Another Obama Reality Check - Lobbying Edition
On the campaign trail, President-elect Obama promised a “fundamental change” in our government. Even before he was elected, though, he’d already succeeded in killing public financing of elections. That means special interests will continue to bribe politicians with massive sums for their political campaigns. VP-elect Joe Biden isn’t exactly a crusader for change on this front either. He pays for his travel and maintenance on his 6800 square foot house with money he supposedly raises for his reelections.
Now, it looks like the Obama administration might take a less than sweeping approach to another cancerous form of influence peddling in our political system: lobbying. From CQ Politics:
President-elect Obama is already backing off his pledge not to hire any lobbyists to serve in his administration. But one prominent hired gun - Stuart Pape, managing partner at the biggest lobbying firm in Washington - expects that Obama will soon after taking office set new disclosure requirements for lobbyists trying to influence executive branch officials.
“You’ll see by executive order maybe a requirement for disclosure of lobbying of executive branch officials that will in a rough way parallel what goes on now with congressional officials”
This is his “fundamental change”? To force White House lobbyists to register? To force them to jump through the same bunch of meaningless, purely symbolic hoops that they have to jump through when they lobby Congress? Disclosure, even on such a small scale is always good. But for Chrissakes, companies spent almost $3 billion lobbying Congress last year. Does Obama think making lobbyists register changed anything? Like so many non-reform reforms in Washington, this new requirement sounds like it will probably just mean more work for bureaucrats:
How the system would work is another question. Presumably, the executive order could not require lobbyists to file with the House and Senate under the existing system, says Brett Kappel, a lobbying expert at the law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease. So the forms would have to go to the White House. That would present a big logistical problem.
“We’re talking about a ton of paper,” says Kappel.
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