Obama’s stimulus: The Lobbyist Enrichment Act | Washington Examiner

Obama’s stimulus: The Lobbyist Enrichment Act | Washington Examiner

Obama was all about getting rid of lobbyists in his campaign. But what has he brought to Washington with him? You guessed it, lobbyists. Not only has he brought more, the one thing that the stimulus has done is it has created jobs, for guess who .. MORE LOBBYISTS!


Borrowing $787 billion from the next generation and spending it as rapidly as possible may or may not provide a jolt to the U.S. economy. But one thing is certain: H.R. 1, the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, has already triggered a lobbying boom, suggesting once again that the Age of Obama will be a golden age for K Street.



The stimulus has spurred small companies to jump into the lobbying game for the first time and big companies to bring in new hired guns.

For example, the National Association of Home Builders hired Baker & Hostetler a week after Barack Obama’s inauguration to lobby explicitly on the stimulus bill, which, in the end, included an $8,000 credit for home purchases.

Better Place Inc. is an electric car company that hired its first lobbyist — Steve McBee, a former staffer for House appropriator Norm Dicks, D-Wash. — to push for electric car incentives in the stimulus. The resulting cornucopia included an expanded tax credit for plug-in cars, $2 billion in funding for electric car batteries and $400 million to build an electric car infrastructure, complete with recharging stations.

Media giant Time Warner added to its lobbying army, hiring the firm Parven Pomper Strategies to lobby for broadband subsidies in the bill. These subsidies included $2.5 billion to underwrite loans to get broadband out to rural areas and an additional $4.7 billion in spending on other broadband projects. Similarly, network giant Cisco Systems lobbied for the broadband subsidies in H.R. 1.

In all, dozens of lobbying firms have landed new business thanks to the stimulus bill, a review of federal lobbying files reveals. In the first weeks of this year, about 50 companies, trade associations, municipalities or nonprofits retained new lobbyists explicitly to lobby on the stimulus bill.

Luring states, counties and towns into the lobbying scrum has been a primary effect of the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Since Election Day, 27 counties and 45 cities or towns have hired new lobbyists.

On this score, Holland & Knight might take top honors. Since Election Day, the Florida-based global law firm with offices on Pennsylvania Avenue has landed six cities, four counties, five local government agencies, one village, one confederation of Indian tribes and the League of California Cities.

These are just the new lobbying contracts the stimulus has spawned. Everyone who has been lobbying for a subsidy, a handout or a tax carve-out redoubled his efforts when Obama announced his massive spending bill even before taking office.

And the Obama lobbying boom isn’t confined to the Beltway. In state capitals, where so much of these billions will be parceled out, lawmakers see the boom, too. In Georgia, for instance, legislators gathered in Atlanta looking for the best way to trim spending amid a revenue downturn. When the stimulus passed last week, however, things changed. “All of the sudden, everyone’s got their hands out,” state Sen. Preston Smith told this columnist.

Does the lobbying boom matter? Even if you reject Obama’s anti-lobbyist, man-of-change rhetoric from the campaign trail, there are costs. Some of these new lobbyists, once they’ve gotten their slice of the stimulus pie, might say farewell to Washington, but most will stick around. They’ll find new ways to game Washington for a profit — new subsidies and new regulations to drive business their way or hurt their competition.
The lobbying swarm over the stimulus also tells us something about the likely stimulative effects of the bill — and Congress’ motives in crafting it.
Congressmen and the White House say the point of this bill is to prime the pump on the economy. But how did the individual provisions end up there? Did some economist tell House and Senate conferees that, say, a tax break for parents who have college kids and buy computers and software (Section 1005) would be an efficient way to improve employment? Or more likely, did the computer and software industry write that into the bill?

And on legislative intent, was Congress trying to boost the economy or reward interest groups that can help their re-election?
The stimulus bill will be just the first example of a lesson unsurprising only to those unfamiliar with the way government works: Obama cannot simultaneously make government bigger and make lobbyists less influential.

Obama’s hidden bailout of General Electric



While many companies hire lobbyists to win earmarks, General Electric’s unmatched lobbying force has secured a tax increase — or its equivalent — in President Barack Obama’s budget.

Labeled “climate revenues” and totaling $646 billion over eight years, this line item in Obama’s budget has inspired confidence in GE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt. As Immelt put it in a letter this week, he believes that the Obama administration will be a profitable “financier” and “key partner.”

On page 115 of Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget is Table S-2, titled “Effect of Budget Proposals on Projected Deficits.” The chart forecasts the costs of Obama’s spending proposals and the added revenue of his proposed tax increases. It also forecasts, beginning in 2012, billions of dollars a year in “climate revenues.” This budget line, which has struck fear into some lawmakers from coal-dependent states, could spell salvation for GE in these times of uncertainty.

How can Obama generate “climate revenues”? By forcing companies to pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

A tax on greenhouse gas emissions could accomplish this, but Obama’s preferred policy — and the approach embraced by a few congressional bills in recent years — is called “cap and trade.” In short, cap and trade requires businesses to spend “credits” to pay for their emissions. Businesses can buy or sell these credits, and the market — not the government — would directly set the price of a credit. Government would initially auction them off, generating revenue.

GE — a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which advocates cap and trade — leads the push for greenhouse gas restrictions.

In the fourth quarter of 2008 as the company’s stock fell 30 percent, GE spent $4.26 million on lobbying — that’s $46,304 each day, including weekends, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In 2008, the company spent a grand total of $18.66 million on lobbying.

Reviewing their lobbying filings, you might think you were looking at Al Gore’s agenda. GE’s specific lobbying issues included the “Climate Stewardship Act,” “Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act,” “Global Warming Reduction Act,” “Federal Government Greenhouse Gas Registry Act,” “Low Carbon Economy Act,” and “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.”

This isn’t altruism or public relations. GE has started a joint venture called Greenhouse Gas Services, which invests in — and hopes to manage the trade in — greenhouse gas credits. But these investments and this trading floor are of basically no use and nearly no value without government restrictions on greenhouse gases.

Hence the lobbying, buttressed by generous campaign contributions: Employees and executives gave $1.35 million to politicians in the past election while GE’s political action committee shelled out $1.55 million. About 64 percent of this $2.9 million went to Democrats, with Obama easily the top recipient of GE money.

Obama’s budget includes the payoff, promising to start a multibillion-dollar greenhouse gas industry by 2012. In a letter this week, GE’S Immelt told shareholders that current events present an “opportunity of a lifetime,” because “capitalism will be ‘reset.’ ”

Immelt wrote: “The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.”

In short, GE plans to get rich by being one of the government’s closest partners — which it has always been, thanks to its unmatched lobbying efforts.

The environmentalist at this point might respond, “Well, good for GE. if they can get rich while helping the planet, more power to them.” But this ignores important issues. First, restraining greenhouse gas emissions will cost Americans dearly. Gas, electricity and heating prices will all go up. The prices of manufactured and shipped goods will go up. A Clemson University report on similar cap-and-trade proposals forecast a 1 percent decline in he U.S. gross domestic product by 2015 if they were implemented.

There are environmental costs, also, to such a focus on greenhouse gases: Ethanol’s damage to water supplies, soil health and air quality are the fruit of government pushing the product as a climate-friendly fuel.

When the lobbying fingerprints of GE and other well-connected firms are considered, it’s not hard to conclude that the policy that will finally emerge won’t be the one that is best for the planet and least bad for the economy, but the one that is best for General Electric


The Leader-Herald

Despite meltdown, lobbying a growth industry in NY

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A lobbying report shows special interests spent nearly $174 million last year trying to sway policy in New York state government.

The annual report from the state Commission on Public Integrity says that's a $3 million increase and compares to a $20 million jump in lobbyist spending from 2006 to 2007.

The New York State United Teachers union spent more than $4 million lobbying — by far the most of all. Verizon communications followed with more than $2 million and the Medical Society of the State of New York spent nearly $2 million.

Health and mental health organizations collectively spent the most of any special interest, dropping nearly $30 million in Albany.

More than 6,600 lobbyists represent more than 4,100 clients

Rational Review

The golden age of lobbying

“Political reforms share a common denominator: They usually produce unintended consequences. We witness this truth again in today’s world of lobbying. President Obama’s policies are producing an explosion in special interest group activity, and much of the growth is taking place outside of federal disclosure and other regulations. Several factors contribute to this surprising result. First, government expansion always produces lobbying growth. And Obama is doing his part to enlarge Washington’s reach. The bigger, more complicated and activist the federal government, the more affected interests mobilize.”

Bloomberg.com
Obama’s Spending Spurs Former U.S. Lawmakers to Join Lobbyists

April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Lobbying, scorned during the 2008 campaign, is an occupation of choice among former members of Congress looking for jobs.

Barack Obama shunned political contributions from lobbyists and, on his second day as president, announced new ethics rules to reduce their influence. Republican nominee John McCain disdained lobbyists as “birds of prey.”

Still, about one-quarter of the House and Senate members who retired or lost elections last year have found new jobs with lobbying firms, where business is booming as Obama pushes for multitrillion-dollar changes in federal banking, health care, energy and military procurement policies.

“Even though some people deplore lobbying, it’s still a growth profession,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow with the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group.

Law, lobbying and consulting firms have announced the hiring of at least 15 of 61 House and Senate members who left politics or were defeated in 2008.

The new hires include Jim McCrery of Louisiana, who was the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee before moving to Capitol Counsel LLC, where clients include Roche Holdings AG, the world’s biggest drugmaker by value. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican who sat on the Senate Finance Committee, joined the Covington & Burling LLP firm, which has advised the Investment Company Institute, the mutual-fund industry trade group.

New York Republican James Walsh, who retired in January after 20 years in Congress and joined the K&L Gates LLP law and lobbying firm, said companies have legitimate needs for experienced advisers.

‘Demagoguery Going On’

“There’s a lot of demagoguery going on,” said Walsh, 61, who spent 12 years in the House’s powerful “college of cardinals,” as appropriations subcommittee chairmen are known. “Politics is an honorable profession. This profession, consulting, can be also as long as you conduct yourself honorably.”

Ex-lawmakers are in demand even after Congress in 2007 passed legislation banning gifts and meals from lobbyists and barring senators from lobbying former colleagues for two years after leaving office. House members must wait one year.

Without direct lobbying, former officials still can help develop strategies for lobbying clients, said Rich Gold, head of the public policy and regulation practice group at Holland & Knight LLP.

Expertise for Clients

“Obviously they know a lot of current members,” Gold said. “They are able to explain in a pretty cogent way to our clients how an issue will move, with a degree of expertise and credibility.”

Lobbyists were paid a record $3.2 billion last year to influence federal government officials and lawmakers, up 14 percent from 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks special-interest spending. Disclosures for the first three months of 2009 are due April 20.

Influence-peddling income is likely to keep rising, as Congress and federal agencies pick winners and losers in the $787 billion stimulus package, a $3.9 trillion federal budget plan, the financial industry bailout, and proposals to revamp Wall Street regulation, curb greenhouse-gas emissions and expand health-care coverage.

Money Flowing

“We’ve got more money coming out of Washington than ever before,” the Sunlight Foundation’s Allison said. “This puts a premium on people who know the system.”

Walsh’s firm, K&L Gates, was paid $15 million for lobbying in 2008 by such companies as Pitney Bowes Inc., of Stamford, Connecticut, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., the largest U.S. railroad, based in Fort Worth, Texas.

“Pitney Bowes finds it helpful to work with individuals that have prior legislative experience,” said Matthew Broder, spokesman for the world’s largest maker of postal meters. “They typically have intimate knowledge of legislative issues, and understand the legislative processes that can help advance the U.S. mailing industry.”

McCrery, who helped oversee health-care policy from his position in the House, is a partner at Capitol Counsel, which got $6.7 million last year from a client roster that included Roche, of Basel, Switzerland, and London-based AstraZeneca PLC.

Smith, former ranking Republican on the Senate’s international trade subcommittee, is a senior adviser at Covington & Burling, where blue-chip clients include General Motors Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

Transportation Background

Bud Cramer, an Alabama Democrat who was on House appropriations subcommittees with purview over transportation and financial services, became chairman of Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates.

The firm got $7.9 million last year from companies such as AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines, which is seeking government permission for an alliance with British Airways Plc, and Visa Inc., which is fighting efforts to put new restrictions on credit-card rates and fees.

“In Congress, Bud quickly gained the confidence of his colleagues on the Hill and became a trusted adviser to House Democratic leaders, and we look forward to him doing the same for our clients,” founder Anne Wexler said in a release announcing Cramer’s hiring.

McCrery, Cramer and Smith didn’t return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

John Warner, who retired after 30 years in the Senate, rejoined Hogan & Hartson LLP, where he worked as a lawyer from 1961 to 1969. The firm, with clients such as Oakland, California-based Clorox Co. and Toyko-based Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., was paid $17.9 million for lobbying in 2008.

K Street Corridor

The path is well worn between Capitol Hill and K Street, the downtown Washington boulevard that is the lobbying industry’s symbolic center.

Former appropriations chairman Bob Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who left the House 10 years ago, leads a firm that was paid $9 million last year by such clients as Hamilton, Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd., and Redwood City, California-based Oracle Corp. Former Senate Majority Leaders George Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, and Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican, both registered as lobbyists.

“It is a natural progression, and it is not an unhealthy one,” said Jim Greenwood, 57, a Republican who represented a Pennsylvania House district until 2005 and now heads the Biotechnology Industry Association. “I know how lawmakers think, what they need to make good decisions, what’s counterproductive, and what’s reasonable to ask and what’s not reasonable.”

New Job

Jon Porter, a Nevada Republican who lost his 2008 bid for re-election after six years in the House, said his new job at the Akerman Senterfitt law and lobbying firm lets him put his experience to good use.

“As the legislation gets more complex and as it’s coming out as fast as it is, there is a role for folks to help provide consultation on how to chart a road map through the federal bureaucracy,” said Porter, 53, who sat on both the Budget and Ways & Means committees.

Lobbying continues to flourish in the face of perennial calls in Congress itself for tougher limits on politicians and aides who bounce between government and lobbying jobs.

“Would I like to see the revolving door slowed? Yes, I would,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who helped write the 1995 law overhauling lobbying rules. “The appearance of an unfair advantage is real. The access is enhanced.”

Craig Holman, who lobbies for Public Citizen, a Washington- based advocacy group seeking stricter rules for lobbyists, said well-connected former lawmakers have unique advantages.

“Their knowledge of the preferences of various members, who is working in what area and what concerns them most, their networks, makes them exceedingly valuable,” Holman said. “That’s the type of knowledge and networks you just can’t get anywhere else.”

La Times Blog

Lobbyists thriving in Obama's Washington

Barack Obama said during the campaign that he wanted to change the culture in Washington, to close the revolving door on lobbyists seeking to influence his administration.



No doubt the president means to make good on his promises.

But ironically, in the months since Obama was sworn in as president, the number of lobbyists in Washington has grown. The reason: complex bills like the president's $787-billion stimulus package are like lobbyist catnip to Washington's K Street corridor of influence peddlers.

And with so much money on the line, the Washington Post found that more than 2,000 cities, companies and associations outside Washington have hired, you guessed it, lobbyists.

"We decided we needed eyes and ears in Washington," said Ed Tinker, city manager of Glenpool, Okla. So the town of 10,000 hired Capitol Hill Consulting Group, which employs former Rep. Rep. Bill Brewster (D-Okla.), for $10,000 a month to help it win grants for education and infrastructure improvements. "There are dollars up there that could come to our community that we weren't aware of," Tinker told the Post. "It's worked out real fine for us. Having that guy on the ground in Washington is going to keep us in the loop."

So the economy may be in the tank, Wall Street may be weeping dollars every day, but jobs are opening for lobbyists. And chief beneficiaries seem to be Democratic firms, like former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart's Glover Park Group, which posted a 27% increase in business last year. One big client: PhRMA, the pharmaceutical lobby, which expects a huge effort this year on the president's health care reform proposals. "We're busy as bees out here," said PhRMA CEO Billy Tauzin. "Making honey."

Democratic causes are also becoming a new growth industry in Washington. According to the Houston Chronicle, climate-change lobbying is enjoying a renaissance. With likelihood of a Democratic victory last fall, roughly 2,340 lobbyists dealing with climate issues -- from doubters to boosters -- were hired in 2008, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Senate lobbying disclosure forms.

As a result, said the Texas newspaper, climate lobbyists now outnumber members of Congress by more than 4 to 1.

Washington Examiner

The Obama era brings boom times for lobbyists



Early numbers suggest that the first quarter of 2009 has seen lobbying in the nation’s capital spike by nearly 22 percent over last year, which would be the largest ever increase in lobbying activity — and a strong indication that President Barack Obama has helped usher in a Golden Era for K Street.

Between Jan. 1 and March 16 this year, the Senate Office of Public Records received 1,381 new lobbying registrations, which include new lobbying firms, new clients at existing firms, and businesses hiring their first lobbyists. This is the largest batch of new registrations since 1999, the first year these records were kept, and a 21.7 percent increase over last year.

If you subtract the lobbying accounts that have been terminated, you get a net gain in active lobbying accounts this year of 1,252, which represents a surge of 13.5 percent over last year’s growth of 1,103 net lobbying accounts in the same period.

The number of active lobbying accounts is not the only measure of lobbying activity — dollars spent is probably the most important number, but first-quarter figures on that won’t be available until late April. The first quarter, of course, has two weeks remaining, and 76 days is a small sample size, but the bump in new registrations is significant enough to support anecdotal evidence that Obama’s ambitious agenda and breakneck pace are a major boon to the very industry he ran against.

The $787 billion stimulus bill, which was the largest spending bill in U.S. history, and the $410 billion fiscal year 2009 omnibus spending bill, which was larded with 8,750 earmarks, attracted thousands of lobbyists in search of pet programs and earmarks. This column reported on dozens of town, city, county and state governments or government agencies hiring new lobbyists this winter — an effort to grab a share of the trillion dollars in spending on the table.

Obama doesn’t deserve full responsibility, however. From 1999 to 2007, federal lobbying spending grew by an average rate of 8 percent a year. From 2007 to 2008, the amount of lobbying accelerated, with spending growing by a record 14 percent, even with the recession and the election putting a damper on fourth-quarter lobbying activity. If lobbying spending grew by 14 percent last year with flat growth in net new accounts in the spring, what will this spring’s boom in new accounts yield?

Reading through the new registrations, three growth sectors seem to be driving the lobbying boom: municipalities, alternative energy and Democratic firms picking up corporate clients.

Towns, cities, counties and states (some as small as Cordova, Alaska, population 2,251) bought into K Street this year, mostly seeking stimulus funding. Will these local governments terminate their lobbyists this year, or — as often occurs — will they continue seeking favors now that they’ve got a taste of Washington largess? If the latter occurs, the Obama lobbying boom will be of unprecedented magnitude.

With calls for green energy and energy independence, companies big and small have come to Washington. Appropriations bills, the stimulus, energy bills, and cap-and-trade proposals don’t uniformly support alternative energy technologies, which is why you have companies like Hydro Green Energy and biodegradable product maker Perf hiring new lobbyists to hit Capitol Hill and the executive branch, making sure that their product is one of the winners picked by policymakers.

The Democratic lobbying boom, to some extent, comes at the expense of Republican lobbyists (reflected a bit in a spike in terminations). A small sample of Democratic lobbying success: Former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., has landed five new clients already this year, including Visa and the biggest fish of them all — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spends more on U.S. lobbying than any other organization or company.

Some observers who have noted this trend have been surprised, with the Hill newspaper in January calling it “ironic, given the president’s rhetoric and immediate strictures against lobbying.” But it’s not surprising. Giving power to government gives more influence to lobbyists, thus increasing the demand for them. Obama cannot simultaneously increase government and curb lobbyists.

The numbers are bearing this out.