From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Fresh off their congressional retirements, former Reps. Bud Cramer and Jim McCrery are prohibited from lobbying for a year -- a ban reinforced by a sweeping crackdown under the Democratic Congress," Politico reports. "But you wouldn't know it from their day jobs and their political donations, which give them a heavy hand in the Washington influence game, advising clients with interests before Congress while donating tens of thousands of dollars from their old campaign war chests to candidates."

• "Facing an Oct. 30 deadline for relinquishing their lobbyist stripes under a new White House decree, the heads of all industry trade advisory boards have written to President Obama and top administration and congressional officials imploring them to reconsider," CongressDaily AM (subscription) reports. "The letter from the 16 ITAC chiefs, dated Monday, requests a meeting with the president and his top aides to discuss the matter."

• "The August recess did little to slow the Washington lobbying frenzy over health-care reform, as insurers, drugmakers and hospitals continued to spend millions to attempt to sway the emerging legislation, according to new disclosure reports filed with Congress," the Washington Post reports. The top spender so far is "the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drugmakers' main trade group," which "shattered records again by spending nearly $7 million on lobbying from July through September, the quarterly disclosure records show."

• "Locked in a bitter legislative battle, package delivery giants FedEx and United Parcel Service" boosted their lobbying in the third quarter, Roll Call (subscription) reports. "From July through September, UPS shelled out $4.4 million to influence federal lawmakers, a whopping $3 million increase from the previous three-month period. FedEx, meanwhile, doled out $5.6 million on lobbying during the same period, up almost $2 million from the prior quarter."