The Voters’ Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act of 2012
Dec 1st, 2011 | 15 responses
There is a little section in the New York Times, published by its editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, that I sometimes overlook — but shouldn’t. For that little section is usually very big on insightful, razor-sharp political commentary.
Yesterday’s piece, “Not-Lobbyists in Name Only,” written by David Firestone, was no exception.
Firestone discusses the fact that “Washington teems with highly paid influence peddlers who proudly disdain the title of lobbyist.” These are people who — unlike “mere lobbyists” — don’t get “their hands dirty from shaking and their loafers muddy with scandal,” but make the real money by “setting up public affairs shops, offering strategy consulting, or commissioning polls and focus groups for industries that need a big tax loophole or a government contract.”
According to Firestone, they do this by cleverly taking advantage of a gaping “20 percent loophole” in existing lobbying disclosure legislation. Existing law says lobbying reporting is only required if a lobbyist spends more than 20 percent of his or her time lobbying for any particular client. Thus, “the public can be completely in the dark about many of these ‘stealth’ lobbyists who wield tremendous influence,” says the Sunlight Foundation.
And that brings us to the present front-runner in the Republican presidential sweepstakes, a man who, according to Mike McIntire and Jim Rutenberg in yesterday’s New York Times:
… is adamant that he is not a lobbyist, but rather a visionary who traffics in ideas, not influence. But in the eight years since he started his health care consultancy, he has made millions of dollars while helping companies promote their services and gain access to state and federal officials.
Work that, according to Firestone:
…was virtually identical to that of traditional lobbyists, even extending to legislation. For his clients who wanted a piece of the growth in electronic medical records, he worked with then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on a bill to increase the use of such records, even appearing with her at a 2005 news conference.
Work and “the same twisted logic that allowed him to accept as much as $1.8 million in ‘consulting fees from Freddie Mac for eight years, while claiming he never lobbied for the mortgage company.”
Of course that man is Newt Gingrich, a man who has “managed to make millions of dollars helping companies gain access to government officials while remaining clean of the taint of being a lobbyist.”
To be fair, in discussing Newt Gingrich’s flagrant influence peddling and self-enrichment “while remaining clean of the taint of being a lobbyist,” David Firestone points out that the hypocrisy is “fully bipartisan.” He also criticizes President Obama for accepting campaign contributions from “those who help lead the lobbying industry” and laments the fact that legislation to correct such abuses has not gotten very far.
Well, here is an opportunity for the American people to, with their voices and their votes, introduce and enact their own “Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act of 2012″ by saying “No” to this “non-lobbyist” presently running for the highest office in the land.
15 Responses to “The Voters’ Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act of 2012”
Thank you for acknowledging, in your last paragraph, that ultimately it is up to the people to reign in these abuses of power. We can enact whatever anti-lobbying legislation we want (and maybe we should), but if the people aren’t holding their elected officials accountable, that legislation won’t mean much. The rules won’t be enforced and politicians and power-seekers will still find ways to manipulate the system to gain disproportionate influence.
We wouldn’t need these rules if people stopped settling for the lesser of two bad choices and expected their elected officials to be accountable to them.
It should be easy. Define a lobbyist as “A person who is paid to influence legislation.”
By this definition Gingrich is a lobbyist.
It is amazing how clear the meaning of a word is when you rely on the dictionary, not on spin.
I tend to agree with you, adelinesdad, it is ultimately up to the people to curb these excesses for several reasons:
1. I doubt if we will ever see legislation that entirely eliminates the problem. Even with this new legislation that was introduced in June, it was referred to the House subcommittee and referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution. God knows when it will emerge out of these committees and subcommittees and when it will see the daylight of a vote.
2. Even then, it will be so watered down, with loopholes so big that even Gingrich can waddle through, that it will hardly make a difference.
3. There are so many congressmen who have their eyes on these lucrative “non-lobbyists” jobs that they’ll go through elephant labor motions only to deliver an anemic mouse.
4. We need to start by not rewarding those who have already abused the system by giving them even higher trust positions.
Thanks for your comments
Seroiusly, it still kills me Gingrich is doing so well. Did the American people forget he WAS SHOWN THE DOOR IN ’98 FOR ETHICS VIOLATIONS?! They fined him $300k and ran him out of town on a rail to avoid a full hearing. And now he is the front runner. Gotta love politics. Forget what he was doing to pay the bills for the past 13 years.
We certainly won’t, because ultimately the “problem” is that people disagree with the decisions coming out of Washington, which tend to favor other people. And the “solution” is to thwart other people from wielding as much influence, by regulating them and forcing disclosures and starting semantic wars over what a “lobbyist” is. It won’t end, because it’s an arms race.
Dr.J:
I believe I get the drift of you comment, but just out of curiosity, do you feel the lobbying rules should be tightened or left alone?
Dorian, you’re asking me to clarify my position? Wow, I don’t think anyone here has ever done that before.
I don’t see that lobbying rules help, so I don’t see the case to tighten them. And all other things being equal I favor giving people as much freedom as possible, so perhaps they should be loosened.
Dr. J:
Fair enough and thanks.
I feel that they should be tightened — or at least have the present rules enforced — for the obvious conflicts of interest and influence peddling that can arise, and have occurred.
But that’s just me.
Added: But I do agree that the present rules have not helped and that additional rules may not either.
Yes, there’s influence peddling. I just think it’s dangerous to write a law for every outcome we dislike, that that will tend to create a mess of even worse outcomes.
In this case, history suggests rules to prevent organized groups from pressuring the government just lead to reorganization, added pressure on the rule-minders, and of course more jobs for lawyers, bureaucrats and lobbyists. They’re lovely people I’m sure, but they’re not the backbone of a strong economy. I think we’re better off to accept that there will be bad outcomes and not let them throw us off course.
In principle I agree with you Dr. J. I view anti-lobbying legislation the same way I view term limits. It seems to me that they are what artificial sweetener is to sugar: an insufficient replacement for the real thing, which is citizens holding their representatives accountable. (Don’t over-think that analogy.)
However, an exception I’d make is that we do need rules in place to ensure that citizens know what their representatives are doing so that the citizens can accurately judge their performance.
Dr. J and AD,
Your comments are well taken.
I agree with AD’s: “However, an exception I’d make is that we do need rules in place to ensure that citizens know what their representatives are doing so that the citizens can accurately judge their performance,” except that I note that if the laws on lobbying already on the books are routinely flagrantly ignored or broken, any “rules” to make sure citizens know what their representatives are doing can be similarly bypassed.
So it really comes down to concerned citizens group/organizations, the media, etc to be the watchdogs and to “punish” those who break the rules. E.g. don’t reward such a law/rule breaker with a higher office…
I’d submit we need the opposite: rules to ensure representatives’ privacy. I think our system worked better before 24/7 media coverage, when representatives were under less scrutiny from voters and had latitude to vote their consciences and build relationships with the other side. “Performance” should be measured by the legislation they enact, not by the quality of the theater leading up to it.
Dr. J,
Point taken, and you are right with respect to evaluating policies.
However, when I’m evaluating a politician, such as for the purpose of decided who to vote for, I need to know not only what policy decisions they made but also have some sense of why they came to those decisions so that I can predict what kind of decisions they might make in the future. If a politician supports a policy I like, but only does it because of a secret deal he struck with an influential supporter, I’m not sure I’d want to vote for him or her.
That said, it’s true that ideally we would not even need disclosure laws. An ideal voter (in my fantasy land) would demand the appropriate level of transparency without the need for imposed rules. Which brings me to your point about scrutiny from voters:
Again it comes down to voters acting responsibly. Voters need to hold their representatives accountable but they also need to be reasonable and allow their reps to operate within the system. If every potential abuse of power is assumed to be an actual abuse of power, as is sometimes the case with our media, then transparency can become a problem. But, I err on the side of giving the people the information and let us have the representation that we deserve, for better or worse.
Yes, a good principle, just harder than it sounds. If you’ve ever gotten a mortgage (at least in California, I can’t speak for elsewhere), you will have been deluged with page after page of legally required disclosures, each of which you have to initial or sign to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. Does that prevent large numbers of people from taking imprudent mortgages they didn’t understand? Apparently not.
Likewise, how much wiser are we if the “lobbyist” threshold is 15% or 10%? Maybe it should be be 0%, and anyone within 2500 yards of a city hall or other legislative center is officially dubbed a lobbyist? How any such changes yield better government is not obvious to me.
Thanks for this reminder of the revolving door that enriches congress critters (elected and staff). This should be enough to derail Newt. (Well, the adultery/divorce bit should contribute, too.)