Back in October lunacanus posted about lobbyists anger because they were going to be bounced off advisory panels. K Street has been in an uproar about it but President Obama’s promise to limit the influence lobbyists have on legislation is being kept.
I thought at the time I read this on the White House site and then posted about it that it could be one of the most far reaching and important things done to limit big money corporations and their ability to change laws in their favor. Now attention is being focused on this little noticed act by the Obama Administration by the press.
Lobbyists are up in arms and claim nothing can get done in DC without their input. They say the government will be severely crippled. My question is, how in the world did anything ever get done before lobbyists? Are members of the Senate, The House and their staffers going to have to do research themselves? Will this force them to make decisions by weighing the facts and coming to their own conclusions by using their best judgement? Is this all too hard for them?
From the Washington Post:
Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists are likely to be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street’s influence in Washington, according to White House officials and lobbying experts.
The new policy — issued with little fanfare this fall by the White House ethics counsel — may turn out to be the most far-reaching lobbying rule change so far from President Obama, who also has sought to restrict the ability of lobbyists to get jobs in his administration and to negotiate over stimulus contracts.
The initiative is aimed at a system of advisory committees so vast that federal officials don’t have exact numbers for its size; the most recent estimates tally nearly 1,000 panels with total membership exceeding 60,000 people.
Under the policy, which is being phased in over the coming months, none of the more than 13,000 lobbyists in Washington would be able to hold seats on the committees, which advise agencies on trade rules, troop levels, environmental regulations, consumer protections and thousands of other government policies.
“Some folks have developed a comfortable Beltway perch sitting on these boards while at the same time working as lobbyists to influence the government,” said White House ethics counsel Norm Eisen, who disclosed the policy in a September blog posting on the White House Web site. “That is just the kind of special interest access that the president objects to.”
But lobbyists and many of the businesses they represent say K Street is being unfairly demonized by a White House intent on scoring political points with scandal-weary voters. They warn that the latest policy will severely handicap federal regulators, who rely heavily on advisory boards for technical advice and to serve as liaisons between government and industry.
“It’s taken me years to learn what the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is,” said Robert Vastine, a lobbyist for the Coalition of Service Industries who also serves as chairman of a trade advisory board. “It’s a whole different and specialized world. It is not easily obtained knowledge, and they are crippling themselves terribly by ruling out all registered lobbyists.”
Read the rest here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/26/AR2009112602362_pf.html
I would find this almost laughable, but it is just too sad.
If you do not have time to read the entire Washington Post article, I have also included this bit that seems to me to pretty much wrap it up.
Administration officials remain sanguine, saying the criticism is overblown and arguing that top corporate officers are free to sit on advisory panels as long as they aren’t lobbyists. Eisen, in a response letter to the ITAC leaders last month, wrote that “arguments that only lobbyists can bring requisite experience to provide wise counsel . . . are unconvincing on their face.”
“If the result of this new approach is that business owners join the conversation in D.C. about issues affecting them, that’s fine,” Eisen said in an interview. “It’s healthy to move away from the professional advocates for the special interests and let some new voices be heard.”
And though lobbyists are unhappy, some good-government advocates say the policy is sound.
“You may lose a lot of expertise, but these people are also paid to have a point of view; they have an agenda,” said Mary Boyle, a vice president at Common Cause. “We support what the administration is doing to get deep-seated special interests out of the business of running our government, so this seems like a step in the right direction.”
Bravo! to the Obama Administration.
Highly paid lobbyists will be leaving and they wil be replaced by the actual people that live day to day with the subject they are advising about. This seems like a good way to get a lot of corporate dollars and influence out of DC.
