry's favor."
Over 300 animal welfare activists met with lawmakers and aides on Capitol Hill on July 27 as part of the Humane Society of the United States' annual "Taking Action for Animals" conference.
HSUS, one of the nation's most powerful voices on animal protection, staged a vegan banquet on Saturday night, drawing Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who met with attendees from the animal welfare sector and dined on faux meat.
"Everyone raved about the food, even the hardcore carnivores," boasted HSUS president and CEO Wayne Pacelle.
The conference weekend and lobbying day served to bolster the citizen advocacy component of HSUS's aggressive lobbying efforts. Annually, the group and its affiliates allocate about $8 million on advocacy efforts, which includes grassroots, federal and state lobbying and work on ballot measures, according to chief operating officer Michael Markarian. In 2008, the group spent about $200,000 on direct federal lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
"We're in the process of building a powerful social movement," Pacelle said, pointing to HSUS's citizen advocacy efforts at every level of government and its undercover investigation this year that unearthed violations in animal welfare law at primate research labs--an effort quickly followed by USDA action.
(Photo of Humane Society's Markarian, actress and animal rights activist Ginnifer Goodwin and Moran following the group's lobbying meetings on Capitol Hill courtesy of HSUS)
So how did HSUS's lobbying conference work?
Continue reading Animal Lovers Work Capitol Hill.
Beer: it's not just for diffusing racial tensions, writes Nancy Watzman, editor of Sunlight Foundation's Political Party Time blog.
It's also for political fundraising. As are wine, bourbon, cocktails, margaritas, and mojitos-all used as attractions for recent fundraisers by members of Congress, according to Party Time's database.
Click here to learn more about the latest alcohol related congressional fundraisers
Before signing on to lead the health and tax practice at Dow Lohnes Government Strategies in late July, Ken Bowler's Washington career took a slightly unconventional turn. Since mid-2005, Bowler, a former staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee who spent 16 years running Pfizer's Washington office, has been the vice president for international and governmental relations with the Church of the Latter Day Saints.
Bowler, a fourth generation member of the church, said the job involved more work with foreign ambassadors and less lobbying on Capitol Hill. But in the end, he says, the lure of the health care issues he followed since the mid-1970s was overpowering. "I discovered that I missed being involved," he says, and "felt left out of this big important debate going on right now."
So when Bowler was approached by Dow Lohnes Vice President Mike Scrivner -- an old friend and colleague from Capitol Hill, where Scrivner was a top aide to then-Rep. Norm Lent, R-NY -- about helping build the firm's health care practice, Bowler says, he readily agreed. See Dow Lohnes press release here: http://www.dowlohnes.com/files/upload/Bowler.pdf
-- Julie Kosterlitz
Lawmakers scrounging for budget savings to offset the cost of health care overhaul have set their sights on existing tax breaks for health spending -- especially breaks seen as encouraging excess health-related spending.
But one person's excess is another person's livelihood, and many of the affected interest groups -- including some new to the Washington lobbying game -- have beaten a hasty path to K Street. The Dallas-based National Association of Dental Plans, concerned that Congress will begin taxing workers on some or all of the value of their employer-provided health plans, has taken a straightforward approach. NADP filed a federal lobbying registration for the first time in May -- signing up both its own staff and the firm Brown Rudnick; it reported spending $150,000 in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, worried that Congress may limit or do away with flexible spending accounts, which let workers pay some out-of-pocket health care costs with pre-tax dollars, the San Mateo, California firm Wage Works made it's Washington lobbying debut in June by spending $30,000 with Patton Boggs.
Wage Works, which describes itself as the "nation's largest independent provider of consumer-directed" benefit programs, is a member of the more-seasoned Washington trade group Employers Council on Flexible Compensation, which has hired and spent $80,000 on Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti to lobby on this issue over the first half of this year.
Wage Works and the trade group have teamed up in hiring Hyde Park Communications to create a website called "SaveMyFlexPlan.org." The website bills itself as home to "a national grassroots advocacy campaign" giving "a voice to the millions of Americans who rely on FSAs." The site has scads of personal testimonials about the value of FSAs, as well as talking points and tools for sending e-mails and making phone calls to Congress, but nary a mention of the site's sponsor.
-- Julie Kosterlitz
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "Trade associations and companies both inside and outside of Honduras have stepped up their lobbying efforts in Washington as the nation's political crisis remains unresolved in the wake of President Manuel Zelaya's ouster," The Hill reports. "A review of lobbying disclosure records by The Hill show that U.S. companies have worked to protect their operations in Honduras while more business groups from the Central American nation have turned to Washington lobbyists in order to keep Zelaya out of power."
• The New York Times analyzes the 2007 jockeying for a chunk of the $50 billion overseen by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: "As a New York money manager and investment banker at four Wall Street firms, Charles E. F. Millard never reached superstar status. But he was treated like one when he arrived in Washington in May 2007."
• "Credit unions are being courted by Democrats to back a key part of the financial regulatory overhaul strongly opposed by the bulk of their industry, giving the institutions an opportunity to reshape the measure more to their liking," The Hill reports. "With roughly 90 million members and thousands of credit unions across the country, the lobby and its grassroots forces would give the Obama administration instant credibility at a time when others have panned the legislation."
Verizon has snagged a staffer from Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry's office to work as part of its federal regulatory team.
Brian Rice, who holds the title of communications policy advisor for Kerry, will serve as a director of federal regulatory affairs for Verizon, but he won't be lobbying. He's expected to work under Kathleen Grillo, who was recently promoted to become senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs.
Rice will represent Verizon on issues before the Federal Communications Commission and deal with other technology policy matters. Rice has also served as a professional staff member at the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee under then-chairman Kerry. In addition, Rice has worked as a budget analyst in the Massachusetts State Senate.
According to Center for Responsive Politics, Verizon consistently gave more money to Republicans from 2000-2006. The gap closed in 2008, with 50 percent of Verizon's donations going to Republicans and 49 percent going to Democrats. For the 2010 election cycle, the broadband and wireless communications company has almost exclusively contributed to Democrats: $32, 266, or 95 percent, to Dems; and $909, or just 3 percent, to Republicans.
Veteran Republican fundraiser and former lobbyist Peter Terpeluk was officially appointed as chairman of the Republican National Committee's Finance Committee, pending approval of the RNC's full membership.
The Washington Times reported that many in the GOP are relieved that a heavy weight fundraiser like Terpeluck has taken the job. Terpeluck takes over as the RNC's fundraising has outpaced Democrats this year. The RNC raised $45.7 million in the 2010 election cycle so far, while the Democratic National Committee has raised $37.4 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Terpeluk was a lobbyist with American Continental Group until mid-2008, when he de-registered, according to lobbying disclosure documents. Prior to lobbying, Terpeluk was co-chairman of President George H.W. Bush's 1992 re-election campaign. In the 2008 election cycle, he was a finance committee member for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Republican presidential nomination effort and then was a major fundraiser for GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Terpuluk was named an ambassador to Luxumbourg in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
Ire over cap-and-trade is helping conservative groups grow their Rolodex of supporter e-mail addresses this summer as their online advocacy efforts enjoy unprecedented participation levels.
One is Freedom Works, which generated over 40,000 e-mails to Congress during a July 4 call to action to defeat the climate change bill, according to the conservative group's press secretary Adam Brandon. It was a "tremendous spike in activity," he said.
The Campaign for Working Families and the John Birch Society, both conservative groups, also staged e-mail campaigns to defeat the climate change bill, but would not release participation numbers, saying only that they have fielded increased online support thanks to dissatisfaction with the legislation.
The burst of emails during the July 4 recess led some members of Congress to perceive salient opposition to the bill, according to Doug Thornell, an aide to Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who voted in favor of the bill. But those on the left question whether there really is growing opposition. Thornell said some theorize that the e-mails really reflect a small contingent of opposition "brought together by Fox News, the right wing blogs, and conservative talk radio."
But that might not matter. The most significant impact of the e-mail campaigns may not be changing minds on Capitol Hill for these conservative groups but, rather the opportunity to gather e-mail addresses from voters in the heartland. Freedom Works has collected over 17,000 new supporter e-mail addresses since February from people interested in energy and cap-and-trade, according to Brandon.
Collecting a large database of supporter e-mail addresses is an essential step in online organizing. "Mass emails are about the least effective way to advocate. But when you use it to get someone to make a phone call, that, all of a sudden, is a very big deal," said Colin Delany, the founder of e.politics, a site about online organizing.
For Freedom Works, each new e-mail address represents an opportunity to rear a new small government advocate. "The real value added is when you keep moving these people up the food chain on any issue," Brandon said.
Conservative groups have generally lagged behind progressive groups in web organizing success, but Brandon believes online efforts will surge thanks to the newfound wealth of galvanizing issues the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress have proposed, like climate change legislation.
"It's clear now when one [policy] is for expanding the role of government, and one is not," Brandon said. "It's so easy" to get people motivated.
Members of Natural Resources Defense Council condemned the conservative group's strategy of using climate change to build membership. Pete Altman, an NRDC climate change director, characterized the Freedom Works strategy as latching onto climate change to further the "broader agenda of opposing progress." He added that: "Clean energy and climate are basically being used to try to propel [these conservative groups] forward."
Thornell echoed the sentiment. "The right wing is looking for any opportunity to mobilize their supporters, and they're trying to find a good fundraising boogeyman," he said.
The US Chamber of Commerce is moving ahead with its plans to launch its Free Enterprise public relations offensive this fall.
The effort has a new field marshall: Brian Gunderson, a former chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and before that, to then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. He also worked for House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas.
The campaign is in the process of talking to various PR firms and pollsters, says Chamber Senior Vice President for Communications and Strategy, Tom Collamore. It has held focus groups and plans "listening sessions" with small businesses. The current plan is to promote the campaign with some high profile speeches in September, and have a splashy launch in October.
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "After a decline in lobbying activity during the first quarter of this year, the major recipients of cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Program -- TARP -- have stepped up their spending as drafts of a new financial regulatory system have begun to take shape, according to the second-quarter lobbying disclosure reports released last week," Politico reports.
• "Lobbying interests that President Obama campaigned against last year have gained the upper hand on the White House in recent weeks," The Hill reports. "In stark contrast to Obama's first few months in office, special interest groups this summer have aggressively opposed the president's top domestic priorities. And they have succeeded in slowing legislation to revamp the nation's healthcare system, won an essential change to climate change legislation and put off efforts to set up a consumer agency in the financial sector."
• "The Hilton Hotels Corp. -- which is currently in the process of moving its global headquarters from Beverly Hills, Calif., to McLean, Va. -- is already acting like a savvy Beltway insider. The company has just hired a top in-house lobbyist," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
We've been getting some pretty telling inside looks recently, at the way Washington groups supposedly founded on principle or scholarship are actually willing to put either at the disposal of interest groups for cash.
The latest was tucked away in the Sunday Washington Post profile of Matt Crawford, the inconoclastic "philosopher and gearhead" who authored the new book called Shop Class as Soulcraft - bemoaning the nation's devaluation of technical skill. As it turns out, Crawford, in a previous professional incarnation, had a brief, and unhappy turn seven years ago as executive director of the Marshall Institute, a Washington energy-policy think tank, and had this to say about the place (which he doesn't name in the book):
"The trappings of scholarship were used to put a scientific cover on positions arrived at otherwise. . . . [P]art of my job consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank," Crawford wrote. Marshall Institute president Jeff Kueter told the Post that Crawford's assertion was "completely incorrect."
Comcast is bringing on two new D.C. hires already familiar with the Capitol, the Philadelphia-based cable company announced Monday.
One is Joe Trahern, a former lobbyist for General Motors, who will be Comcast's senior director of federal government affairs. Before GM, Trahern served as chief of staff to Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., as a staffer for Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and in political affairs at the White House under President Bill Clinton.
Rudy Brioché, the other new hire, joins as senior director of external affairs and public policy counsel. In that role, he will help define the company's public policy interests, which revolve around telecommunications law. He has served as a legal adviser at the Federal Communications Commission and before that worked for Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.
Comcast spent $2.8 million on lobbying during the first half of this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2008, the company spent a total of $12.5 million, placing it among the top spenders in the television, movies, and music industries, the Center said. Topping Comcast's 2008 lobbying agenda were tax, broadcasting, and intellectual property issues.
Everyone expects the ground war among grassroots groups supporting and opposing the Democrats health care plans to intensify during the August recess, so I found interesting the comments of Evan Tracey, COO of the Campaign Media Analysis Group.
Tracey was on the NewsHour Friday evening where he told host Ray Suarez that spending on health care reform advertising is already approaching $2 million a day. So far $45 million has been spent, with most of the ads targeted at certain senators. The ads are likely to increase and expand in scope to target House members as well during August. (In 1993 and 1994, the health insurance industry spent about $35 million on health care ads, including the iconic "Harry and Louise" ads which helped to define the public opposition to President Clinton's health care reform plan.)
Click here for a link to the video of the segment and here for a transcript.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag posted a statement on OMB's blog about the administration's official revisions to rules governing lobbyist communications with executive branch officials with regard to the stimulus package.
"We continue to demand unprecedented transparency for lobbyist contacts and, for the first time in history, we now are bringing transparency to the world of unregistered lobbyists - CEOs and others with special access who would contact an agency or department about their interest in Recovery funding," wrote Orzag. "By expanding the restrictions on oral communications to apply to everybody who tries to exert influence on Recovery Act competitive funding decisions, we reinforce merit-based decision-making and transparency."
To read further, click here.
UPDATE @ 11:38 AM to add comment from Dave Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyists
In May, Norm Eisen, White House special counsel to the President for ethics and government reform, wrote on the White House blog that the administration would be revising its rules on lobbyist communications with executive branch officials with regard to the stimulus package.
K Street has been waiting ever since for written confirmation of those changes. Now the White House Office of Management and Budget has released the written guidance on what the revised rules now say.
The key graph from the OMB memo is here:
"The prohibition on oral communications between Federal agency officials and federally registered lobbyists regarding specific Recovery Act projects that was contained in the President's Memorandum has been clarified. That restriction applies in the context and at the stage where concerns about merit-based decision-making are greatest - the period beginning after the submission of formal applications for, and up through awards of, competitive grants or other competitive forms of Federal financial assistance under the Recovery Act. The restriction also has been expanded to cover, generally, all persons outside the Federal Government (not just federally registered lobbyists) who initiate oral communications concerning pending competitive applications under the Recovery Act."
At least one person on K Street is pleased with the final guidance: David Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyists:
"We appreciate the formalization of the revised policy on interactions with registered, compliant and law abiding lobbyists and feel that these changes will allow for a more constructive dialogue which in turn will provide administration personnel with information that will allow them to make the best merit based decisions possible."
He add: "We look forward to the full implementation of the revised policy and ensuring that the departments and personnel are able to meet with lobbyists as specified in the revised guidance and gather the information from the lobbyists and their clients needed to make good government decisions on stimulus funding projects."
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "Five years after lawmakers began a high-profile campaign to expose how influence-peddler Jack Abramoff bilked American Indians out of millions of dollars with inflated lobbying fees, many tribes continue to do business in Washington, D.C. -- but they are spending a lot less money," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "The scars remain, however, in a scandal that many Indians believe unfairly tarred their community, not just Abramoff and his associates."
• "A strong force, perhaps as powerful in Congress as President Barack Obama, is keeping the drive for health care going even as lawmakers seem hopelessly at odds. Lobbyists," AP reports. "The drug industry, the American Medical Association, hospital groups and the insurance lobby are all saying Congress must make major changes this year. Television ads paid for by drug companies and insurers continued to emphasize the benefits of a health care overhaul -- not the groups' objections to some of the proposals."
The American Civil Liberties Union has tapped Michael Macleod-Ball as acting director of its Washington office, which has been on the front lines of the battle against government warrantless wiretapping, Internet free speech fights and a range of other issues.
Read more in TechDailyDose.
The fight between brand name companies and generics isn't the only fallout from the growing importance of biotech drugs in the marketplace. Look for growing rivalries between the Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The biotech industry focuses on medicines made of proteins and genes, rather than conventional chemical compound drugs.
Swiss-based Roche Group, an old line drug company and major PhRMA member recently quit the organization after acquiring Genentech, part of the bio-tech vanguard and a BIO member, as reported by the The Star Ledger of Newark, N.J. in late June.
PhRMA CEO and former Rep. Billy Tauzin,R-La., sent the group's chairman to Roche headquarters in Basel in a bid to stop the defection, but Roche joined BIO anyway, the paper reported. "Without Roche, PhRMA also loses critical revenue for carrying out its lobbying activities," the story said, adding that Tauzin wouldn't disclose Roche's membership fees, which are based on a company's annual sales.
PhRMA still represents about 72 percent of the industry, the paper noted--but could other defections be looming?
When National Journal called PhRMA, spokesman Ken Johnson was playing down the significance of Roche's departure. "We have members that come and go every year, and we also signed up four more" Johnson said, adding that most of PhRMA's newer members are biotech firms.
Earlier this month, shortly after Roche's departure was announced, PhRMA announced that it was creating a new "committee on small biopharmaceutical companies" focused on "developing solutions to policy issues that are most important" to these companies.
Johnson said the timing was coincidental: "This has been in the works for months. It is designed to give some of the smaller companies a larger voice."
From this week's National Journal: (subscription)
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "The GOP-tilting Chamber of Commerce is backing Sonia Sotomayor in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee" sent Thursday, Politico reports. "'Her extensive experience both as a commercial litigator and as a trial judge would provide the U.S. Supreme Court with a much needed perspective on the issues that business litigants face,' wrote COC executive vice-president R. Bruce Josten."
• "EMILY's List, the Democratic fundraising powerhouse, finally weighed in on the special election to replace former Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), endorsing Thursday state Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan in the Sept. 1 all-party primary," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
• "The commander in chief may have no love for K Street, but his aversion to traditional lobbying tactics has combined in the public mind with the extraordinary grass-roots campaign that helped propel him to the presidency to produce a result he probably didn't foresee: a new enthusiasm for grass-roots campaigns among lobbying firms and their clients," Politico reports.
The House Blue Dogs, the fiscally conservative group of 51 House Democrats, have raised more than $1.1 million for their political action committee this election cycle, putting it on track to break all previous fundraising records, according to a new report by the Center for Public Integrity.
"Whether the subject is health care reform, climate change or pay-as-you-go budgeting rules, almost everyone, it seems, suddenly wants to talk wtih the Blue Dogs," the Center said. "As their clout has expanded, fundraising has grown too."
The study also found that nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC's contributions this year have come from three sectors: health care PACs, energy PACs, and financial services PACs.
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "The Obama administration released Wednesday night a list of 15 health-care lobbyists and senior executives who have visited the White House to discuss health-care reform," the Washington Post reports. "The list was released in response to a lawsuit filed earlier in the day by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, which had been denied access to the names by the U.S. Secret Service. Many of the meetings, it turned out, were well-known gatherings that had already been publicized."
• "Backers of Democratic proposals to overhaul the nation's healthcare system have spent twice as much on television advertising as their opponents this year, as advocates on different sides of the debate brace for a costly ad war that could stretch into the fall," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. "According to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks TV ad spending nationwide, about $12 million has been spent this year on ads that support Democrats' healthcare reform plan, compared to $5.9 million spent by groups hoping to derail changes sought by President Obama and his allies."
• "K Street is getting nervous that it will lose its ability to influence Medicare policy thanks to growing enthusiasm for an independent commission that would limit Congress's authority on a program that accounts for 14 percent of the federal budget," The Hill reports. "President Obama has been promoting the creation of the Independent Medicare Advisory Commission, made up of physicians and healthcare policy experts, which would issue recommendations for Medicare payment rates and payment policies that Congress would then vote on -- a system that would give healthcare interest groups little say in the decision process."
Daniel Caprio has joined law and lobbying firm McKenna Long & Aldridge as managing director of government affairs.
From 2004-2006, Caprio was chief privacy office at the Department of Commerce and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, where he advised the department and the White House on technology policy and privacy issues.
In 2007, he served on the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee and in 2009 was named by the European Commission to represent the technology industry on the implementation of the European Commission's radio frequency identification recommendations.
Prior to the Commerce department, Caprio was chief of staff to a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.
(Photo courtesy of McKenna Long & Aldridge)
The Sunlight Foundation's Political Party Time blog has a fun post about the number of lawmakers who like to raise money while skeet shooting or dove or pheasant hunting.
The post is timed to the Senate's vote Wednesday to narrowly reject a provision that would have allowed people to carry concealed weapons from state to state. Political Party Time asks: Is there a correlation between fundraising-while-shooting and how senators voted?
Click to see the post here and their list of fundraisers.
Mark Lindsay, a former White House advisor to President Clinton and a member of President Obama's administration transition team, is joining the Livingston Group as a director of the the firm's health and pharmaceutical practice area.
Previously, Lindsay held a number of positions with UnitedHealth Group, including president of the AARP pharmacy services division and vice president of public communications and strategy. When Clinton was president, Lindsay held a variety of positions including assistant to the president for the Office of Management and Administration. Before that, he worked for Rep. Louis Stokes, D-Ohio.
For more click here for the press release.
Update to yesterday's story about Harry and Louise twittering:
The mystery of who tweets for Harry and Louise has been solved. It's never the actors themselves; rather, it's staffers at Goddard Claussen, the firm that brought us both rounds of commercials. They maintain the Harry and Louise Twitter and Facebook pages to protect their invention.
"We're very proud of the brand. They're some of our best ads," said Sue Zoldak, associate vice president of Goddard Claussen, explaining the why the brand moved onto online.
The firm created Harry and Louise's online presence as a contact point for media interest, Zoldak said, and to distinguish Goddard Claussen's work from Harry and Louise knockoffs and parodies elsewhere on the web.
"We're careful with the brand," she said. "Harry wouldn't do an ad with some other Louise. That confuses the brand."
Goddard Claussen's dedication to Harry and Louise is part brand protection, part firm promotion, and a way to highlight that pop culture has made room for such a thing as health care policy celebrities.
"In policy world pop culture, they're iconic," she said.
(Photo of Harry and Louise by Liz Lynch)
Mark R. Dybul, the global AIDS coordinator under former President George W. Bush, will joined APCO Worldwide's international advisory council, the firm announced Tuesday.
Dybul was a Bush appointee who helped build the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, (PEPFAR), which distributed AIDS drugs to 2 million AIDS patients in Africa. Dybul's abrupt resignation in the first weeks of Obama's administration resulted in criticism that an effective official had been shepherded out the door. The State Department countered that he was treated no differently than other political appointees.
Dybul, a doctor who has cared for AIDS patients, has been celebrated for the scope and successes of PEPFAR, and to a lesser extent associated with criticisms of abstinence-only policies. Dybul's backers denied he supported abstinence-only programs.
Dybul will help APCO's clients "raise awareness, build advocacy and maximize the reach and impact of their global health efforts," he said in the APCO statement.
Dybul will join over 50 other on the council which include former elected officials, business leaders, and other influentials, some of whom are registered as lobbyists.
Dybul has also served at U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization, according to the release.
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "Auto companies and eight of the country's biggest banks that received tens of billions of dollars in federal bailout money spent more than $20 million on lobbying Washington lawmakers in the first half of this year," The Hill reports.
• "Energy companies and industry groups with a major stake in climate change legislation are spending millions of dollars more on lobbying this year," The Hill reports. "The two biggest consumers of coal, for example, each reported increases in lobbying expenditures as lawmakers considered a climate bill, which could reshape the nation's energy fuel mix by capping carbon dioxide."
TechNet's search for a new president and CEO has turned up a number of qualified candidates but the high-tech lobbying group's board has apparently not yet settled on one. The bipartisan political network of Silicon Valley CEOs and senior executives enlisted professional search firm Korn/Ferry International after its former chief, Lezlee Westine, announced her departure in April. She became CEO of the Personal Care Products Council and took TechNet's Washington-based fundraiser Meredith Simpson with her.
The Center for Political Accountability announced today that four more companies, three of them indexed in the S&P100, have agreed to adopt disclosure and board oversight of political spending with corporate funds. CPA, a nonprofit organization, is leading a shareholder effort to urge companies to make corporate political expenditures public.
"We have found that political spending can pose risks and disclosure can help mitigate those risks," said Bruce F. Freed, executive director of the group. Compliance with CPA's disclosure requirements means companies must list, on their website, soft money contributions and payments to trade associations and other tax-exempt organizations like (501(c)(4)s).
Freed pointed to the American Conservative Union's recent attempt to shake Fed-Ex for $2 million in exchange for political support, as a perfect example of why disclosure is so important. See the Politico story about this here. The American Conservative Union denied some of the assertions in the story. See their release.ACU statement.pdf
The four new companies adopting political disclosure, bringing CPA's total to 65, are Entergy, Heinz, Williams Companies and Hartford.
To see a complete list of the companies that have agreed to political disclosure, see here
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced Tuesday afternoon it will launch a new advertising campaign opposing the creation of a government-backed health insurance option to compete with the private sector in health care reform.
The business group is initially spending $2 million on print and online ads aimed at generating grassroots support for its position in five states where it has the strongest bulwark: Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Maine and North Carolina.
The tagline of the ads will be "Don't Bring Down Health Care Reform," said Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the chamber.
Josten said that every time a lawmaker has expressed concern about a public plan, the member has been subjected to attack ads from labor and progress groups calling them opponents of health care reform.
"We want to make sure that we don't just sit here and allow [progressive groups] to have a monologue [with lawmakers] with one message," Josten said.
The campaign is named "Campaign for Responsible Health Reform" and is separate from the $100 million campaign launched last month by the chamber called the "Campaign For Free Enterprise."
The National Republican Congressional Committee on Tuesday criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for hiring a new aide with K Street connections.
Pelosi announced Monday that her policy director, Amy Rosenbaum, would be stepping down, CongressDailyAM reported(subscription). She is expected to hold a temporary position for Pelosi as an adviser on healthcare reform legislation.
Taking over for Rosenbaum is Richard Meltzer, who was Pelosi's transition coordinator after Democrats won control of the House in the 2006 elections. In a release, Pelosi said Meltzer "recently left" Washington Counsel Ernst & Young, where he had been a registered lobbyist, as of the second quarter of 2009, according to Senate Office of Public Records documents.
Meltzer has worked on the Hill in the past. In the 1990s, he served as counsel to the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, chief counsel of the House International Affairs Select Committee on the U.S. Role in Iranian Arms Transfers to Bosnia and chief counsel to the House Committee on Natural Resources.
The NRCC put out an e-mail saying that Pelosi had promised to "close the revolving door" between government officials and lobbyists, and yet hired a lobbyist.
"The revolving door is wide open in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office just two years after she promised to crack down on the practice of congressional aides moving into lobbying shops and then back into government," the NRCC said.
A Pelosi spokesman said that Meltzer is knowledgeable and she "trusts him" on policy issues. He also said that Pelosi's concern about closing the revolving door is about discouraging the practice of staff leaving Capitol Hill and becoming lobbyists rather than discouraging lobbyists from returning to Capitol Hill to work as staff.
UPDATE: Second quarter 2009 lobbying figures
As Under The Influence reported yesterday, the Senate Office of Public Records is processing all of the lobbying disclosure forms due Monday and we have a new top ten list as of this morning.
Coming in first place, as was the case last quarter, is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with $7.4 million. The Chamber in June announced that it was going to be spending as much as $100 million on a campaign to protect "free enterprise."
Six of the top ten spenders in the second quarter were either in the health or oil industry. Big health spenders include the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Pfizer and the American Medical Association. Chevron dropped to fifth place (still at $6 million) and its petrol brethren, Exxon Mobil and BP America, came in at eighth and ninth respectively.
So far, 120 groups spent at least a million on lobbying in the second quarter and of that 120, National Journal identified 22 groups that are related to health care.
Full top ten list here:
1. U.S. Chamber of Commerce - $7.4 million
2. General Electric - $7.2 million
3. PhRMA - $6.2 million
4. Business Roundtable - $6.1 million
5. Chevron - $6 million
6. Pfizer - $5.6 million
7. AARP - $5.3 million
8. Exxon Mobil - $4.3 million
9. BP America - $4 million
10. American Medical Association - $3.9 million
We will keep updating our data as the Senate continues to process the lobbying filings.
Move over, Newt Gingrich. This year's prize for the biggest political comeback could go to a pair of small-screen actors, Harry and Louise.
When the duo agreed to appear this month in ads funded by Families USA and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America touting health care reform--after starring in ads against it in 1993--the new campaign seemed like a savvy marketing coup and an interesting cultural twist.
But now Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark--the actors playing the middle-aged couple--are broadening their role. They're stepping out beyond the script and touting their status as "cultural icons in the health care debate," as their shared Twitter bio describes them.
Speaking off-screen and on their own dollar--and not as spokespeople for PhRMA or Families USA--Clark and Johnson have either developed a passion for advocacy or are just relishing the extension of their 15 minutes.
The actors, who are not married in real life, maintain joint Facebook and Twitter pages unaffiliated with their ad sponsors. They write about two things: healthcare reform and their own publicity. So far, they have 31 Twitter followers. (Louise is married to Ben Goddard, the producer of the 1993 "Harry and Louise" ads)
Typical tweets mention their press: "Louise, here's our National Journal Article http://bit.ly/cESxt."
Or, "The Washington Examiner calls us iconic! http://tinyurl.com/kwts4o."
Continue reading Harry and Louise's Off-Screen Advocacy.
• "The American Medical Association and drug giant Eli Lilly & Co. spent more on lobbying than other healthcare groups in the second quarter, according to reports filed Monday on Capitol Hill," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. "The AMA said it spent $4 million from April through June, while Eli Lilly spent $3.6 million."
• "Sweeping proposals to reform the energy, healthcare and financial-services sectors helped K Street shake off a slow start to the year, although corporate belt-tightening continued to be a drag on revenues at some lobbying firms, a preliminary analysis of midyear lobbying revenue totals shows," The Hill reports. "Although several firms rebounded during the second quarter, midyear figures still appeared to be down from where they were a year ago. Lobbyists attributed the decline to the problems of the broader economy."
• "Despite taking on a larger role in crafting the GOP's legislative and policy strategy, recently installed Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman John Thune (S.D.) is keeping the bulk of his K Street outreach portfolio," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "Thune will continue to take the lead for Senate Republicans on meeting with business lobbyists, trade groups and conservative issue-advocacy organizations, according to his spokesman."
Similar to the work of the transparency corps at the Sunlight Foundation, WashingtonWatch.com is calling all citizens to contribute to an earmark database online to track how members of Congress steer federal funds to special interests and projects in their districts. While still a work-in-progress, the group's earmark page features information on hundreds of earmarks that can easily be organized by state or lawmaker.
Administered by Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, Washington Watch tracks bills by proposed cost and savings, newest and most active.
In addition to helping improve the transparency of government, Washington Watch is giving prizes to encourage citizens to participate. Ranked by the amount of earmarks you enter into the database, first place will receive an Amazon Kindle, second place an iPod shuffle and third place a fruitcake (if the last one raised any eyebrows, all winners can choose to receive the cash value of their prize.)
Continue reading Cato's Harper Looks For Help Tracking Earmarks .
Here is a study that is interesting to me given the recent history in Washington of the "K Street Project," where GOP leaders, when they were in charge of Congress, pushed trade associations and major lobbying firms and corporations to hire individuals of a particular political strip. The legacy of placing that emphasis on how the business of Washington gets done continues on K Street, as this study shows.
Federally registered lobbyists in Washington tend to be loyal to the political party they personally favor, in terms of campaign contributions, rather than pragmatic operatives giving to both sides of the aisle, according to a new study published by the American Political Science Association.
Political scientists Gregory Koger, from the University of Miami, and Jennifer Nicoll Victor, from the University of Pittsburgh, looked at the campaign donations of 1,200 lobbyists from the 2006 election cycle and found the behavior of lobbyists "quite partisan," with 29% giving almost nothing to Democrats while another 28% giving almost nothing to Republicans. Only 6.3% of lobbyists gave at least 40% of their donations to both parties.
"Lobbyists are often depicted as the ultimate insiders of the Washington 'game' [but]...we have found a pattern of stark polarization in lobbyists' donations," said Koger and Victor in their study. "The broader implication is that lobbyists do not shed their partisan loyalties [and therefore] it is easy to see why politicians take a great interest in who is hired to talk to them, since they clearly see lobbyists as resources for one party or another."
INITIAL PREVIEW: Second Quarter Lobbying Reports:
Hold the phone, lobbying disclosure reports for the second quarter of 2009 are due today and National Journal has taken a preliminary look at the data filed as of this morning to identify the top ten spenders (by individual filing) this quarter. These numbers will change as the week goes on and the Senate and House process the thousands of disclosure reports.
Chevron takes first place, reporting that it spent a little over $6 million on lobbying and the oil giant is closely followed by seniors group AARP, who reported spending $5.3 million on lobbying. Among the issues AARP pushed in Congress during the quarter is a bill to demystify government-speak: The Plain Language Act of 2009. The legislation calls for all executive agencies to use plain language in any document issued to the public (other than regulation).
Financially troubled General Motors ranks sixth on the list with $2.8 million spent on lobbying this quarter. Other transportation-related groups who made the top ten includes Lockheed Martin, the American Electric Power Company and the Association of American Railroads. Here is the complete list*:
1. Chevron - $6 million
2. AARP - $5.3 million
3. National Association of Realtors - $3.8 million
4. Lockheed Martin - $3.3 million
5. American Electric Power Company - $2.9 million
6. General Motors - $2.8 million
7. Association of American Railroads - $2.7 million
8. Wal-Mart Stores - $2.6 million
9. Koch Companies Public Sector - $2.5 million
10. GlaxoSmithKline - $2.3 million
*Information comes from the Senate Office of Public Records.
This list will be updated this week, as traditional big spenders, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have yet to be processed by the congressional document offices. We will keep you updated.
From today's Earlybird:
For her piece in this week's National Journal, Marilyn Werber Serafini went to the shoot of the new "Harry And Louise" ad sponsored by Families USA and PhRMA. In a conversation with NationalJournal.com's Theresa Poulson, Serafini talks about her time on the set, and how she expects ads to change as the health care debate heats up.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which seems poised to join the lobbying fight against the Obama administration proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, hosted a meeting on Tuesday with about two-dozen large financial services groups to discuss a possible coalition effort.
The chamber meeting included lobbyists from such powerhouses as the American Bankers Association, the American Land Title Association, the Financial Services Roundtable and the American Financial Services Association. The AFSA presented new polling data on the proposed agency that suggested the kinds of messages that could be used against it. In the last few weeks, the AFSA has hosted a few meetings with some of the same trade group lobbyists to lay the groundwork for a lobbying blitz aimed at thwarting the proposed agency, which industry fears would have a very broad regulatory reach.
"Everybody's working towards the shared goal to slow this down," said one lobbyist familiar with the meeting. Right now, he added, everyone would "vote to kill it." Earlier on Tuesday, about a dozen financial services lobbyists from some of the same groups went to Capitol Hill for a meeting with key staff of Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, to talk about strategies.
A draft letter opposing the new agency is circulating among the different trade groups, says one lobbyist, who adds that it should be sent up to the Hill next week as a joint letter. Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass, who has championed the proposed new agency, has indicated he'd like to mark up a bill by the end of July.
At a committee hearing on Thursday the proposed legislation was endorsed by a number of consumer groups, including the Consumer Federation of America and U.S. PIRG. A new alliance, dubbed Americans for Financial Reform, has been cobbled together by almost 200 backers of the new agency and has been trying to build grassroots backing for the idea.
-- Peter H. Stone
From this week's National Journal: (subscription)
Continue reading Federal Fraud Busters Get To Work.
From this morning's Earlybird:
In an important boost for congressional Democrats, the influential American Medical Association announced Thursday afternoon it is backing House Democrats health care reform legislation which is now moving through the committee process.
That means the doctors group is now supporting a public health insurance plan option that is aimed at competing with the private sector. Initially, the AMA had said it had concerns about such a plan.
The move is likely to increase friction at the AMA. CongressDailyAM reported that a coalition of seventeen state medical associations and three specialty physicians' groups were planning to unequivocally oppose a government-administered insurance plan.
On Wednesday, AMA President J. James Rohack issued a statement saying:
"At our annual meeting in June, AMA physician delegates voted for AMA to support health system reform alternatives consistent with principles of pluralism, freedom of choice, freedom of practice, and universal access for patients. This evolution in policy is consistent with the AMA's strong support for health reform this year that provides high-quality health care coverage for all Americans."
Click here for more of CongressDaily's story.
In an update of our post from this morning, CongressDailyPM reported:
"Harry and Louise" are back, but this time they're supporting health reform.
The duo, famous for ads opposing then-President Bill Clinton's health reform plan in 1994, will star in a new multimillion-dollar ad backed by Families USA and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America that begins running this weekend.
The actors, Louise Clark and Harry Johnson, appeared on Capitol Hill today with Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee members today to cheerlead for the healthcare overhaul the panel approved this week. Also appearing at the event were former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; John Podesta, a former Clinton administration official and president of the Center for American Progress; AFL-CIO President John Sweeney; and Families USA President Ron Pollack, among others. All represent progressive groups that strongly back the HELP Committee's $611 billion overhaul, which would provide for a public plan option.
"This bill does not tinker around the edges," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. "This is a paradigm shift."
This is the second time in the past year that Harry and Louise have come out for health care reform. Back in August 2008, the two appeared in a series of television ads paid for by American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Health Association, Families USA, and the National Federation of Independent Business. The ads were timed to run during the Democratic and Republican national conventions last year.
Harry and Louise, the couple that made a name for themselves pitching a health care message on television back in the 1990s, have returned and will hit the airwaves this weekend with a new ad urging more cooperation and less politics in the push to the finish line on health care reform.
The two are scheduled to appear at a news conference at 11 a.m. today with Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and other senators who sit on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Dodd called the news conference to thank the people and organizations that are supporting the health reform bill that the committee approved Wednesday.
A K Streeter sent me a copy of an invitation to a July 21 dinner and fundraiser for Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., chair of the House Ways & Means health subcommittee.
The fundraiser's lead sponsor is the American Occupational Therapy political action committee, and the event is co-sponsored by the American Podiatric Medical Association PAC, the American Dietetic Association PAC, and the American Speech - Language-Hearing Association PAC. These are all groups that have a stake in health care reform.
"Probably not the best timing for this," the person noted in reference to the fact that the House Ways & Means Committee is to begin marking up the House Democrat's massive health care reform overhaul legislation later this week.See the invitation here: Stark fundraiser.pdf
Stark's press secretary couldn't reached for comment.
Some foreign-owned companies who thought the worst was over after this winter's "Buy American" debate were taken aback in recent months as they began applying for stimulus dollars: they discovered the agencies doling out grants and contracts sometimes specify that "foreign entities" need not apply, even though the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act doesn't itself exclude foreign-owned companies.
In most cases, reading the fine print rouses sighs of relief at foreign-owned companies. Those setting their sights on National Institute of Health grants, for instance, are pleased to learn that although the organization bars "foreign institutions" from applying for certain funds, NIH defines companies located in the United States that employ Americans as "domestic organizations" even if they're foreign-owned.
Nevertheless, eyebrows shot up when Department of Energy projects funded by stimulus dollars stuck to a broader definition of "foreign entity." This definition included firms "directly or indirectly owned or controlled by a foreign company or government," restricting such companies as Bosch, Saint-Gobain, Royal Philips Electronics, and BASF from acting as the lead organization on certain stimulus-funded Energy projects.
If the definition lost these companies an opportunity, it gained them an extra pair of eyes: Nancy McLernon, the president and CEO of the Organization for International Investment, who is now on watch for other agency stipulations that limit foreign-owned companies from applying for stimulus funds.
"We want to make sure it doesn't build into a trend," she said.
(Photo of Nancy McLernon provided by OFII)
Continue reading Foreign Companies Still Fear 'Buy America'.
The Retail Industry Leaders Association hired Mark Warren as vice president for tax policy, where he will drive the group's tax agenda.
Warren was deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury department where he worked in the office of legislative affairs. He joined the department in June 2006 and advised the Treasury Secretary on legislative matters including tax, pension, Social Security, the budget and economic policy.
Prior to Treasury, Warren spent ten years on Capitol Hill, where he served as special counsel to Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, and staff director and chief counsel at the Senate Committee on Small Business.
Warren holds an undergraduate degree in finance and a law degree from Georgetown University, and a masters in tax law from New York University. Warren has also spent time in private practice working in New York and Washington.
As the Senate considers the defense authorization bill this week, Common Cause is spotlighting Boeing and Lockheed Martin's lobbying and campaign finance efforts in 2009. For the first three months of the year, Lockheed and Boeing have devoted $6.5 million and $2.4 million, respectively, on lobbying, according to Common Cause's analysis of congressional lobbying records.
The companies have also been active with political donations. Fifty senators have received contributions from the companies' political action committees, employees, and their immediate family members, for the 2010 election cycle, a Common Cause analysis of campaign finance records found. Boeing has contributed $593,550 so far and Lockheed has doled out $780,483. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-HI, received the most from the two companies ($86,800), followed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. ($82,975), and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. ($79,000).
The analysis was issued as Senators debate funding for F-22 raptor fighter jets, which the companies manufacture and Defense Secretary Robert Gates says are not needed. Common Cause opposes the purchases, as does President Obama, who has threatened to veto the bill. McCain has also said he opposes the purchases.
From our colleagues at TechDailyDose:
After leaving Microsoft in December, Jack Krumholtz is joining the Glover Park Group as a managing director of its government relations practice. Krumholtz opened the Microsoft federal government affairs office in Washington, D.C., in 1995 and acted as a one-man shop for a year working out of the company's Chevy Chase sales office. Given the distance from Capitol Hill, Krumholtz spent most of his time in his Jeep on conference calls and writing and checking emails on the side of the road, said the company at the time. See Tech Daily Dose entries here for more on Krumholtz and here for details on his replacement at Microsoft, Fred Humphries.
Elsewhere in the tech policy world, David Washington, who has been serving as the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, has joined the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation as a senior fellow. At ITIF, Washington will work on building private and public partnerships. Washington has a PhD in forensic clinical psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master's degree in legal studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Law School.
A new group called the Wholesale Markets Brokers' Association Americas Inc. has been launched to represent five North American "inter-dealer" brokers.
The five founding members are BGC Partners, CFI Group, ICAP, Tradition, and Tullett Prebon. Inter-dealer brokers are intermediaries between dealers in "over-the counter" markets, where securities are traded in formats other than futures or stock exchanges. The association will be represented by Patton Boggs in Washington.
According to Bloomberg News, inter-dealer brokers pair bids and offers between the world's largest banks in derivatives markets that have no public exchanges such as credit-default swaps and interest-rate products. Unlike traders and investment bankers, the brokers don't take on risk or devise trading strategies for their clients.
House Democrats this afternoon unveiled a 1,018-page healthcare overhaul bill, with Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-NY, announcing that his committee will begin marking up its portion on Thursday morning, CongressDailyPM reports. (subscription)
Click here to see the actual bill.
As the bill was being unveiled, 31 business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote a joint letter to House members raising points of opposition to the legislation. Many of the groups who signed onto the letter have been publicly quiet, until now, on the healthcare reform debate. They include the International Dairy Foods Association and the National Association of Home Builders.
"We felt it was important to draw the line" with the letter, said James Gelfand, senior manager of health policy at the U.S. Chamber.
Two of the key points in the letter are opposition to a mandate requiring employers to provide health care coverage and opposition to the creation of a public plan option.
"We believe that some of the approaches under considering in the House legislation would not improve the system, but in fact would jeopardize the parts of the system that currently work," the letter says.
The question now is how aggressive will these groups be in expressing their opposition? Will they run "Harry and Louise" type ads, like those that were funded by the health insurance industry 15 years ago, that many believe turned public opinion against President Clinton's health care reform efforts?
Gelfand says no, for now. He expects business groups to keep their powder dry until they see what the Senate Finance Committee produces. That committee's chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. has been working closely with ranking chair Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to produce a bipartisan bill that would likely address many of the concerns business groups are raising. That legislation is expected to be unveiled later this week, though the deadline has shifted in prior weeks and could shift again.
GOP senators are seeking "majority makers" like former Bush Pioneer John Nau at their retreat at the Four Seasons for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in Jackson Hole, Wyoming August 14 - 16, writes Nancy Watzman for the Sunlight Foundation's Political Party Time blog.
"Majority Makers" may sound like a hopeful term these days for the GOP now that the Senate is 60-40 in Democratic hands; in fact, it is the NRSC's donor club for those individuals who contribute the maximum possible of $30,400.
Click here to see the post and the actual invitation.
Better Health Care Together - a loose coalition of businesses, labor groups, and think tanks that includes Wal-Mart Stores, Intel, AT&T, and the Service Employees International Union - is still alive and kicking, executive director Jody Hoffman tells National Journal. But, when three of the group's most high-profile organizations, including Wal-Mart, signed on to a July 1 letter in support of a congressional proposal requiring most employers to provide health care for their employees, some of the diverse group's members weren't on the same page.
"Not everybody was ready to go forth" on the position voiced by Wal-Mart, the SEIU, and the Center for American Progress, Hoffman said, adding that "most of our members were delighted" to see the nation's largest employer make its voice heard on the issue.
Wal-Mart's surprising advocacy for the "employer mandate" rocked the business community, prompting an angry response from the National Retail Federation and grumbling among other business groups, who say that mandating coverage for employees would create devastating new costs.
The Better Health Care Together coalition, which was founded in April 2007, includes General Mills, Intel, the Communication Workers of America, the Committee for Economic Development, Manpower, and Qwest Corporation. Several coalition members declined to discuss their views on the mandate proposal last week, saying that it is premature to comment on pieces of health care legislation while the bills are still being debated in committee.
Jim McIntire, a lobbyist for large temporary staffing company and coalition member Kelly Services, said that his company is willing to keep the proposal on the table, provided that comprehensive overhaul includes plenty of provisions - like health IT requirements, malpractice reform, and comparative effectiveness research -- that would slash health care costs for employers.
"We can accept [an employer mandate] as the price of reform," McIntyre said. "But the caveat there for us would be that we would need to see some fairly robust cost controls."
Better Health Care Together's Hoffman emphasized that the coalition as a whole will not weigh in on specific health care reform proposals before Congress finalizes its plans to finance the overhauled system. But, she said, the coalition remains active and "true to its principles" of advocating for affordable, efficient health care for all Americans.
There has been a lot of talk this week that House Blug Dogs may prove to be spoilers in the health care debate because of their concern that the legislation will cause the deficit to balloon. But Nate Silver, author of the blog FiveThirtyEight, thinks many Blue Dogs might be more receptive to health care reform than many would think.
The reason is that the uninsured rate in the majority of Blue Dog districts is above the national median uninsured rate of 14.6 percent. Silver looked at Gallup poll data in the 48 congressional districts that Republican presidential candidate John McCain won in 2008, but which also elected a Blue Dog Democrat as their congressman or woman. He found that 31 of those districts reported uninsured rates above the median. Constituents in the district that elected Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla. had the highest uninsured rate of the group, with 25.8 percent saying they don't have health insurance.
Click here for the chart and story.
Silver suggested that if those Democratic members representing districts with higher uninsured rates choose to vote against the Democrats' health care bill, the public should look into how heavily the members were lobbied and "then check to see if they're still in office four years hence."
• "Concerned that emerging healthcare reform legislation could erode their ability to advise and advertise to potential clients, health insurance agents and brokers will mobilize on Capitol Hill this week to lobby lawmakers on the high-stakes measure," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. "The coalition of insurance consultant groups, overshadowed by well-financed stakeholders like physicians' groups and pharmaceutical companies, hopes to protect the role of licensed brokers and ensure against the implementation of potentially burdensome rules governing how and when they can sell coverage plans."
• "The battle over climate legislation will now pit the country's top power sources against each other," the New York Times reports. "Saying they failed to protect their interests as a landmark bill came together and passed the House last month, natural gas executives are forming a strategy to influence rewrites in the Senate."
It's all well and good for reform advocates on Capitol Hill to pick a fight with the White House over who sits on the Federal Election Commission. Certainly the numerous partisan spats and stalemates that have brought FEC enforcement to a grinding halt this year suggest that the agency could do with some new commissioners.
But the hold imposed by Sens. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and John McCain, R-Ariz., to block the confirmation of FEC nominee John Sullivan glosses over a more fundamental problem. The real reason the FEC can't function is that its structure and appointments process are long overdue for an overhaul, writes Eliza Newlin Carney in her weekly column "Rules of The Game."
Some have laid the blame at the feet of President Obama for failing to follow through on promised reforms, both at the FEC and in the presidential public financing system. Obama pledged to fix public financing as a presidential candidate -- even as he rejected Treasury funding and hauled in record amounts of private money.
No wonder progressive activists are getting restless. Reform advocates fret that if the president doesn't follow through soon, the next election will kick into gear and their narrow window to enact changes will close. Feingold has drafted a bill with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to revamp the presidential public financing system, but it appears to be languishing at the White House.
"It's really clear that nothing else can move until the president moves," noted Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center.
The American Chemistry Council hired Don Thoren as managing director of the chemical industry lobbying group's newly created political mobilization department.
Thoren is to build the new field-oriented, campaign style department which aims to bolster the American Chemistry Council's relationships with lawmakers in their home states and districts.
For the past eight years, Thoren has been the district director of state and government affairs and the director of political outreach and communications for Altria Client Services. Prior to that, he worked at SWR Worldwide and the National Restaurant Association.
ACC also hired Tre' Riddle as director of federal affairs. Riddle most recently was the legislative director for Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y. and before that worked for Democratic Representatives Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif., Robert Andrews, D-N.J. and Robert Scott, D-Va.
Ever since retail giant Wal-Mart announced on June 30 that it is embracing an employer mandate as part of health care reform, the company has been criticized by some congressional Republicans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and fellow retailers.
And Republicans are probably even more unhappy with the direction of the company's political donations this election cycle.
Like many others in the business community, the company's campaign contributions have moved with the power shift in Washington to Democrats from Republicans. Wal-Mart's political action committee has doled out $108,500 to federal candidates and parties in the 2010 election cycle, with 69 percent to Democrats and 31 percent to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. See here.
That is a switch from the 2008 cycle, when Wal-Mart gave out $1.24 million, of which 46 percent went to Democrats and 53 percent to Republicans. The change is even more pronounced when looking at the 2006 cycle, when the company's PAC contributed $1.29 million to federal candidates, of which 32 percent went to Democrats and 68 percent to Republicans.
Only one industry, the oil and gas sector, out of the top 50 industries that contribute money to federal candidates have given more money to Republicans then Democrats in the 2010 election cycle. The food and beverage and the chemical industries have given money equally to candidates of both parties, while every other sector has given more to Democrats than GOP candidates, according to CRP. See the chart here.
What's driving this for Wal-Mart are employer costs, say political observers. Wal-Mart has taken steps to ensure that a majority of its employees have health benefits and for competitive reasons would like to see other companies bear those costs as well. Others in the business community are concerned an employer mandate would cost too much and lead them to eliminate jobs.
Fifteen years ago, costs led some businesses, particularly those with big union health care plans, split off from the wider business community and supported President Clinton's efforts to reform health care.
The Associated Press on July 9 took an interesting look at the splits in the business community that are developing during this year's debate that will make it difficult for opponents to derail the Democrats efforts. See story.
National Retail Federation President and CEO Tracy Mullin sent an open letter on July 13 to its members condemning Wal-Mart for its decision two weeks ago to embrace an employer mandate as a part of health care reform.
"We knew going up against Wal-Mart would raise some eyebrows - and it did," Mullin writes in the letter. "But, simply put, we could not condone the decision of one retailer, even the largest retailer in the world, if it would come at the expense of everyone else. So, we spoke up."
Mullin goes on to say that it is imperative that businesses, associations and politicians "not shy away from deal-breakers like employer mandates."
See the letter here.
An open letter from Tracy Mullin about Wal-Mart and employer mandates for health care.pdfWal-Mart is not a member of the NRF, which traditionally has represented department store companies like Macy's and JCPenney's.
On June 30, Wal-Mart, along with the Service Employees International Union and the Center for American Progress, sent a letter to President Obama supporting the employer mandate, requiring businesses to provide health care coverage to their employees. The move, which marked an unlikely alliance between the retail giant and two liberal groups surprised much of Washington's business community lobby which has been unanimously opposed to an employer mandate.
The National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (of which Wal-Mart is a member) called off their merger plans, just six days before that letter to the White House. Mullin had planned to retire after the merger, but has since put off those plans.
From this morning's Earlybird:
•The Republican members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee have instituted a new rule this year -- any lobbyists wanting to meet with staff about a Member-sponsored project or earmark must be accompanied by the Member or a staffer from the Member's personal office," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "'We wanted to be as transparent as we could possibly be,' said Jim Coon, Republican chief of staff for the committee."
•Lobbyists who represent key stakeholders in health care reform quietly have begun plotting how their clients' legislative priorities would fare if Members make good on the threat of moving reforms to a budget reconciliation package," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "A budget reconciliation bill in the Senate would require a simple 51-vote majority, vastly easier to obtain than the usual 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. As the health care debate has grown increasingly partisan, lobbyists say they are taking more seriously the looming possibility of having many reforms added to reconciliation."
After searching for more than five months for the right person, Hewlett-Packard has settled on Larry Irving to serve as vice president of global government affairs and effectively act as the new leader of the company's public policy efforts around the world. Irving will report to Michael Holston, HP executive vice president and general counsel.
Irving has been the president and CEO of the Irving Information Group, a consulting firm focused on international telecommunications and technology companies. He served for almost seven years as assistant secretary of Commerce for communications and information and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under former President Bill Clinton. Irving was part of the U.S. team that negotiated the World Trade Organization agreement on basic telecommunication services.
When asked if he will be registering as a lobbyist, Irving said: "I will comply with the law."
(Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va. invited some National Journal and CongressDaily reporters to come have an on-the-record breakfast with him at his Capitol Hill office this morning.
Among the topics Cantor raised: the economy, his optimism that President Obama's popularity is waning, and his belief that House Republicans have done a good job offering policy alternatives to House Democrats' on key issues like health care.
On health care reform, Cantor said Republicans plan to capitalize on what he sees as "growing" public concern about the shape of congressional Democrats health care reform plans. In two weeks, House Republicans, via their House GOP Health Care Solutions Group, plan to hold a forum on the quality of health care and experiences of physicians, patients, and providers in other places like Canada and the United Kingdom.
"We are trying to take the discussion to the people," said Cantor, who lived in the U.K. for a year and personally experienced the country's health care system.
"Do we really think that the American people understand when we say, 'You don't want a system like the U.K. and Canada?,'" Cantor said.
The conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity has been raising just those questions over the past month with a series of million dollar ad buys, via its "Patients First" campaign. See my item yesterday.
Cantor was also critical of a decision by Wal-Mart last week to embrace an employer mandate in health care reform. "I understand that it was a business decision, but I think it was just wrong," he said.
Wal-Mart broke with business groups in Washington last week by joining with the Service Employees International Union to support a legal requirement that employers provide health benefits to their workers.
Continue reading Cantor: GOP Sees Opportunity On Health Care.
Lawmakers on committees with jurisdiction on health care reform legislation who oppose the creation of a publicly-funded health insurance option to compete with private insurers, received more money, on average, from the health care sector than members who support it, according to a new study of campaign money conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics. Members who have said 'no' to a public plan option received an average of $1.3 million over their career (as far back as 1989 when the Center began collecting data) versus $900,000 for those who said 'yes,' the study says.
Over the past three weeks, the Center's staff called lawmakers on all five of the congressional committees working on health care legislation to get their stance on the public plan option and they analyzed their campaign donations. In total, the Center's staff looked at 187 members. No information was available regarding 50 of the lawmakers contacted that were included in the report.
And improtant caveat to the study was that not everyone responded 'yes' or no 'when' asked about whether or not they supported a public plan option. Among the undecided was Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., Chairman of the Finance Committee, who has received $3.8 million from the health care sector. Baucus ranked third in the study, behind Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., who have raked in a total of $8.3 million and $9 million, respectively, from the health care sector.
With the climate bill moving through Congress, energy-industry lobby expenditures were up more than 10 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to an analysis of the companies that Common Cause lists as the top spenders.
The 34 top spenders in the oil, gas, and electric utilities industries spent almost $24 million in that time frame. Number 1on the list, Edison Electric Institute, dished out $2.5 million (up 14 percent), and American Petroleum Institute parted with $1.8 million (up 42 percent). American Electric Power, Norfolk Southern Corporation, Koch Companies Public Sector, and Duke Energy Corporation all broke the million-dollar mark as well.
The same companies spent more than $21 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2008, when the cap-and-trade bill wasn't looming. And 12 of the companies that Common Cause lists actually spent less in the first quarter of this year, compared with their spending for the same period last year.
Comparatively, lobby expenditures by industries that stand to gain from climate-change legislation are low, and not listed by Common Cause. The alternative energy production and services sector spent just $7.2 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009, according to Center for Responsive Politics data. The largest spender in this category was American Wind Energy Association, shelling out $1.2 million. Environmental groups spent $4.7 million on lobbying for the same period, with the Environmental Defense Action Fund shelling out the most money: $300,000.
For its part, Common Cause spent $40,000 on lobbying in the first quarter of this year.
From this week's National Journal: (subscription)
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "Honduran business leaders are turning to Washington lobbyists to convince Congress that it should support rather than oppose the military removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office," The Hill reports. "The Honduran branch of CEAL, the Latin American equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has hired Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to make the case to U.S. lawmakers and foreign diplomats."
• "The increasingly contentious debate over health care reform is fueling new advertisements aimed at key Senators. The conservative group Patients First is spending $1.3 million on a one-week ad buy in a dozen states, while the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association has launched a new campaign over generic biologics," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
• "The League of Conservation Voters announced Thursday that it is launching a new TV ad to laud Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) for his vote in favor of controversial climate change legislation, in an effort to blunt Republican attacks on the freshman over the issue," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "Perriello was recently targeted by the National Republican Congressional Committee in a TV ad that criticized his vote for the cap-and-trade bill that narrowly passed the House in late June."
Louisiana is the most transparent state of the union when it comes to financial disclosure requirements for legislators, according to a report recently updated by the Center for Public Integrity. Since 1999, the center has been tracking state disclosure requirements, measuring public access to information on legislators' employment, investments, personal finances, property holdings, or other activities outside the legislature.
In its latest results, 20 out of 50 states received a failing grade for their disclosure requirements -- three states: Idaho, Michigan and Vermont, have no personal financial disclosure laws at all. Only three states received an "A": Hawaii, Louisiana and Washington.
Louisiana's top ranking can be credited to Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, who made sweeping ethics reforms soon after assuming office. Jindal signed bills that require all lawmakers to disclose outside financial interests.
"Citizens have a right to expect a certain amount of basic and personal information about their elected officials," said Mary Boyle, vice president for communications for Common Cause, quoted by the center in an article about the project. "Disclosure laws allow the public "to make a judgment about whether there are conflicts of interest," Boyle added.
After Louisiana, Georgia improved the most since 1999 in its disclosure ranking, catapulting from 33 to seven. Virginia declined the most, starting out at eight and dropping to 31st place -- mostly because its laws have gone unchanged while other states have improved theirs. To learn more about the project, check out the report here.
The conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity announced it is plunging an additional $1.3 million into television advertising advocating less government involvement in health care policy.
The ads will be run through the think tank's Patients First campaign and targets senators in 12 states. The group has already spent about $2 million in commercials over the past month raising grim scenarios about the impact of the health-care reform legislation developing in Congress.
Here's the most recent Patients First ad, which will run this week.
The newly formed technology trade association, TechAmerica, is undergoing staffing changes as part of a restructuring. The group is the result of a recent merger of AeA, formerly known as the American Electronics Association, the Information Technology Association of America, the Government Electronics & Information Technology Association and the Cyber Security Industry Alliance.
Rob Mulligan, who served as senior vice president international for the group, will become a part-time employee. Mulligan managed TechAmerica's D.C.-based international policy staff, oversaw the group's offices in Brussels and Beijing, and represented the tech industry's interests in Washington and abroad.
Chris Hansen, TechAmerica's CEO, will be more actively engaged in TechAmerica's international programs. That effort will now be managed as part of the organization's new commercial policy division led by Joshua Lamel, currently senior vice president for commercial policy and government affairs. Lamel was hired by ITAA last year as a vice president for Internet, telecom, technology policy, and the commercial sector.
Atlantic contributor Matthew Cooper writes that even with the support of newly sworn-in Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that has been heavily lobbied by unions, remains stuck in the Senate.
Says Cooper: "The problem that's plagued the bill for months still remains: 60 Democrats don't support it and the Republicans are determined to filibuster the measure."
That's probably music to the ears of the business community, which has united to oppose the legislation.
Click here to read his full post.
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "Pressure is building on the Senate to ratify a treaty designed to bolster American and British military cooperation by removing red tape that critics say delays the transfer of defense technologies and products between the two countries," The Hill reports. "The Senate's inaction has frustrated leaders in the United Kingdom and spurred a strong lobbying push from the American defense and aerospace industry, which stands to benefit from the treaty."
• "Under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, staffers earning at least 75 percent of their bosses' salaries for more than 60 days trigger the lobbying moratorium," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "But the rule has also ensnared at least one unwitting junior Senate staffer whose $8,000 bonus unexpectedly triggered the lobbying restrictions."
David Goldston, former chief of staff at the House Science and Technology Committee, joined the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council this week, where he will supervise strategies for working with the White House and Congress as director of government affairs.
The NRDC has been noted for having several of its alumni - members of the "NRDC mafia" as a New York Times source put it in March - move into government jobs this year. But in Goldston's case, it's the other way around: before his six years serving as committee chief of staff under former Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, R-NY, he served as Boehlert's legislative director.
Goldston has also taught at Princeton and Harvard and written monthly columns for the science journal Nature about the intersection of science and politics.
For those looking for a bright spot in the Republican party, the Republican Governors Association said it outraised the Democratic Governors Association in the first half of 2009.
In the first six months of the year, the RGA raised $12.2 million and has $20.4 million cash on hand. The DGA raised $11.6 million during the same period and $12.5 million cash on hand.
RGA communications director Mike Schrimpf touted the sum, calling the states the last place left where Republicans can flex some muscle, without the White House and control of Congress.
The positive note comes as hopes for a state-centric Republican renaissance have been complicated by recent developments about two of the party's former star governors, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Palin is stepping down at the end of July and Sanford last month admitted to having an extramarital affair.
"Governorships are the one area where Republicans can implement effective policy that can rebuild the party," said Schrimpf, whose organization recently underwent a leadership shakeup when Mississippi GOP Governor Haley Barbour took over after Sanford stepped down.
DGA communications director Emily DeRose emphasized that the amount raised by Democrats was an association record.
Clarification: Sen. Claire McCaskill's, D-Mo., office called to clarify that she did not attend the Ignite tour event in May. According to Express Scripts, McCaskill's office played a ministerial role in hosting the event by securing the room where it took place.
There may not be a silver bullet in healthcare reform, but Bob Nease thinks the application of behavioral economics can help.
Nease, chief scientist for Express Scripts' Center for Cost-Effective Consumerism, is pushing for healthcare reform based on "choice architecture." Here's the basic concept: Since people often procrastinate, having employers automatically sign up workers for a program gets them on the right track for maximal benefits.
Express Scripts, one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit managers, used this logic to create its Select Home Delivery program. For employers who participate, the Select Home Delivery program automatically enrolls their employees in the home delivery prescription service unless they specifically opt out of it. According to an Express Scripts, participating companies and employees could save up to $3 million in 2009.
Behavioral economics has a lot of traction at the White House. Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget and top OMB official Cass Sunstein, are heavily influenced by the discipline.
"I do think this [application of behavioral economics in health care] is inevitable," said Nease. "I don't think we're going to get health care reform without some deeper understanding of why people behave they way they do."
Nease and the center kicked off a listening tour on May 27th in D.C. at an event hosted by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Speakers included representatives from the American Benefits Council, Hewitt Associates and the National Business Coalition on Health. The full list of tour partners can be seen here.
The tour currently has two events planned for October, first in
Continue reading Update: Behavioral Economics In Healthcare 101.
A former Democratic National Committee political director is headed to K Street: Donald R. Sweitzer, who held the DNC position during the Clinton years. He will be a senior strategic advisor and independent consultant for McKenna Long & Aldridge, the firm announced Tuesday.
Sweitzer follows fellow DNC alum and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean to the law firm that touts its large government contracts practice and a roster of Washington insiders, including former Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga. and a handful of others. The firm has 22 registered lobbyists.
At this point, Sweitzer will be consulting in the politics and technology sectors, and not working as registered lobbyist. He has been active in Democrat campaigns and fundraising efforts since his time at the DNC. In the 2008 election cycle, he donated $23,900 to Democratic candidates and parties, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Sweitzer's move comes after he headed business development and public affairs at the gaming technology and services company, GTECH Corporation, where he remains chairman. GTECH is a McKenna Long & Aldridge client.
Susan L. Kurland, who the Obama administration announced this week as the nominee for assistant secretary of Transportation for aviation and international affairs, registered as a lobbyist in 2004 and 2005. Kurland did not report earning money for services rendered.
Reports filed in the Senate database indicate she worked for herself as an aviation and security consultant. Kurland listed Barton Protective Services (now AllianceBarton Security Services), Command Security Corporation, WSA Security and Gate Safe as clients, firms that provide security services for the transportation industry.
-- Eliza Krigman
Gary Fazzino, the long time chief of public policy for Hewlett-Packard, is leaving to join electronics firm Applied Materials as worldwide vice president of government affairs. He starts at the end of July.
"Energy and the environment are top policy priorities for governments around the world, and Applied Materials' technology - from semiconductors to displays to solar - will be an important part of the solution, Mike Splinter, chairman and CEO of Applied Materials, said in a statement. "Expanding relationships and engaging in dialogue with government are important for the long-term success of Applied Materials and Gary's proven ability to help shape public policy will be invaluable as we explore new markets and new lines of business."
Fazzino was named Hewlett-Packard's vice president of government and public affairs in 2000 after service in various roles at the computer company, including Northwest public affairs manager, state government affairs manager, and director of public policy in Washington. He also served as mayor of Palo Alto, Calif. from 1992 to 1993 and again from 1999 to 2000. He also was the first president of tech lobbying group, TechNet.
Fazzino will be based in Applied Material's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., but will work closely with Bill Morin, who heads up the company's Washington D.C. lobbying efforts.
Lobbying firm Monument Policy Group hired Jane Alonso, former legislative director to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine., as vice president of government relations.
Alonso worked for Collins for seven years, where she handled a range of issues including, health care, energy, defense, foreign policy, trade, and taxes. She also served as a professional staff member for two committees, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Prior to Collins, Alonso, who is a native of Miami, Fla., worked for Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. and Rep. John Mica, R-Fla. She also twice served as an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe election supervisor in Bosnia.
Monument Policy Group stressed Alonso's bipartisan ties, noting that she was co-founder of the Senate Bipartisan Legislative Directors Group, a program that brings together senior Hill aides to foster bipartisanship.
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "As Sen. Chris Dodd gears up for a grueling re-election fight, he has tried to distance himself from K Street by taking an increasingly pro-consumer, anti-industry tack, according to many lobbyists who work closely with the Connecticut Democrat," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
• "Organized labor this week is warning Senate Democrats not to renege on trade protection included in House climate change legislation that would buffer domestic manufacturers from cheap consumer products made in China and elsewhere," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
An all Democratic boutique lobby shop, Parven Pomper Strategies, has just announced a couple new hires.
Roger Murry, who will serve as a managing director, is a former aide on health care and trade issues to then-Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., who is now undersecretary for arms control and international security at the State Department. He's also a former aide to another California Democrat, Rep. Grace Napolitano.
Parven Pomper has also brought in Sarah Crnkovich, a former intern with the firm who recently graduated from Dartmouth College. The firm was founded by Scott Parven and Brian Pomper, who was chief international trade counsel for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.; the firm's senior vice president, Alixandria Lapp, was campaign director under then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 Democratic takeover of the House.
(Photo of Scott Parven taken by Liz Lynch)
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "Al Franken's victory in Minnesota over incumbent Norm Coleman gives Democrats the 60th vote they need to overcome Republican filibusters -- assuming, of course, they can keep their often-feuding caucus unified," The Hill reports. Union officials plan to renew their push for a controversial bill that would make it easier for employees to organize, legislation that has stalled so far this Congress under a massive lobbying campaign by business groups that oppose it as a threat to an already listless economy."
• "A group of unions, including the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said they will start pressing lawmakers for a jobs bill," The Hill reports. "They said the $787 billion economic stimulus approved earlier this year, though helpful, wasn't big enough and didn't include enough government spending."
• "Through June 27, $31 million has been spent for roughly 47,000 TV ads on health care this year, says Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a firm that tracks issue advertising," AP reports. "That's double the roughly $14 million the insurance industry spent in 1993 and 1994 for the famous 'Harry and Louise' ads credited with helping kill President Bill Clinton's health care drive, but a fraction of the $250 million Tracey guesses will ultimately be spent this year."
David G. Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media, sent the following memo to employees this afternoon:
Re: A July Writing
Colleagues and Friends:
Earnest being my strong suit, I don't know that I ever have stir-the-world words in me. This early July writing surely won't. So as to a topic suddenly in our Washington news, I will go for direct instead. As there is no secret here, you may know much of this detail already. Even so, I think it is right that these words come from me directly, over my signature (if that image still pertains).
For a half dozen years, Atlantic Media has been hosting sponsored salon dinners in Washington and around the U.S. I don't believe that any one of these events had any of the ill intention or effect that some have attributed to The Washington Post concept. But we live on a street too close to the brush fire to pretend no interest. So what I thought I might do is give the detail of the Atlantic Media dinners, address some of the concerns I'm reading now on the Web, explain the virtue I see in this work and end with a personal statement and caveat. Please forgive me if this runs long.
Let me begin by saying that I won't distance myself from this issue. From some of our earliest events, I have been part of the thinking behind this work. I've approved many sponsored dinners personally, sent out my own invitations, hosted some dinners at my house, welcomed the sponsors in my remarks and written thank you notes to those involved. I am a part of this work. Openly.
So, if I may, let me give you some detail about salon dinners.
Continue reading Bradley Responds To Questions About Salons.
Of all the puzzling things about the Supreme Court's recent move to rethink corporate political spending limits, the strangest is the timing, writes Eliza Newlin Carney in her weekly column "Rules of the Game."
It's odd enough that the high court should postpone a narrow ruling on the case at hand, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and instead set the stage to broadly re-examine whether corporate campaign expenditures may be restricted at all.
The conservative group Citizens United had asked the court to reject restrictions in the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that would have forced it to disclose who paid for its 2008 movie critical of then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. But the court appears poised to go much further.
Having heard oral arguments on March 24, the court has now ordered a second argument for Sept. 9 and has asked for new briefs on whether it should overturn a landmark 1990 ruling that upheld a decades-old ban on independent corporate campaign expenditures, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. The BCRA ad disclosure rules will also be on the table.
"They're being very activist in laying down this rehearing and suggesting they might overturn the traditional ban on corporate expenditures," said Trevor Potter, a former FEC chairman and president of the Campaign Legal Center. "It's a very aggressive action."
For more of the column, click here.
(Corrects to fix cumulative figure in second graph)
The Secretary of the Senate has sent 1,713 potential violations of the Lobbying Disclosure Act this calendar year to the Justice Department's U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, according to the U.S. Senate Office of Public Records website.
The cumulative number of potential violations sent by the Senate to Justice is 5,596 since January 1996 January 2008, the site says.The office was required, under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, to publicly update the number of potential violations that it has sent to the U.S. Attorney's office twice a year. (HLOGA was passed and signed into law in 2007, amending the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995)
Though the types of violations that were referred to Justice aren't clear, they could include minor mistakes like failing to fill out a particular line in the disclosure report, to a more major violation such as failing to report spending on lobbying at all. A Senate Office of Public Records official wasn't available for comment.
Under the law, a registrant has 60 days to remedy a violation once notified by the Secretary of the Senate or the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Failure to comply could result in a $200,000 fine and up to 5 years in prison.
Kenneth Gross, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, said 90 percent of those lobby violations were likely minor errors or misinterpretations of the law and having the U.S. Attorney's office as the agent of enforcement of the law is "unwieldy."
As of March 2008, investigations of lobbying disclosure violations had only resulted in three instances of fines levied on registrants. An official with the U.S. Attorney's office was unavailable for comment to update that number. We will update this story when we get the number.
From this week's National Journal: (subscription)
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "A new technological marvel appears, and its proprietors -- at least initially -- pay little heed to Congress and the potential havoc that federal lawmakers can wreak," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "Witness Microsoft and Google, which were flourishing entities before finally wising up and staffing substantial D.C. outposts. Twitter seems to be following suit."
• "Financial services lawmakers and lobbyists will ramp up their efforts this week to shape legislation creating a consumer financial protection agency," The Hill reports.
• "Months after instituting tough new rules designed to limit the influence of lobbyists on the administration, the White House has a growing and thriving relationship with K Street, though not one that appears to violate promises that President Barack Obama made to curtail influence peddling," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
•"The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records," the Washington Post reports.
•"Across the country, activist groups on each side of the health care debate stepped up their campaigning last week while members of Congress were home for the Fourth of July recess," the New York Times reports. "In Maine, home to Sens. [Olympia] Snowe and Susan Collins, moderate Republicans who could provide crucial support for the Democratic health care plan expected to emerge in the coming weeks, efforts to sway their votes -- and to sweep average citizens into the debate -- were intense."
Karen Ignagni, CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, the advocacy group for the majority of U.S. health insurers, has given $48,550 in campaign donations since the 1996 election cycle, according to a profile of her giving detailed by the Center for Responsive Politics today.
Though prior to AHIP Ignagni worked for Democrats and the AFL-CIO, the health association executive's giving leaned slightly more Republican. The Center says 55 percent of her donations went to GOP candidates and parties since the 1996 election cycle.
See the Center for Responsive Politics profile here.
See also my profile of Ignagni in National Journal's June 13 isse. Click here. (subscription)
(Photo courtesy of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee)
A few dozen banks, consumer finance companies, mortgage companies and other large lenders have been meeting under the auspices of the American Financial Services Association to discuss forming a coalition to fight an Obama administration proposal for creating a new consumer financial protection agency with a large regulatory mandate.
"I think everybody around the table understands the urgency of the challenge we face," said Bill Himpler, the top lobbyist for the AFSA which has about 350 members including a number of consumer finance companies that provide 50 percent of the nation's non-mortgage loans.
Himpler added that the groups stand "shoulder to shoulder in terms of wanting consumer protections, but this is not it." Some of the groups fear that the new agency's purview would be too sweeping and would also take away some regulatory powers that now reside with the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The groups met again today at the offices of Toyota, which has a large finance arm, to try to develop a strategy that's likely going to include hiring outside consultants to craft their message and possibly run some advertising. Yesterday, the White House unveiled a 150- page proposal to create a new regulatory agency whose powers could include limiting or barring risky loans, enforcing new laws to protect credit card consumers and setting standards for mortgage lending. The new proposal has drawn considerable support from consumer organizations and liberal groups.
Continue reading Opposition Builds to Consumer Finance Agency.
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "The Laborers' International Union of North America on Tuesday announced plans to target Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) with a cable television spot in Des Moines even as it cut short ad buys in Montana and North Dakota at the request of Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.)," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
• "The pharmaceutical industry and one of the country's leading consumer health care groups on Tuesday launched a multimillion-dollar national television advertising campaign to urge lawmakers to pass quality, affordable health care reform," Politico reports.
