The Downside of Anti-lobbyist Rhetoric by Obama and Edwards

The Politico has picked up on the "potential downside of being anti-lobbyist" meme, which I posted on 10 days ago. You can read my original post here. Their story even validates my point about how banning lobbyists from a Presidential Administration radically reduces the talent pool, and quotes no less an authority than Paul Light, formerly with the Brookings Institution. However, it does not go into the potential damage such an action would do to the Capitol Hill Democratic Leadership, which would have been nice follow through. Just goes to show how lazy reporters really are.

Imitation really is a nice form of flattery. The Politico story is below:


Anti-lobby pledges easier said than done
By: Jeanne Cummings
January 14, 2008 09:07 PM EST

John Edwards and Barack Obama are taking their bans on donations from Washington lobbyists one step further: pledging to limit the role of the persuasion class in their administrations.

Needless to say, this isn’t sitting too well with lobbyists here in town, and at least one expert wonders whether it makes much sense.

“It’s easier to say you are going to ban lobbyists from your administration than actually doing it,” said Paul C. Light, an expert on federal appointments and hiring.

“We know from past research, back to the Kennedy administration, that almost two-thirds of presidential appointees come from within the Washington standard metropolitan area — almost a three- or four-mile radius around the White House,” he added.

The pledges from both candidates are aimed at bolstering their argument that they can change the way Washington operates. Neither is proposing an all-out ban on lobbyists-turned-presidential-advisers, although that might actually be easier to implement than what they are planning.

If elected, Edwards says he wouldn’t hire or appoint Washington-registered corporate lobbyists or those who represent foreign governments.

“It is unrealistic to think that you can sit at a table with drug companies, insurance companies and oil companies and they are going to negotiate their power away,” he says on the campaign trail.

Obama is keeping the door open to hiring them. But any lobbyist who joins his administration wouldn’t be permitted to work on “any project, law or regulation related to their former employer.” And, upon leaving his service, the former appointee would be prohibited from lobbying the Obama administration for the duration of his term.

On the campaign trail, the Illinois senator vows to “challenge the money and influence that’s stood” in the way of major policy changes. He also reminds audiences that he co-sponsored sweeping ethics reform legislation passed last year. “I’ve gotten something done,” he says.

Certainly, there are reasons for any administration — and particularly a new one — to be cautious. The most obvious one: Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff, who was convicted in a bribery scheme involving members of Congress, never officially worked for the White House. But in 2001, he used his ties to the new Bush administration to promote the hiring of some of his allies in the Interior Department and the General Services Administration. Then he used those connections to advance the interests of his clients. (Some of his Bush administration allies ultimately were convicted, too.)

The Abramoff scandal was the subject of hearings chaired by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The fallout tarnished Congress more than the White House. But it fed the story line of Bush critics who claim the administration has been too cozy with corporate interests and lobbyists.

While it makes sense for the Abramoff scandal to prompt a prospective president to raise his guard, cases such as his are pretty rare. Meanwhile, there are some downsides to the Obama and Edwards pledges.

Lobbyists, for all their baggage, also happen to represent some of the best-trained advocates in Washington. The community also is home to a slew of experts on policy ranging from health care to energy to foreign affairs.


The Edwards and Obama approaches could wind up excluding, or discouraging, an impressive pool of talent from assisting their White Houses.

“I just think it’s silly,” said Charlie Black, a longtime lobbyist who is now helping McCain’s campaign.
“There are a lot of CEOs who have to register as lobbyists and their executives who come to town to meet with members. It’s demonizing a group of people who are mostly honorable people and who are knowledgeable about how government works and public policy,” he added.

Indeed, the pool of registered lobbyists is expanding today under the ethics reform law pushed by Obama.

Ethics attorneys in Washington spent much of last year urging corporations to err on the side of caution by registering anyone who touches, or even confers about, a strategy for influencing Congress. That could shrink the potential employment pool under Edwards’ no-corporate-lobbyist rules.

The fine wording of Edwards’ hiring ban is also likely to lead to some predictably edgy headlines, warned Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Among the scrutiny the former North Carolina senator would face: questions about the fairness of hiring a former labor union lobbyist while shutting out any corporate advocates, or headlines that note an appointee had once been a registered lobbyist.

“It’s a nice promise to make, but the people who have to implement the rules could go crazy,” Light said.

The decision by both candidates to ban federal lobbyists — not state lobbyists — from their donor lists already has led to the same sort of technical attacks.

At a New Hampshire debate, Hillary Rodham Clinton noted that a high-ranking figure in Obama’s campaign is a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical company. Obama shook his head and muttered that the charge just wasn’t so. But the adviser is indeed a lobbyist, albeit at the state level.

Finally, the policies overlook some new realities: Many in Washington want to be, or wind up becoming, a lobbyist. Republicans have long used lobbying shops as a refuge while their party was out of power. In the Bush years, Democrats had begun to follow the same path. Democratic lobbyists’ ranks swelled significantly last year after their party took over the Congress, making them sought-after hires for groups that had lost touch with the once-minority party.

That phenomenon would not only limit Edwards’ personnel choices, but it could make Obama’s post-service rules unpalatable to many who would lose significant income if they lost their ability to lobby the administration.

“It’s hard to be in this town without doing some lobbying to get by,” Light concluded.

TM & © THE POLITICO & POLITICO.COM, a division of Allbritton Communications Company

Edwards Alienates Hundreds of Potential Volunteers, Endangers Country and Party

About a week before the Iowa Caucuses John Edwards stated that if he became President, he would not hire anyone who had been a federal lobbyist. Now, I understand that he doesn't think trial lawyers are a special interest or that his actions as a trial laywer are actually what has caused the health care crisis (health insurance companies raise rates due to jackpot jury awards, thus making healthcare unaffordable and causing companies (especially small firms)to drop their health care coverage for employees.

However, there are literally thousands of people who have been lobbyists and frankly, most of the top lobbyists are the pre-eminent experts in their fields. Why would you want to forgo the expertise of someone simply because of a job they may have held? This is especially concerning considering that some of our nation's top foreign policy people have worked as lobbyists for one firm or another, and sacrificing their knowledge due to some populist BS concern that they're tainted could put our nation in real jeopardy.

Additionally, if he is serious about this, his administration would basically have to depopulate the ranks of senior political/policy experts on Capitol Hill. The effect of this would be to essentially disarm unilaterally against the Republicans on the Hill by taking away all the top Dems with institutional memory and knowledge of how to get things done, while leaving their Republican counterparts in place and able to outmaneuver his own party. In the wake of this past disastrous year for Congressional Democrats, why would you want to make them even weaker?

Finally, lobbyists and former lobbyists are the people who are willing to fly in from out of state on their own dime and help you get out the vote, ID supporters, etc. Telling them they'll have no place in his administration pretty much guarantees they'll drop their plans to help out. After all, why help an ingrate? No one, even "evil lobbyists," volunteers on campaigns simply for future jobs, but a telling them that you're not grateful and won't even consider them for a job in the future pretty much guarantees the loss of a lot of money (from their personal accounts) and help from people who otherwise share his values.

Sell the book! Sell the book quick!

As a libertarian, I am deeply conflicted about the now-infamous " Beltway Madam", Ms. Debra Palfrey, but think that she should sell her little black book of clients before the courts stop her from doing so. (ed - little black book my ass - the 10,000 names and phone records weigh 46 pounds)

Begin Self-Involved Explication

My main source of internal conflict is that while I support the right to engage in prostitution as a matter of principle, I abhor trafficking in people and sexual slavery. I don't doubt that Ms. Palfrey and people at her level of the sex industry don't buy and sell people to provide sexual services. However, the fact that they exist helps fuels demand for all types of escort services, especially the more downscale ones. Escort services that compete on price (as most services do in our capitalist society - I am pro-capitalist btw) seem more likely to be run by those who engage in sex trafficking.

End Self-Involved Explication

Now that that's over, I really do think that she has the absolute right to publish the book or sell it since it is her property and I am offended the prosecutor is trying to stop it. Simply doing that and embarassing some people is not the same as blackmail and the prosecution should stop pretending that it is. There is no law against embarassing thousands of people simultaneously.

At this point there has mainly been only small comments of titillation that some people will be embarassed. No one yet has really thought through the implications. After all, Brent Wilkes is going to jail for procuring prostitutes for Congressman Duke Cunnigham and others. There likely will be many other lobbyists in there as well, which will present problems for some of them, and not just of the going to jail variety. I'm talking about their personal life fallout.

Many of the people in the book likely procured sexual services for themselves. However, many of the lobbyists in the book will tell their wives/girlfriends/boyfriends that they simply were procuring the escorts for their clients. Many of the significant others will believe this because people who play at the level where it's plausible to hire an escort for a Congressman know how the game works. The problems will come for those who have cheated on their wives in the past and remained together or those who have had past relationship problems that this further contributes to. I feel bad for them

Finally, the publication of this book may result in some resignations from Congress or other scandals on K Street. We can only hope . . .

Another Defense of Lobbying

The latest issue of The Hill contains a cogent defense of lobbying, and why it is necessary for democracy. It also echoes some of the arguments I make here.

The Value of Lobbyists

The rise of the lobbyist is directly related to the poor pay on Capitol Hill and the Executive Branch. Every year or so, the Office of Personnel Management, the General Accounting Office, or the Congressional Management Foundation put out studies comparing the salaries of Hill Staff and Federal employees with their private sector counterparts. The results show private sector employees with the same education and background making upto TWICE as much money as their public sector counterparts.

Why does this matter? Because the people who do the legwork and have institutional memory leave the Hill or Executive Branch due to "status-income disequilibrium" (see Bobo's in Paradise by David Brooks). In other words, their salary is not commensurate with the prestige of the job they hold. So they look for a new position that pays more money. Thus Members of Congress thus lose the people who know best which policies and strategies have and haven't worked in the past.

However, Members still have access to those former staffers turned l0bbyists, and the former staffers still have access to their contacts including members. Without these former staffers turned lobbyists continuing to advise members, individual Congressmen and Senators would have to continually reinvent the wheel.

In short, lobbying provides a valuable service to Members of Congress, which is why they continue to flourish.

Oh- and the idea that a staffer can be bought off for a $50 lunch is absurd. Staffers value their positions, and want to protect their respective members, too much to do so.

The Conspiracy Community Gets its Own Lobbyists

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