UPDATE @ 2:28 PM to make clear that the Open Society Policy Center hired Bill Wasserman, not the Institute.
As the Obama administration's complicated tug of war with lobbyists continues, Washington's professional persuaders are fighting back the best way they know how: with a lobbying campaign, Eliza Newlin Carney reports in "Rules of the Game."
The leaders of more than a dozen advocacy groups, frustrated with the administration's multi-pronged restrictions on lobbyists, are meeting regularly at the Open Society Policy Center's Washington office to plot strategy. Possible actions include a push for congressional hearings, or even a demonstration on the Capitol steps.
The center, the advocacy arm of the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute, has underwritten the hiring of consultant Bill Wasserman, president of M+R Strategic Services, to help it respond to the administration's lobbying rules. Leaders of the groups spearheading the effort, which also include the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest and OMB Watch, will reach out to trade associations and unions to fortify their ranks.
Constraints on lobbyists actually reduce transparency, some argue, by encouraging lobbyists to "deregister."
"What we want to do is try and shift the focus from federally registered lobbyists to money and influence in the administration," said Lee Mason, director of nonprofit speech rights for OMB Watch. "That's where the focus ought to be."
Continue reading Lobbyists: Obama's Rules Bring Pain, No Gain.
Cross posted from NJ.com:
A simmering conflict between the House ethics committee and its fledgling investigative arm has escalated into open combat, prompting watchdogs to warn that lawmakers may be gearing up to kill the new Office of Congressional Ethics.
Following the accidental leak on Oct. 29 of a 22-page ethics panel activity report, most news stories have trumpeted the more than 30 House members identified as apparently under investigation. These include at least seven lawmakers caught up in the panel's ongoing probe of defense earmarks and the now-defunct lobbying firm the PMA Group.
But obscured in the hubbub over the leak, which was first reported in the Washington Post, was another explosive document released that very same day: A 525-page ethics committee report attacking the Office of Congressional Ethics. Established in March of last year, the OCE conducts preliminary inquiries and makes recommendations to the full ethics panel, officially the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
The ethics committee's real beef appears to boil down to two complaints: The OCE is being too transparent and too hard on members.
But the ethics committee has chafed under the new system, which has forced the panel to observe unaccustomed deadlines and disclosure rules. Its Oct. 29 report, ostensibly to dismiss a complaint involving Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., devotes more than 30 pages to blasting the OCE for its "fundamentally flawed" handling of the Graves matter.
If you think the health care reform fight has been aggressive, hear this: The lobbying war over climate change could be even nastier.
The climate bill battle has fractured partisan, geographic and industry allegiances; thrown erstwhile enemies into strange-bedfellow partnerships; and sparked allegations of dirty tricks on both sides of the debate. And this is just the beginning.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has filed a 36-page civil complaint demanding a jury trial of the Yes Men, activist hoaxers who staged a fake press conference announcing a fictitious Chamber about-face on climate change two weeks ago. The Chamber is already reeling from member defections over its climate bill opposition.
On the flip side, Washington lobbyist Jack Bonner and coal industry organizer Steve Miller were excoriated on Capitol Hill last week by lawmakers who accused them of deceptive practices. At a hearing before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, lawmakers grilled Bonner and Miller about more than half a dozen faked anti-climate bill letters sent to Capitol Hill purportedly from civil rights and civic leaders.
Both controversies signal a rough-and-tumble climate bill fight ahead, with the full range of pressure tactics thrown into the mix. By nature, environmental policy disputes tend to break down along unpredictable partisan and geographic lines, and that has been especially true for the cap-and-trade climate bill now wending its way through Congress.
The Yes Men stunt raises questions about misrepresentation in lobbying and when it strays over the line.
Democrats have squabbled among themselves; Republicans such as Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have declared themselves willing to work with Democrats, angering some in their own party; and environmental groups have forged new partnerships with industry players promoting green energy.
Continue reading Climate Change Advocacy Is Off To Ugly Start.
Norman Eisen, White House special counsel on ethics and government reform, again defended tightening restrictions on federally registered lobbyists to limit the influence of special interests.
In a post on the White House blog Wednesday evening, Eisen responded to a letter sent by the American League of Lobbyists protesting the administration's decision to ban lobbyists from serving on government advisory boards.
"We are concerned that your administration will deprive career public officials of knowledge, perspective and insight offered voluntarily and free of charge from many of the industry experts who will be precluded from serving as formal advisors under this policy," the League wrote in an Oct. 28 letter sent to President Obama.
To which Eisen said: "The letter makes a number of arguments with which we disagree, and to which we will respond, but our simple point is this: the system of lobbyists holding privileged government positions needs to be changed."
Stay tuned for more Obama versus the lobbyists...
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs Wednesday danced around accusations that Democratic donors have had special access to White House officials, saying those that did have meetings at the White House will be made public by the end of the year.
Gibbs comments follow a Washington Times story suggesting that Democratic bundlers and big money donors have gotten special access to White House officials and other perks.
"Hundreds of thousands of people have visited this White House since the president came in," said Gibbs. "Every name of every person that comes to this White House will be released."
He added: "Contributing doesn't guarantee a visit to the White House, nor does it preclude it."
When pressed about a reported Democratic National Committee program for big midterm- election donors to meet with Obama administration officials, Gibbs suggested reporters contact the Democratic National Committee for answers.
In early September, the White House announced it would be making its visitor logs public, ending two lawsuits seeking the names in those logs under the Freedom of Information Act. Under the new policy, enacted Sept. 15, the White House will make public the names of individuals visiting the White House, the names of those they were meeting and how long the meetings lasted. (Meetings that were held for national security reasons won't be released.) The first report is scheduled to be released at year's end. Meetings in the Oval Office will also be made public, Gibbs said.
Gibbs added that as far as he was "aware of," no campaign donor received a night in the Lincoln bedroom, as had been a practice during the Clinton administration.
Click here to see an excerpt of the White House briefing today and Gibbs' back and forth with reporters on the issue of donors and White House special access. I called Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president on ethics and government reform, today to ask him about the Washington Times story, but he referred me to Gibbs comments today on the matter.
The Office of Congressional Ethics began one preliminary review into a possible ethical violation by a representative between July and September, according to the office's third quarter report released today. Click here:
OCE Third Quarter 2009 Report.pdfThe OCE, a quasi-independent group created in 2008 to screen potential ethics violations and make
recommendations to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the official name for the House Ethics committee), reported commencing 14 preliminary reviews in the second quarter.
In the third quarter, the OCE recommended to the ethics committee that four matters be reviewed and one matter be dismissed. This year, the office has recommended nine reviews and two dismissals. The OCE also reported that it did not terminate any investigations in the third quarter.
In 2009, OCE has commenced a total of 25 preliminary reviews and terminated four matters, indicating that 21 reviews are outstanding. The report does not detail which members are being investigated.
In August, we wrote about lawmakers known to be under investigation, according to records kept by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. That list included 13 representatives: Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., Rep. Jesse Jackson, D-Ill., Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., Rep. Gary Miller, R-Calif., Rep. Allan Mollohan, D-W.Va., Rep. Timothy Murphy, R-Pa., Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., and Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska.
Continue reading House Ethics Office Releases Report On Probes.
Robert J. Cabelly, who owned a firm called C/R International, was indicted Tuesday by the Department of Justice on eight counts, including failing to register himself as a foreign agent.
Cabelly, who was a career diplomat, is charged with working on behalf of the government of Sudan, in violation of U.S. sanctions against that country.
The complaint can be found here.
Cabelly indictment.pdf
Norman Eisen, White House special adviser on ethics and government reform, said it wasn't a scandal that drove the Obama administration to issue its latest restrictions on lobbyists -- they're trying to prevent one.In September, the administration asked all federal agencies to replace lobbyists serving on federal boards and advisory panels with non-lobbyists as part of the president's ongoing efforts to reduce the influence of special interests in Washington.
"While we recognize the contributions some of those who will be affected have made to these committees, it is an indisputable fact that in recent years, lobbyists for major special interests have wielded extraordinary power in Washington DC, resulting in a national agenda too often skewed in favor of the interests that can afford their services," Eisen wrote on the White House blog on Oct. 21. "It is that problem that the President has promised to change, and this is a major step in implementing that change."
When National Journal asked Eisen if there as a particular situation where a scandal or problem of undue influence by lobbyists occurred at these federal boards and advisory panels, he said no and "we wanted to keep it that way."
Cross-posted from the blog of my colleagues at Government Executive:
It looks like every federal department is getting into the blog act -- now, the Federal Election Commission has debuted its "Disclosure Data Weblog." According to its first post, the blog will highlight new disclosure features and Web site tools, as well as answers to common questions about the FEC's site.
Click here to see the whole post.
For years, First Amendment champions have argued that all campaign finance rules tread on free speech and that American elections should be completely deregulated.
It's a sweeping premise that Congress has long rejected in favor of ever-tighter political money limits. But thanks to a sharp right turn in the judiciary, from the Supreme Court on down, those who favor a world without rules may be about to get their wish.
The Supreme Court appears poised to reverse a century-old ban on direct campaign expenditures by corporations large and small. A federal appeals court has rejected Federal Election Commission rules that restrict spending by non-party political groups, such as so-called 527 organizations -- a move that the FEC is prepared to let stand. And two other cases challenging the existing limits on soft (unregulated) money and on independent campaign expenditures are wending their way up to the Supreme Court.
The upshot could be an outpouring of unregulated, often-undisclosed spending by both big corporations and tax-exempt political organizations, election lawyers say. "The trend is toward deregulation," said former FEC general counsel Lawrence H. Norton, who is of counsel at Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice. The role of outside political groups, he added, can be expected to "expand dramatically as soon as 2010."
Some reform advocates wonder whether disclosure rules will be the only ones eventually left standing.
Little wonder that Congress' chief reform advocates, Sens. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and John McCain, R-Ariz., recently took to the Senate floor to defend the campaign finance rules they helped write. In a rare public challenge to the Supreme Court, both warned that if the court rejects longstanding corporate spending limits in its pending Citizens United v. FEC case, as many expect it will, the results could be disastrous.
"The implications of this case are very serious, and the Supreme Court's decision could result in the unraveling of over 100 years of congressional action and judicial precedent with respect to corporate spending in political campaigns," said McCain in an impassioned Oct. 21 floor speech.
(photo of Feingold and McCain from Senate)
The investigation into a prominent lobbying firm's fake letters to Congress points up the dangers to K Street in so-called grassroots and grass-tops lobbying, both of which are increasingly popular -- and controversial. It also underscores the absence of disclosure, let alone regulation, in a booming segment of Washington's influence industry.
The probe has led to PR headaches and new internal rules at Bonner & Associates, which sent out the letters, as well as at a consulting shop and a coal industry coalition caught up in the scandal.
Bonner & Associates got a temporary reprieve last week after Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who chairs the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, abruptly canceled a scheduled hearing on the faked letters following a rules dispute. But the hearing has been rescheduled for Oct. 29.
Markey is investigating why three members of Congress received more than a dozen letters opposing climate change legislation that forged the identities of seniors advocates and civil rights leaders, and why the lawmakers weren't notified until weeks after lobbyists discovered the fraud. The Sierra Club has also asked the Justice Department to investigate.
Reform-minded lawmakers have sought twice to require disclosure of grassroots lobbying activities, without success.
In the witness chair will be Bonner & Associates founder and CEO Jack Bonner, who has blamed the deception on "a rogue temporary employee" who has since been fired, and Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. The ACCCE had retained its longtime consulting firm, the Hawthorn Group, to lobby against climate change legislation that the House went on to approve in June. The Hawthorn Group in turn subcontracted letter-writing work to Bonner & Associates.
Continue reading A Grassroots Cautionary Tale: Bonner & Assoc..
The Sunlight Foundation's Daniel Schuman analyzes the Treasury department's new lobbying rules on communications with department employees regarding matters related to the Troubled Asset Relief Program and its implications for transparency.
He writes:
The rules promulgated by the Treasury Department attempt to meet the great challenge of improved transparency, but fall short of their potential. They are hard to understand, difficult to apply, and full of contradictions and omissions that undermine stated policy objectives. The rules should be clarified, rewritten, simplified, and broadened.
Cross posted from NationalJournal.com
When philandering politicians fail to keep their pants zipped, public attention tends to zero in on the salacious details: the stoic wife, the smoldering e-mails, the humiliating apologies.
But in a string of recent political sex scandals, it's campaign finance, lobbying and ethics abuses that may ultimately prove the most damaging.
Extramarital affairs by onetime presidential hopeful John Edwards (picture above from Creative Commons), Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford have raised questions that go far beyond morality and character. In all three cases, irregular expenditures to facilitate or cover up the affairs have led to investigations that could end in serious criminal charges.
A federal grand jury in Raleigh is reportedly investigating whether Edwards, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination without success last year, violated election laws by encouraging supporters to steer large payments to his mistress and onetime campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter.
This latest crop of bad boys, by allegedly misspending public or campaign funds, has strayed beyond moral hazard into criminal danger zones.
Prosecutors are examining whether payments that two wealthy Edwards donors made to Hunter should be considered in-kind campaign contributions, according to the New York Times.
A federal grand jury in Washington that is probing possible criminal conflicts of interest involving former Interior Secretary Gale Norton's official and private dealings in 2006 with Royal Dutch Shell has recently issued subpoenas to both Norton and Shell, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.
The grand jury subpoenas are part of a criminal investigation launched earlier this year by the Public Integrity Section at Justice into whether Norton may have broken a federal law in 2006 when the Interior Department granted three lucrative oil shale leases on federal lands in Colorado to Shell which later in the year hired her as general counsel for its unconventional fuels unit in the United States. The Colorado based unit focuses on exploration and production, including shale projects.
The Justice probe is focused primarily on whether Norton broke a law that bars government officials from negotiating future jobs with a company that stands to benefit from official actions.
Asked to comment on the grand jury subpoenas, a Shell spokesman said that the company is "aware of an investigation by the Department of Justice and we will cooperate with any lawful processes. We are unable to provide further comment on the investigation."
Norton did not return calls seeking comment. Herbert Fenster, an attorney with McKenna Long & Aldridge who has represented Norton in the past, also declined to comment
Continue reading Grand Jury Probing Former Secretary Norton.
The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct unanimously voted this afternoon to expand the jurisdiction of its investigation of House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.
In a statement, the committee said it is looking into whether Rangel "violated the Code of Official Conduct, or any law, regulation or other standard of conduct applicable to his conduct in the performance of his duties or the discharge of his responsibilities with respect to all financial disclosure statements and amendments filed in calendar year 2009."
The committee also said that it has issued close to 150 subpoenas, interviewed about 34 witnesses, resulting in 2,100 pages in transcripts, reviewed and analyzed 12,000 pages of documents and held over 30 investigative subcommittee meetings.
Yesterday, House Democrats voted down an effort led by Republicans to force Rangel to step down from his chairmanship until the ethics committee finishes its investigation.
Senate Ethics Committee chair Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said on CNN Sunday that her committee has opened an ethics investigation into whether or not Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., violated the chamber's rules of conduct.
"I can't discuss this with you, other than to say there is a preliminary investigation going on and we will look at all aspects of this case as we do whenever there's a case before us and try to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible," Boxer said to CNN's John King, when he asked her whether or not Ensign may have acted improperly in trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a staffer that he later publicly acknowledged.
Further, the Washington Post wrote an editorial today noting that the Nevada senator may have broken lobbying ethics rules by ignoring revolving-door strictures that ban former senate senior staff members from directly lobbying their former boss and colleagues for one year. Apparantly Ensign's former aide, Douglas Hampton and Ensign "were aware of the restriction but chose to ignore it."
It's important that the ethics committee look into that allegation as I wrote a story (subscription) in this week's National Journal about how little actual enforcement there is of the lobbying rules.
A loaded question looms over Senate health care negotiations as they enter the crucial phase between now and mid-October: What if Democrats don't win the 60 votes they need to break a GOP filibuster, asks Eliza Newlin Carney in her "Rules of the Game" column this week.
The obvious answer is that they'd resort to the obscure procedural tool known as reconciliation, which would require only a 51-vote majority. For months, Democrats have talked about using reconciliation, a process designed to facilitate fast-track approval of budget bills, if they can't reach the magical number 60.
But as Democrats' informal mid-October deadline for action draws near, the complexities of reconciliation are looking increasingly nasty. Restrictive reconciliation rules would require non-germane measures, such as those with no budget implications, to be considered separately.
At least one Democrat -- Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb. -- has said he would oppose using reconciliation to enact health care changes. And the predictable GOP backlash could undermine public support and further aggravate partisan tensions on Capitol Hill. Among other constraints, reconciliation restricts floor debate to no more than 20 hours.
"To use budget reconciliation in this way would be to employ a legislative loophole to rewrite one-sixth of our economy with 20 hours of debate," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said at a late-September press conference. "If that option is chosen, I think there will be a severely negative and, frankly, appropriate reaction on the part of the American people that this process is jamming through something about which, in the end, we'll only have bipartisan opposition."
Continue reading Reconciliation Looms Large In Health Debate.
The U.S. Public Research Interest Group and five other open-government outfits have sent a letter to congressional leaders supporting the Office of Congressional Ethics in its ongoing spat with the House Ethics Committee.
The House Ethics Committee recently challenged the performance of the new OCE regarding an ethics matter and the two organizations remain locked in a turf battle.
"In taking this action, the Ethics Committee left the public impression that it seemed more concerned about the activities of the OCE than it was about the ethics inquiry involved," said the letter addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,D-Calif. and House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
At issue is whether the House Ethics Committee has the authority to take over investigations from the OCE. U.S. PIRG and friends feel it does not.
"One of the major reasons for the establishment of the OCE was to address the problem of ethics matters disappearing in the past into a 'black hole' at the Ethics Committee and never being addressed, without anyone having to take formal responsibility for the failure of Congress to do anything about the ethics matter," said the letter.
The signers (Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters and Public Citizen) said the OCE is "doing an excellent job."
Government agencies began the process this week of asking companies and organizations to find replacements for federal lobbyists currently serving on federal advisory committees, following a Sept. 23 White House request asking agencies not to appoint lobbyists to such panels.
The Department of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative on Wednesday sent letters to companies and organizations with representatives serving on Industry Trade Advisory Committees asking them to certify the person isn't a lobbyist, and if they are, to find a replacement who isn't. There are a total of 335 people who serve on the ITACs which advise the two agencies on export, manufacturing and travel and tourism policies. The terms of those serving on the boards all end in 2010. About 132 of those individuals are registered lobbyists.
"Like all ITAC advisors, I have undergone security clearances and served at my own expense -- except for the occasional cup of coffee and donut that the Commerce department provided," he wrote. "Like my ITAC colleagues, I have attempted to give the Secretary of Commerce and USTR advice that was designed to open foreign markets, promote US competitiveness and encourage economic growth."
He added "with that in mind, I would like to appeal the decision from the White House to exclude registered lobbyists from the ITACs and ask you reconsider my application to be an ITAC advisor."
Casting the Obama administration's call to phase out federally registered lobbyists from federal advisory boards and committees as a move against transparency, the American League of Lobbyists (ALL) is gathering feedback on how to respond.
In an email sent out today, ALL president Dave Wenhold called on members to share their candid thoughts, strategies and input regarding the White House's new directive on federally registered lobbyists.
Yesterday we reported on the administration's blog post, written by Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, describing the president's request to weaken the influence of special interests in Washington.
"It is uncertain at this time how many registered lobbyists will be affected," said Wenhold in the email, "but the trend is obvious, and every federally-registered lobbyist needs to pay attention to the overall anti-lobbying mindset."
Wenhold added that the organization's attempts to open a dialogue with the administration have fallen on deaf ears.
(UPDATE @ 4:52 pm to add reaction from Doug Pinkham, president of the Public Affairs Council)
President Obama has asked government agencies not to fill positions on federal advisory boards and committees with federally registered lobbyists, Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, wrote on the White House blog Wednesday afternoon.
Eisen wrote:
"The White House has informed executive agencies and departments that it is our aspiration that federally-registered lobbyists not be appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions. These appointees to boards and commissions, which are made by agencies and not the President, advise the federal government on a variety of policy areas. Keeping these advisory boards free of individuals who currently are registered federal lobbyists represents a dramatic change in the way business is done in Washington."
Eisen said federally registered lobbyists that currently serve on these agency boards and committees, may continue, but "when these appointments expire, it is our hope that agencies not reappoint anyone who is currently registered as a federal lobbyist at the time of their potential reappointment."
Click here to read Eisen's whole post.
"It makes no sense to stifle discussion about important issues like trade by keeping experts out of the conversation," said Pinkham. "Eisen's statement shows no respect for professionals who work for companies, unions and nonprofits and happen to devote part of their time to advocacy."
Another lobbyist asked why Obama's campaign bundlers and big donors weren't also included in this latest effort to reduce special interest influence on government agency decisions.
We'll update as we have more commentary.
To some election law experts, dire warnings by vocal activists that faulty voting machines are threatening democracy tend to ring false.
After all, questionable machines are only one of the many problems plaguing an election system that's outmoded, decentralized and chronically underfunded. The best machines in the world won't help if local election officials can't hire and train enough poll workers and clean up their error-riddled voter registration lists.
But an industry shakeup that's placed one controversial vendor in charge of more than half the nation's voting technology has thrust the debate over machines squarely back into focus.
The sale earlier this month of Diebold Inc.'s election business to Election Systems and Software has alarmed election officials and civic watchdogs, and prompted calls on Capitol Hill for the Justice Department to intervene. A smaller, competing voting machines manufacturer has also filed suit.
"This acquisition may have serious adverse implications for how our country votes," wrote Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. Schumer, who chairs the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, urged the Justice Department to review the deal, which would give ES&S control of the election systems in 68 percent of the nation's voting precincts.
Continue reading Voting Machine Monopoly Threatens Elections.
The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct announced today that it has voted to extend investigations into activities by Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
The committee did not say what activity it was investigating regarding Graves or Waters.
It did say, however, that the investigation of Graves was authorized, though the committee "did not find a 'substantial reason to believe' that there was a substantive violation of any provisions of the Code of Official Conduct or any law, rule, regulation, or other standard," because the panel had identified "exculpatory evidence" gathered by the Office of Congressional Ethics that had not been provided to Graves, and "in the interests of justice" should have been provided to him.
In the case of Jackson, the committee said that it was investigating whether or not Jackson "may have offered to raise funds for then-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich in return for the appointment" to the Illinois Senate seat vacated by President Obama.
Late last week, the Treasury Department announced lobbying guidelines for communications regarding bailout funds, a year after the bailout package was passed by Congress.
The guidelines state that communications about Troubled Asset Relief Program funds between an outside person, registered lobbyist or not, and a Treasury Department official are not permitted once a formal application for funds has been submitted. Communications concerning logistics and communications at a "widely attended gathering" are allowed.
William Minor, a partner at DLA Piper said the guidelines appear to have been modeled on the rules the White House laid out for lobbying on the stimulus package.
The Hill reports on the guidelines also. See here.
Read the Treasury guidelines in full here.
The Supreme Court reheard oral arguments on Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission yesterday morning, examining two decisions underpinning laws that constrain corporations from spending on elections.
Court-watchers walked away predicting a win for Citizens United. What remains debatable is how broad the Court's decision will be.
Most broadly, the Court could entirely scrap Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and part of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, gutting some significant portions of campaign finance law including a ban on corporations using their treasury dollars to influence campaigns, and a ban on corporate funding for broadcast ads that mention federal candidates in the days leading up to a federal election.
The Court could also rule more narrowly, hewing closely to the particulars of the original issue, which involved whether the FEC was justified in limiting Citizens United's capacity to broadcast a disparaging film about then-candidate Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primary.
The Court's decision might not come for a while--experts guessed anywhere between a few weeks to the end of the year. In the meantime, yesterday morning's arguments provided new fodder for predicting where this case is headed.
Below, a handful of experts weigh in on what they saw as yesterday's key indicators--from Chief Justice Roberts' demeanor to the seeming concessions of Solicitor General Elena Kagan. In particular, they looked for signals on how broadly the Court will rule--agreeing very little about what yesterday portended.
They also graded Kagan and new Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor on their Supreme Court debuts.
Continue reading Citizens United Predicted To Win In High Court.
On Friday, Norm Eisen, the White House special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, wrote a blog post announcing the creation of a central repository for the public to track presidential appointees that received limited waivers from ethics rules.
Wrote Eisen:
"We have previously reported six limited waivers that have been granted by the White House pursuant to the President's Executive Order on Ethics for Executive Branch personnel - the strongest ethics standards in U.S. government history. Three of these waivers involved lobbying-related issues and three did not. We blogged about them here, here, and here.
Several months ago, the public-interest community suggested that we also make available in a central place limited waivers granted by other federal agencies besides the White House. Today, we are releasing all ten such agency-granted waivers (none of which involve lobbying). The President's Executive Order calls for an annual report to be completed in early 2010 that will include all waivers granted pursuant to the Order. We are, however, pleased to make all of the pledge waivers granted to date by this Administration available now--more than four months early."
UPDATED @ 4:23 PM to add Campaign Legal Center commen to court decision)
A federal appeals court today in Washington, ruling unanimously in favor of greater transparency in government, upheld the constitutionality of a reform law that requires associations to publicly disclose certain members who are active participants in lobbying.The National Association of Manufacturers, a regular lobbyist on issues that include global warming and nuclear power, challenged the constitutionality of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 in a suit filed last year in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The Campaign Legal Center applauded the court decision in a statement.
"Today's decision is a huge victory for sunlight on our political process. The ink was barely dry on the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) before the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) challenged the law in an attempt to keep the membership of its lobbying coalition secret. The challenged provision of HLOGA simply requires trade associations to reveal those member organizations that spend large sums of money to support the coalition's lobbying efforts. The Court of Appeals rightly found that the law was a reasonable measure to ensure "transparency in government" which "remains a vital national interest in a democracy."
On the eve of the Supreme Court's unusual Sept. 9 rehearing of the Citizens United case, in this week's National Journal (subscription required), I examine how conservative and Republican legal activists -- led by Indiana legal gadfly James Bopp -- have been stepping up challenges to campaign finance law as the Court has moved to the right.
If the Supreme Court overturns rulings that empower government to limit corporate spending on elections when it rehears Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in September, the impact could reverberate across the economy, afflicting "severe consequences on the openness, dynamism and operation of markets."
This is the argument the Center for Political
Accountability, a non-profit, and the
The CPA/Zicklin brief is one of numerous briefs filed in the past week weighing in on a case prompted by whether the FEC was justified in mandating that a 2008 film by the conservative non-profit Citizens United that negatively portrayed then-Democratic presidential primary candidate Hillary Clinton not be broadcast or advertised on television. The Court heard the case in June but decided to rehear it on September 9, before the start of the next term, a move that upped the ante by widening the scope of what the Court will consider.
Although many who oppose corporate spending in elections have sounded alarm bells about the case, the CPA/Zicklin brief stands out even among recently-filed briefs in that it wages a broad macroeconomic argument. Predicting doom and gloom for the financial system if the Court overturns decisions limiting corporate influence on the election process, the brief focuses on the nation's economic health rather than focusing more exclusively on elections.
"The brief introduces into the argument some justifications for corporate prohibition that have never been fully considered by the Court," said Karl Sandstrom, CPA's counsel, who authored the brief. Sandstrom, who is also of counsel at law firm Perkins Coie, noted that CPA comes at the case from a distinct perspective as an organization that works with shareholder advocates for transparency in corporate political spending. "[The brief] shows the large consequences the decision could have on the overall economy."
Continue reading Campaign Finance Opinion Could Roil Economy.
Federal and state regulators are moving aggressively to rein in so-called pay-to-play abuses -- the cozy deals that involve kickbacks or campaign contributions given in return for lucrative government contracts -- in the wake of a string of such scandals in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere, writes Eliza Newlin Carney in this week's column "Rules of the Game."
Investigations by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (D) and the Securities and Exchange Commission have led to charges that numerous investment firms in several states made millions in illegal payments in exchange for the right to manage public pension funds.
Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III (D) stepped down last week amid allegations that he took $25,000 from a federal informant in exchange for pledging to support a building project. Earlier this year, of course, there were the indictment of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) on pay-to-play conspiracy charges and the federal investigation involving New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D).
But even as officials at the SEC and in state legislatures take steps to end pay-to-play dealings, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are showing little interest in curbing contracting abuses. This despite a congressional ethics investigation involving the PMA Group, the now-defunct defense contractor, and growing White House impatience with spending bills loaded with defense industry earmarks.
Recently the SEC voted unanimously to propose new rules aimed at ending pay-to-play practices involving the $2.2 trillion tied up in public pensions and investments. The public funds -- which include the pension plans that pay retirement benefits to government employees -- represent a growing market for investment advisers. The rules also target advisers angling to manage the $104 billion now invested in so-called 529 college savings accounts.
Continue reading Congress Should Heed "Pay-To-Play" Scandals.
As Congress heads into its summer recess, some members have more worries to take home with them than others.
According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, 17 representatives and senators are known to currently be under investigation for breaking ethical standards. Of those under investigation, 13 are Democratic members and four are Republican members.
Charges range from steering earmarked funds toward associates to tax evasion to receiving preferential mortgage rates.
The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct does not release information regarding which members are under investigation, but a July committee report stated that 26 investigations had been underway since the beginning of the 111th Congress, 11 of which were carried over from the 110th Congress and 15 of which began this Congress. Four investigations had been resolved in that time period. A Senate Ethics Committee official couldn't be reached for comment.
According to CREW's records, the lawmakers currently under investigation are: Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Rep. Jesse Jackson, D-Ill., Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Rep. Gary Miller, R-Calif., Rep. Allan Mollohan, D-W.Va., Rep. Timothy Murphy, R-Pa., Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska.
Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that Richardson is under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics in relation to a home she owned in Sacramento that was in foreclosure.
So should the public wonder if Democrats as a part are more ethically challenged than Republicans at this point? CREW spokeswoman Naomi Seligman doesn't think so. She says more Democrats than Republicans are under investigation because more Democrats are in Congress right now.
"I don't think it indicates anything for the parties," Seligman said. "It takes power to abuse it. It's the cycle of things here."
Craig Holman, legislative representative for watchdog group Public Citizen, said it is typical that the majority party would be dealing with more ethics questions.
"A lot of the money and influence peddling is going to flow disproportionately towards Democrats," Holman said.
Holman is impressed with California Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi's leadership efforts on ethics reform despite the number of Democrats who are under investigation, saying she "has done a phenomenal job when it comes to passing the strictest ethics rules that we've seen on Capitol Hill."
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."
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
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.
From this week's National Journal: (subscription)
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.
Good government groups are using House Democrats' rush to pass climate change legislation to renew their call for more congressional deliberation and public input on major legislation.
"This Friday, Congress plans to vote on a bill that could fundamentally alter the American economy, dramatically affect the climate, and have huge implications for our national security. But, right now no one knows what's in the bill or how it came to be," said a release from the Sunlight Foundation, which leads a coalition called "ReadTheBill.org."
The coalition is supporting legislation introduced in mid-June by Reps. Brian Baird, D-Wash., and John Culberson, D-Texas that would require the House to post bills online 72 hours before they're debated.
The Sunlight Foundation notes that the American Clean Energy and Security Act--known as the "Cap and Trade Energy Bill" ballooned from a 946-page bill marked up by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to a 1201 page bill when it emerged after it negotiations with Agriculture Committee Chairman Colin Peterson, D-Minn.in mid-June, with little explanation.
With just 4 days before House leaders are promising a vote on June 26th, the bill was made available online in an unofficial version on the House Rules Committee's website. While that might seem to meet the 72-hour requirement Sunlight favors, foundation spokesman Gabriela Schneider says it is not much of a step forward.
"Technically, what was posted is not the final legislation because it hasn't even been introduced yet," she said by e-mail. "Moreover, most people don't know to look at the Rules Committee site."
This week's issue of National Journal profiles 366 Obama administration officials in our quadrennial "Decision Makers" special report. (subscription)
I thought readers might be interested in my profile of Norm Eisen, White House special counsel on ethics and government. Eisen wrote the ethics rules restricting federally registered lobbyists from working in the administration on policies they lobbied on in the past two years. He also wrote the March memo restricting lobbyist communications with executive branch officials with regard to the economic recovery package passed in February.
The Office of Management and Budget is expected to soon release detailed guidance on communication with executive branch officials on the stimulus projects.
President Obama is making a "sea change" on the issue of lobbying, Spencer A. Overton, principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, told attendees June 19 at the American Constitution Society's annual conference.
Overton's comment was given in response to a question, posed in writing to a panel of Obama officials, about the administration's policies with regard to federally registered lobbyists.
Any lobbyist hired by the administration is prohibited from working on a policy area on which they lobbied for the past two years, unless they receive a waiver. The aim was to reduce the influence of special interests on adminsitration decisions. The policy has had the effect of barring most lobbyists, including those who work for non-profit advocacy groups, from getting jobs in the administration, which has upset a large swath of Obama's progressive supporters. Obama administration officials also must comply with new restrictions designed to make communications with lobbyists more transparent.
Overton, a George Washington University legal professor currently on leave, was asked why Obama is treating lobbyists who work for nonprofits the same as lobbyists who work for corporate entities.
He said Obama understood the complaints, but wanted to establish that with his restrictions, he was "making a sea change with regard to those issues."
Overton said he had worked on the rules during the transition, and he said "it really was difficult." He said, "It is difficult to say these are the good lobbyists, and these are the bad lobbyists -- get them out of here."
The Office of Management and Budget is expected to issue guidance on its policies regarding lobbyist communication with executive branch offices within the next few weeks.
The Supreme Court's landmark Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. ruling has prompted sweeping predictions on both sides of the debate over judges and campaign money.
Some see the high court's June 8 ruling as a signal that states should reconsider the system of installing judges through election campaigns, which have become increasingly costly and hard-fought. Thirty-nine states elect at least some judges.
"I hope this decision will spur states to focus on whether our 19th-century method of selecting judges works well in the 21st century," said Thomas Phillips, the former chief justice of Texas and a partner at Baker Botts, in a recent interview with Legal Times. Phillips co-authored a brief in the Caperton v. Massey case on behalf of the Conference of Chief Justices.
On the flip side, critics of the 5-4 ruling -- including Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the dissenting opinion -- predict that it will unleash a wave of litigation and actually undermine the credibility of the courts. Roberts' dissent warns that the ruling creates an ambiguous standard that states will find difficult to enforce.
In fact, both scenarios miss the mark. The ruling's more likely outcome is that state supreme courts will establish and enforce clearer recusal rules for judges who may face conflicts of interest, guidelines that are long overdue.
To read more of Eliza Newlin Carney's column "Rules of The Game" click here.
The Obama administration has deftly defused a nasty argument with some of its allies over restrictions on lobbyists seeking economic stimulus money, but the war over how to regulate lobbyists is far from over, writes Eliza Newlin Carney in this week's "Rules of the Game" column.
The recent dispute over lobbying curbs tied to the $787 billion recovery package points up the need to revisit lobbying restrictions across the board, say reform advocates, who predict more rules changes ahead.
"Lobbying disclosure is certainly something that's moving back on the table," said John Wonderlich, policy director of the Sunlight Foundation. Discussions are under way in the administration and on Capitol Hill about reopening the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, Wonderlich added, with an eye toward broadening the definition of who qualifies as a lobbyist and requiring more real-time reporting.
Given the recent uproar over lobbyists' contact with the administration, however, any further changes are sure to kick up a fight. The administration generated enough of a stir when it issued a directive in March that barred executive branch officials from speaking with lobbyists seeking stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Continue reading War To Regulate Lobbyists Is Far From Over.
Given the outcry on K Street caused by President Obama's restrictions on lobbyist communications with executive branch officials on stimulus projects, I thought it worth a post on lobbyist support of the administration's decision to expand the restrictions to everyone.
From David Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyists:
"The American League of Lobbyists applaud the revisions to the White House's previous policy that limited lobbyists' communications on stimulus projects. In working with the WH, ALL, Citizens for Responsiblity and Ethics and the American Civil Liberties Union made suggestions about increasing transparency for all parties petitioning the government and not limiting access to one group of law abiding, compliant citizens who happen to have the job title of lobbyists. Increasing accountability for all parties is important and so is removing the restricting on lobbyists meetings because oftentimes the lobbyists are the subject matter experts and merit based decision making often relies on this expertise. ALL is proud to have represented and ensured that lobbyists voices have and will remain to be heard in these important discussions."
UPDATED @ 6 PM:
Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, posted a comment on the White House blog explaining the amendments to the president's directive on communications with executive branch officials regarding stimulus package grants. See post here.
Eisen said that once the "merit-based" decision on a grant has been made, a lobbyist can communicate orally with government officials regarding the project.
Meanwhile, Public Citizen applauds the White House's move. See statement here.
Earlier:
The Obama administration expanded the ban on oral communication between lobbyists and executive branch officials with regard to stimulus projects to include anyone who has submitted an application for a grant, according to advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Those applying for grants will still be able to communicate with officials in writing.
"The White House announced updates to President Obama's March 20, 2009 Memorandum on Ensuring Responsible Spending of Recovery Act Funds. That policy barred lobbyists from engaging in oral conversations with agency officials regarding specific requests for Recovery Act funds. The new policy will bar not just lobbyists, but everyone from speaking with agency officials about competitive grants once grant applications have been submitted. Written communications will be permitted." according a CREW release.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW applauded the move as a way "to level the playing field to ensure that corporate bigwigs and major donors who do not register as lobbyists do not benefit from an inside track unavailable to those less politically influential."
Sloan had joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and the American League of Lobbyists to protest the March 20 directive which initially only applied to federally registered lobbyists.
A White House official couldn't be reached for comment.
The comment period on President Obama's March 20 executive order detailing rules for lobbyists' contacts with the administration on stimulus projects ended yesterday. David Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyists, submitted suggested rules revisions to the White House, but he doesn't expect that the administration will adopt his recommendations. Instead, his group is preparing to take the administration to court over the rules, and ALL is soliciting other organizations to join the fight.
The issue is a ban on oral communications from lobbyists to federal officials. "I want the president to succeed as much as any other guy but not at the cost of anyone's right to petition the government," said Wenhold on Monday at a compliance conference held at the office of McKenna, Long & Aldridge, a firm that represents some in the lobbying industry.
"I've never gotten a good answer [from the White House] as to what is improper influence," said Wenhold.
-- Eliza Krigman
Even as Congress and the Obama administration mull a new round of campaign finance regulations, a series of legal challenges threatens to dismantle the existing rules, election law experts warn, according to "Rules Of The Game."
Emboldened by the court's tilt to the right under Chief Justice John Roberts, conservatives who champion the First Amendment have mounted more than 20 challenges to election laws in both federal and state court recently, according to a recent analysis by the Campaign Legal Center.
At least one of these, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, is already before the Supreme Court and will be decided by the end of June. Other cases, most notably Republican National Committee v. FEC and SpeechNow.org v. FEC, are working their way through the lower courts and appear inevitably headed to the high court.
What worries lawyers defending the existing regulations is not that the Roberts court will overturn the campaign finance rules wholesale. Rather, they foresee the Supreme Court continuing its pattern over the past two years of chipping away at the building blocks of the current campaign finance regime. These include contribution limits, disclosure requirements and the ban on direct corporate and labor expenditures, which some warn are now under siege.
"Slowly but surely, the move is toward deregulation," said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, at a May 8 conference on money in politics at the National Press Club. The event was sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
Though lobbying reports filed with Congress show that 871 lobbyists registered in the first quarter of 2009 to lobby on the stimulus package, only 12 of them appear on filings that government agencies are now required to post online under the Obama administration's new rules related to lobbyist communication with the executive branch, ProPublica reports.
The story suggests that lobbying firms are handing off the formal influence duties to lawyers and junior staff who aren't registered to lobby and hence don't fall under the new restrictions.
Under a March 20 directive, lobbyists may not talk directly to executive branch officials about specific projects funded by the stimulus package and instead must put all requests in writing.
Under a 60-day review period, the administration is currently examining feedback about the rules from the K Street community. Critics say that the rules are reducing transparency rather than increasing it, as intended.
ProPublica has also put together a who's who list on those lobbying on the stimulus. See here.
Daniel Schulman, policy counsel for the Sunlight Foundation, flagged us on his video (4 min., 30 sec.) explaining President Obama's rules on lobbyists' communications with the executive branch on stimulus funding.
Take a look here.
It's easy to see why some good government advocates are upset that President Obama has tapped labor lawyer John J. Sullivan to serve on the Federal Election Commission.
Labor unions fought to block the landmark McCain-Feingold legislation that banned soft money, joining in an unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge in 2003. More recently the Service Employees International Union, where Sullivan is associate general counsel, has urged the FEC to relax its enforcement both of disclosure rules and of limits on coordination between candidates and outside groups.
Sullivan's selection bodes poorly for Obama's pledges to fix the dysfunctional FEC, complained J. Gerald Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center.
"The gusto with which Mr. Sullivan has bashed important elements of McCain-Feingold and repeatedly taken radical deregulatory positions does not inspire confidence that he will have different views if confirmed to the Commission," Hebert warned in a statement.
But Sullivan's critics would do well to remember another labor lawyer whose nomination prompted similar dire warnings back in 2005. President Bush's nomination of Robert Lenhard also caused a stir among reform advocates, who objected at that time that Lenhard, too, had challenged the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold as associate general counsel of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
As it turns out, Lenhard went on to help preside over what in hindsight looks like one of the FEC's more productive recent phases. Not that Lenhard's every decision was lauded by good government watchdogs. But compared with today's FEC -- which in recent months has bogged down repeatedly in partisan deadlocks and public disputes -- Lenhard's tenure looks like a virtual model of efficiency.
To Read More, click on "Rules of the Game."
John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation writes about a May 6 meeting he and his colleagues and others in the nonprofit community had with White House officials on President Obama's rules for lobbyists.
Many in the nonprofit world have been highly critical of the revolving-door rules, which have eliminated many lobbyists for nonprofits from being considered for administration posts. And many on K Street have been critical of the administration's rules restricting lobbyists' communications to writing when it comes to discussing specific stimulus requests with executive branch officials.
Wonderlich provides both an interesting defense and a criticism of the rules. He writes:
"To me, this looks like an imperfect law (the Lobbying Disclosure Act)
being used as a foundation for imperfect lobbying restrictions, in the
face of enormous and unprecedented stimulus spending. Whether the
restrictions are proportional to the sudden need for competent spending
is certainly up for debate. There seems to be little debate, however
over whether the LDA is a sufficient vehicle for lobbying regulation.
It isn't. The LDA requirements are easily skirted, enforcement is lax,
and many terms are insufficiently defined. (It's probably fair to say
that position was the consensus of the groups present, but certainly
not presented as administration policy.)"
Read more at Sunlight Foundation.
The George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management hosted a forum Tuesday looking at the Obama administration's lobbying rules. White House ethics adviser Norman Eisen defended the restrictions. And one panel discussed crafting appropriate government policies for lobbying. Panelists, from left to right, were: Melanie Sloan, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; Leo Wise, Office of Congressional Ethics; Moderator Steven Roberts, GW's SMPA; Ron Christie, Christie Strategies; and Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation. Video highlights and a write-up of the event follows.
At a forum at George Washington University Tuesday, White House ethics adviser Norman Eisen touted the "open-door" policies of the White House and said that restrictions the administration has placed on lobbyists have been created in the interest of striving for merit-based decision-making.
"What we have attempted to do in defining the public interest is to embark on a ... compact with the American people that we will not be subjected to the influences ... that have waylaid good policy, but really will attempt to be guided by that point on the horizon that represents the best thing for the country," said Eisen, who was a partner at law firm Zuckerman Spaeder and co-founded watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington before joining the administration.
Eisen said that the administration recognizes that there are challenges in figuring out how to create a transparent and effective policy-making environment, but is gathering "evidence" on the impact of ethics rules by meeting with lobbyists to hear their opinions.
"One of the striking things that does not come across [in the media] is the level of agreement that lobbyists and others have with us with respect to the stimulus lobbying rules," Eisen said.
Continue reading White House's Eisen: K Street Rules Evolving.
Four outside groups today sent a letter to House Ethics Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. and ranking member Jo Bonner, R-Ala., asking that they open an investigation into the defunct lobbying firm PMA Group and its relationship to House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., and Reps. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., and James Moran, D-Va., CongressDailyPM reported.
Democracy 21, Common Cause, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG cannot file a complaint with the committee, but they said in the letter that "there is currently no public information to indicate that any ethics investigation is taking place."
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio at a news briefing, stopped short of calling for the panel to investigate, but said, "The Ethics Committee has a job to do and I hope they do it."
The Ethics Committee does not identify matters it is considering, and the groups noted that many of the issues it wants investigated occurred before the Office of Congressional Ethics was created. The groups said the committee should "determine whether these House members were influenced by campaign contributions and other financial benefits in providing earmarks for clients of the PMA Group."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., chair of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics), today announced that Blake Chisam would serve as committee staff director and chief counsel. Chisam assumes his new role on Friday. The position has been vacant since last summer. "I'm certain that Blake will bring the same professionalism and dedication to the committee that he has demonstrated through his career," Lofgren said. Currently, Chisam serves as counsel and senior policy advisor to Lofgren. In the previous session of Congress he worked as senior counsel at the House Judiciary Committee.
Last summer, the ethics panel suffered through a difficult period when then-Chairwoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, passed away unexpectedly. The committee finished the 110th Congress with an interim chair and an interim staff director.
-- Eliza Krigman
Government reform groups issued a statement today in support of President Obama's policies to restrict lobbyists' influence in Washington and to increase transparency.
"Above and beyond the specific steps President Obama has taken in the first hundred days, his actions represent a larger challenge to the way business is done in Washington," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21. "That itself has been a very important step to challenging the influence culture of Washington."
The groups joining Democracy 21 were: Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG.
Beyond praising Obama's revolving door policies and transparency initiatives, the statement stressed the need for reforming campaign finance laws. Wertheimer characterized campaign finance as the "800 pound guerilla" in the battle to reform the inordinate influence of money in Washington.
The full statement can be read here
-- Eliza Krigman
"Is there really a lobbyist problem" and if one exists what should the government do about it?
This is a question that panelists at a forum hosted by George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management plan to explore next week as part of an event on ethics and leadership in public life. Slated topics for the May 5th conference include "Crafting Appropriate Government Policies for Lobbying" and "Bringing Real Change to Washington Policy Making" and speakers include Bob Edgar of Common Cause, former Rep. Butler Derrick, D-S.C., George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, Leo Wise of the Office of Congressional Ethics and Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation.
An invite to the forum notes that both "presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain focused a significant amount of attention on the role of lobbyists and their potentially corrupting influence on the policy making process." The invite states that since taking office, "President Obama has severely restricted the ability of lobbyists to be appointed to positions in the administration and limited employment possibilities in the lobbying arena for former administration officials."
-- Winter Casey
Pity the poor lobbyist.
First, President Obama imposed strict revolving-door rules on lobbyists seeking jobs in his administration. More recently, the White House has banned executive branch officials from even talking to lobbyists eager to steer economic stimulus money to their clients. (Lobbyists must instead communicate in writing.)
Both moves have prompted heated protests on K Street, and not just from predictable players such as the American League of Lobbyists. Some public-sector activists now argue that the administration's revolving-door rules are "causing serious, unintended harms to nonprofit organizations," as they put it in a recent memo to the White House. A coalition that includes civil rights and good-government organizations also has attacked the stimulus lobbying rules as "an ill-advised restriction on speech."
It's easy to see why lobbyists are upset. After all, the president's new lobbying and ethics regime has caused a lot of pain without getting at the root cause of undue influence in Washington -- namely, the political money system that makes lawmakers depend on lobbyists for campaign cash. Obama has said he wants to fix the public financing system and strengthen enforcement, but has yet to follow through. (He's had a few other things on his plate.)
Still, it's hard to feel too sorry for the lobbyists who argue that Obama's ethics rules are either unconstitutionally stringent or should apply to everyone but them. Organizers for nonprofits object that the revolving-door rules, for example, lump public-sector lobbyists together with those representing "pecuniary" interests. They've asked the White House to essentially carve out a blanket exemption for all job seekers who lobby for 501(c)3 nonprofit or 501(c)4 social welfare groups.
To read more of Eliza Newlin Carney's column, "Rules of The Game," click here.
Representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, American League of Lobbyists and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington met on Friday afternoon with White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform Norm Eisen to discuss President Obama's restrictions on lobbyist communication with executive branch officials related to the stimulus pacakge.
The administration issued the restrictions in a March 20 executive branch memo. The president's memo prohibits administration officials from talking to registered lobbyists in person or on the phone about specific stimulus projects. Instead, lobbyists must put their requests in writing to be posted online. Lobbyists may talk directly to administration officials only about "general policy" related to the stimulus.
The ACLU, ALL and CREW have formed a loose coalition to urge the administration to reverse the March 20 memo. They also have suggested the rules may be a violation of the first amendment. See my story in National Journal. (subscription)
In a press release, Dave Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyists said the meeting with Eisen was "a frank and open discussion."
"We were happy to meet with Norm Eisen and his great team," Wenhold said. "We look forward to working with the Administration to create a policy which truly increases transparency for all, as opposed to the current guidelines which singles out some."
--Bara Vaida
A Washington Post story today is likely to generate more questions from lawmakers about whether companies receiving federal bailout funds are using that money to oppose efforts to impose more rules on their companies.
Top recipients of federal bailouts spent more than $10 million on political lobbying in the first three months of this year, including aggressive efforts aimed at blocking executive pay limits and tougher financial regulations, the Post says.
Back in January, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, reintroduced legislation (S.133) that would block firms receiving money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) from using those funds to lobby. Not much has been heard on the topic since. These numbers might renew interest in Feinstein and Snowe's bill, though lawyers say such legislation could be unconstitutional.
--Bara Vaida
In just over a month in the watchdog business, the new Office of Congressional Ethics has launched 10 reviews of possible misconduct by House officials, according to the first quarterly report of the new outfit.
The report, issued April 15, provides the public's first peek at the workings of the new non-partisan office-- which was voted into being by the House just over a year ago. Although the report covers the office's activities from January through March 2009, the eight member board couldn't actually set about its mission of policing ethics until it finalized rules governing its investigations and a code of conduct, which were completed in late February.
In the remaining time, the Office heard from more than three dozen private citizens, authorized both preliminary and follow-up reviews of half a dozen allegations of misconduct against House officials, and begin preliminary probes of four other allegations.
There's no detail on who or what was probed, since the investigations are confidential, but the Chicago Sun-Times, has reported that the office is probing possibly improper involvement by Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., in Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's alleged attempts to sell a vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. If the office votes to refer a matter to the House Ethics Committee, that referral becomes public at some point; but because the office hadn't finished the second phase of its reviews by the time of the report, no referrals had yet been made.
--Julie Kosterlitz
Per President Obama's March 20 directive, executive branch agencies working on stimulus- related projects have started posting their communications with lobbyists online.
The Sunlight Foundation has more on the disclosures. Not all agencies have started posting the communications and for those that are, there doesn't seem to be a uniform way of labeling the documents, which obviously will make it harder for the public to actually find them.
Go check out the Sunlight Foundation and click on some of their links to agencies. I'd be interested to see what you think about these disclosures and whether they are providing meaningful information to the public. Feel free to Email me.
--Bara Vaida
Last week, I wrote about a growing number of non-profit lobbyists who were frustrated that the Obama administration's broad ethics rules have excluded them from positions in the executive branch.
I noted that Larry Ottinger, president of the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest and Stephen Rickard, Washington director of the Open Society Institute, have formed a loose coalition to push the White House to amend its ethics rules to delineate between lobbyists who are public interest advocates and those who pursue private monetary gain.
Here's the letter sent to the White House on April 9.
Non-profit lobbyists' memo to Eisen.pdfA spokesman from the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest says his group has yet to receive an answer from the administration. We'll update the story as we learn more. I'm sure this won't be the end of the debate about whether Obama's ethics rules are too broad.
--Bara Vaida
As the Sunlight Foundation noted this morning, the Office of Management and Budget has published a memo clarifying rules for lobbyist communication with executive branch officials regarding the stimulus package.
The Obama administration's March 20 announcement on the lobbyist restrictions has caused lots of consternation on K Street, including questions about whether the rules are a violation of lobbyists' first amendment rights.
Take a look at the memo here
OMB memo.pdf--Bara Vaida
Lobbyists for public interest groups are feeling increasingly frustrated that President Obama's broad ethics rules are preventing them from getting jobs in his administration.
So they're fighting back. Larry Ottinger, president of the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest and Stephen Rickard, Washington director of the Open Society Institute, have formed a loose coalition to push the White House to amend its ethics rules to delineate between lobbyists who are public interest advocates and lobbyists who pursue private monetary gain.
Under Obama's ethics guidelines, executive branch officials may hire a lobbyist, but that person cannot work in an area of policy for which they lobbied on for two years. That rule has been waived for three former lobbyists that now have jobs in the administration, but for no one else.
Ottinger and Rickard think the administration should consider several options for changing the policy. Amend the rule so it doesn't apply to public interest lobbyists; or issue a statement saying the rules don't apply to public interest lobbyists; or expand the number of waivers being offered to public interest lobbyists. The suggestions will be made in a letter being sent to the White House. Other organizations signing onto the letter are Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, OMB Watch, and the Project on Government Oversight.
Obama's executive order is "causing serious, unintended harm to nonprofit organizations who want and need to participate in our democracy," the letter is expected to say.
Public interest lobbyists are defined as those working for 501 (c) 3 and 501 (c) 4 organizations (advocacy and educational groups), but not unions or 501 (c) 6 groups (Usually trade associations). See our definitions of these groups on the right hand side of the blog under "Lobbying and Campaign Finance 101."
Readers, we'd be interested in your thoughts on this topic, should public interest lobbyists be exempt from the administration rules? Email me.
In National Journal last week, White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform Norm Eisen said his door "is always open" and he's willing to talk to those protesting President Obama's restrictions on lobbyist communications related to the stimulus package.
So American League of Lobbyists President David Wenhold decided to take Eisen up on that offer and gave his office a call. And indeed, Eisen was willing to meet with him to talk about the restrictions and other matters related to lobbyists. Eisen's office is currently working to find a date and time for the meeting.
Last week, Wenhold's group joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in writing a letter to the administration asking Obama to rescind his March 20 directive on lobbying. The president's memo prohibits administration officials from talking to registered lobbyists in person or on the phone about specific stimulus projects. Instead, lobbyists must put their requests in writing to be posted online. Lobbyists may talk directly to administration officials only about "general policy" related to the stimulus.
"Their willingness [to meet] is a sign that this is a serious issue and they are willing to listen and hopefully work with the American League of Lobbyists, the ACLU and CREW on good-government policies," said Wenhold. "The breadth of the coalition demonstrates to the White House that this issue is about the ability for everyone having the same right to petition the government, regardless of job title."
--Bara Vaida
Congress Daily's Andrew Noyes reports at TechDailyDose that campaign finance clearinghouse OpenSecrets.org, which is run by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, is going "open data" next week, according to an e-mail circulated by the center on Thursday. For the first time in CRP's 26-year history the money-in-politics watchdog is making its most popular data archives fully available to the public for download for free.
Officials hope that OpenSecrets.org, a four-time Webby winner for best politics site, will remain the go-to independent source for most people interested in "following the money" but now the skilled data-diver can explore the information that's already aggregated on the site to its full depth. CRP is expecting all sorts of data mash-ups, maps and other cool projects to result from the new capability.
Transparency group the Sunlight Foundation helped fund OpenSecrets.org's OpenData initiative to make millions of records available under a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike" license. CRP will continue to offer its data to commercial users for a fee.
On the campaign trail, President Obama promised to increase the transparency of government. Among the pledges he made was to create a centralized database on lobbying.
The Sunlight Foundation has proposed something similar, saying the executive branch should create and administer a website aggregating disclosures of meetings between government officials and lobbyists.
Under the Sunlight vision, meetings between executive branch political appointees and lobbyists would be posted on the site after each meeting is held. In the filings would be the names of the agency, the employees that attended the meeting, the lobbyist whom the government official met with and any clients the lobbyist represents. The site would also allow the public to track the meetings by lobbyist, subject matter, agency and official.
"We think the president is headed in the right direction: more real time, online disclosure of lobbying activity," said Sunlight Foundation Policy Director John Wonderlich in a statement. "Imagine having this sort of information from across the federal government right now -- being able to track who lobbying, and what each of those discussions is about."
Sunlight is also urging both Congress and the administration to expand the legal definition of a lobbyist to include anyone paid to engage in direct issue advocacy with lawmakers, staff and executive branch officials. Currently, the law only requires individuals who spend more than 20 percent of their time lobbying for a client, and who also make more than two contacts with executive branch or congressional officials to register to lobby. Anyone who is below that threshold, doesn't have to register.
James Thurber, a professor of government at American University, called the Sunlight proposal a "terrific idea." Thurber has long argued that there are thousands of people in Washington connected to advocacy who operate under the radar because they aren't required to register to lobby.
Last week a coalition of lobbyist, advocacy, and watchdog groups wrote a letter to White House officials, challenging Obama's new order which restricts the way in which registered lobbyists may communicate with administration officials regarding the stimulus.
The directive prohibits administration officials from talking to registered lobbyists in person or on the phone about specific stimulus projects. Lobbyists may put their requests in writing and those comments then are to be posted online. They may also talk directly to administration officials, but only about "general policy."
-- Winter Casey and Bara Vaida
Given the White House's efforts to reduce the influence of lobbyists, I thought it interesting to pay attention to the ethics commitments of its staff.
ProPublica, an independent, non-profit investigative news organization, has copies of the ethics commitment letters written by some of President Obama's prominent political appointees. In the letters, officials promise to comply with government ethics rules and list their conflicts of interest, past and present. Take a look here.
They include letters by the Pentagon's number two, William Lynn, Attorney General Eric Holder and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
ProPublica also analyzed the financial disclosure filings of 179 appointees.
--Bara Vaida
From this week's National Journal: (subscription)
Given lobbyists' interest in how they may communicate with the Obama administration regarding the stimulus package, I thought this story would be of interest:
With an eye toward increased transparency and timeliness, the Obama administration plans to impose more reporting requirements on federal agencies dispensing economic stimulus funds, CongressDailyPM reported. (subscription)
OMB Deputy Director Rob Nabors told the the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that his agency will issue guidelines Friday that will require more deep and frequent reporting of the details of contract and subcontract recipients of stimulus funds.
--Bara Vaida
The Government Accountability Office estimates in a new report that about 6 percent of disclosure reports filed with Congress last year under the Lobbying Disclosure Act incorrectly reported income or expenses related to lobbying activity.
The GAO randomly audited 100 of 40,169 lobbying disclosure reports filed in the first 9 months of 2008 and found that 14 percent of the lobbyists or lobbying firms had incorrectly reported too much or too little income related to lobbying activity, or could not explain why their internal company documents contradicted their lobbying reports sent to Congress. Based on that figure, the GAO estimated that a total of 6 percent of reports had "erroneous" income information.
The report also said that in Dec. 2008 the Secretary of the Senate referred 242 LDA non-compliance cases to the U.S. Attorney's Office covering the mid-2007 reporting period. The U.S. Attorney's Office acted on 190 of those cases and compliance letters were sent on Jan. 9, 2009. No further information was provided.
The GAO said as of April 2009 the U.S. Attorney has created an electronic method of keeping track of violations of the lobbying law and it has assigned more staff to enforcement of the lobbying rules.
The GAO findings were first reported today in BNA's Money & Politics Report.
--Bara Vaida
UPDATE (March 31 4:17 pm) In response to the letter, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said:
"The
goal is full transparency. That's entirely consistent with the First
Amendment. Lobbyists can communicate about specific projects in writing and
about policy issues orally. That fully respects freedom of speech - while at
the same time ending closed-door lobbyist dealmaking in favor of sunlight. We
welcome everyone's comments and will consider them."
President Obama's March 20 directive limiting lobbyists' communication with executive branch officials "won't get rid of undue influence" and will result in less disclosure and transparancy, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in a Tuesday press briefing.
Sloan has joined with Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union and Dave Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyists, in writing a letter requesting the administration rescind a portion of the directive aimed at reducing lobbyists' influence on how the $787 billion stimulus package is spent.
"CREW whole-heartedly supports Obama's goals, but demonizing lobbyists isn't the solution," said Sloan, whose group has been one of the loudest voices against the influence of "special interests" in Washington.
Continue reading Critics Challenge White House Lobbyist Rules.
Here's the letter that the American Civil Liberties Union, the American League of Lobbyists and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent to White House Counsel Greg Craig, challenging the administration's memo limiting lobbyists' communication with executive branch officials on the stimulus package.
ACLU et al Letter to White House.pdf
The three groups are holding a press briefing at 1 pm to discuss the letter.
--Bara Vaida
Two more groups, the American Society for Association Executives and the Center for Competitive Politics, have penned letters to President Obama in opposition of the administration's memo on lobbyist communication with the executive branch regarding the stimulus package.
See here:
UPDATE (March 30, 4:15 p.m.) -- Here is the news release issued by CREW, ACLU, and the American League of Lobbyists about tomorrow's briefing.
CREW, ACLU, ALL.pdf_______________________________________________
The American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the American League of Lobbyists will challenge President Obama on his new policy severely limiting lobbyists' communication with all executive branch departments and agencies.
The three groups are drafting a letter that is to be delivered to the White House on Tuesday raising First Amendment questions about Obama's March 20 memo directing the entire executive branch not to talk with lobbyists about specific projects in the economic stimulus package. A lobbyist may send a letter explaining their client's viewpoint on a specific project, but they may not have a conversation about it with administration officials. They can, however, discuss "general policy" related to the stimulus with administration staff.
Lobbyists have a good chance if they do legally challenge the memo, says Ken Gross, who leads the politics practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
"If a lobbyist is excluded from a meeting as a result of a presidential directive or agency policy or ruling, the lobbyist would likely have a cause of action under the First Amendment and possibly equal protection," Gross says. "The chances of succeeding of winning such a challenge are reasonably good."
A White House spokesman wasn't available for comment. What is interesting about these three groups working together is that CREW was co-founded by Norm Eisen, Obama's ethics advisor. We'll have more on this story as it unfolds online and in this week's magazine.
News of the three groups working together on the letter was first reported by the Associated Press.
--Bara Vaida
Many lobbyists have grumbled to me about the number of fundraising solicitations they get from lawmakers, and a few of them are putting their money where their mouth is.
Congressmen-turned-lobbyists Butler Derrick, D-S.C., Toby Moffett, D-Conn., and Marty Russo, D-Ill., along with Cassidy & Associates founder Gerry Cassidy and Ed Gabriel, president of the Gabriel Co., are joining with campaign reform advocates like Common Cause and Public Citizen to support public financing of campaigns. The aim is to reduce the amount of money that lawmakers rely on from "special interest" donors.
Lawmakers are "only dealing with the edges when they say a lobbyist can't pay for a dinner, or can't give gifts," said Russo, who is now CEO and vice chairman of Cassidy & Associates. "That is all a distraction from the big issue, which is money. Money is the problem."
The five are supporting the Fair Elections Now Act, which is scheduled to be introduced in the next week. The measure, co-sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and in the House by Reps. John Larson, D-Conn., and Walter Jones, R-N.C., would combine private funding from small donors with public matching grants up to a fixed amount as a way to boost the power of small donors in congressional races and reduce lawmakers' reliance on campaign bundlers, political action committees and lobbyists.
From this morning's Earlybird:
• "Irate over the demonization of their profession, lobbyists say they will push back against a new White House directive aimed at limiting lobbyists' influence on how the government doles out $787 billion in stimulus funds," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "The Obama administration memo released Friday says lobbyists cannot meet or speak with executive branch officials regarding specific stimulus projects or applications."
• "The eight largest banks receiving government bailout funds cut back on their campaign contributions in February amid a public backlash toward Wall Street, but Bank of America doled out more than $150,000 to federal politicians," The Hill reports. "The bank's political action committee (PAC) gave the most money of the eight firm PACs in February, contributing to a range of campaign committees as well as to lawmakers' and other corporate PACs, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Bank of America has received $45 billion in federal bailout money."
• "The companies that announced an alternative to the union-backed Employee Free Choice Act over the weekend stepped into the middle of a firefight and became targets of both sides," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. "Starbucks, Whole Foods and Costco announced last weekend they were forming the Committee for a Level Playing Field and, with the backing of Democratic operative Lanny Davis, would set out to promulgate six principles for labor-law reform that provided an alternative to EFCA."
Is the Senate finally ready to start filing campaign finance reports electronically?
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., hopes so. Often a pioneer of government accountability initiatives, Feingold has re-introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act to require senatorial candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically with the Secretary of the Senate. After unsuccessful attempts to pass this legislation in the past three sessions of Congress, Feingold and primary co-sponsors Sens. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., hope to push the Senate into modern technological practices.
"This commonsense bill to make our electoral system more transparent is long overdue," Feingold said in a statement after re-introducing the bill. "The Senate should catch up with the House, the President, and the many Senators who already voluntarily file electronically by passing this reform which has broad bipartisan support." Introduced on Feb. 26, the bill already has 31 co-sponsors.
Under the current system of paper filing, the final disclosure reports of senatorial candidates are not available to the public until after the election due to the time it takes the Federal Election Commission to process the paperwork. Filing on paper not only delays making the information available to the public, but it's also costly. The FEC told Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, that $250,000 goes out to vendors to keystroke the information into a computer. That figure doesn't include the paper cost of printing out hundreds of reports to be transported to the FEC.
During the last session of Congress, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., killed the e-filing legislation by insisting on an unrelated and controversial amendment to require groups that file ethics complaints to disclose their donors. The Center for Responsive Politics reported that Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., might float the same amendment to stymie the bill once again.
"I think the amendment [if introduced by Roberts] is a non sequitur," said Malbin. "If it is adopted, the purpose would be to bring down the Senate electronic filing requirement."
(Photo by Liz Lynch)
--Eliza Krigman
Obama's ongoing battle with K Street continued today. In a speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Obama said any lobbyist who wants to talk to a member of his administration must put their viewpoints in writing, to be posted on the Internet. He said these restrictions on lobbyists will help ensure that "lobbyists don't stand in the way of our recovery."
Here's the relevant graph:
