Hope and Fail

A ‘credibility gab’ on lobbyists

During his State of the Union address, president Obama talked about the “deficit of trust” that exists in Washington, and he explained how he is working to shrink it:

To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust -– deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve. (Applause.)

That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why -– for the first time in history –- my administration posts on our White House visitors online. That’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs, or seats on federal boards and commissions.

Anyone who’s paying attention to the president’s promises of transparency and stricter ethics guidelines knows that his claim that “we’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs” is an outright lie.

There are several “lobbyists” working in the Obama administration, many with special waivers issued by the White House Counsel’s Office.

As Timothy Carney points out in the Examiner:

reflects an executive order Obama issued on his first day in office to restrict recent lobbyists, but it is belied by the dozens of former lobbyists currently serving in his administration, including in policy-making jobs.

For instance, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was a lobbyist for the National Education Association in March of 2008. He is exempted from Obama’s ethics rules because his Cabinet job is not relevant to his recent lobbying work

In the field agriculture, two former lobbyists –Monsanto’s Michael Taylor and CropLife America’s Isi Siddiqui — have been named to policy-making jobs. Their lobbying stints, however, were outside the two-year window covered by the executive order.

William J. Lynn, a lobbyist for leading defense contractor Raytheon received a waiver from Obama in order to serve as deputy secretary of defense.

Treasury Department Chief of Staff Mark Patterson, on the other hand, has not received a waiver although he was a Goldman Sachs lobbyist as late as April 2008, lobbying on issue areas such as monetary policy, tax policy, and financial policy.

At least 16 former registered lobbyists serve in the Obama administration.

Attorney General Eric Holder is also a former lobbyist. One can’t say he doesn’t hold a policymaking position.

And from the Associated Press:

Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn’t absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone.

The administration does deserve a bit of credit for notifying the public that lobbyists are working at the White House — most of the ethics waivers have been posted on the White House Web site.

But the public disclosure doesn’t count as “excluding” lobbyists.

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