President's war on 'beltway bandits'

Opinion

WASHINGTON - They are known as the "beltway bandits", the lobbyists based inside the Washington ring road whose mission in life is to peddle influence in the United States capital's corridors of power.

These days their offices tend to be located in the glass and concrete buildings along K street, only a few blocks from the White House.

Never mind the recession - they have been living in a golden age: last year they spent a record US$3.47 billion ($4.9 billion) lobbying Congress to influence legislation.

They cover all walks of life, from education to tax, banking, the environment and, of course, healthcare. An eye-watering US$544 million was spent last year by the healthcare industry according to the lobbyists' watchdog, the Centre for Responsive Politics.

As the bitter year-long debate on "Obamacare" finally draws to a close, both sides are said to be spending US$1 million a day this week on television ads.

There are 13,379 registered lobbyists in Washington, a number which has been in gradual decline since 2007; in order to register with Congress they need to prove they spend 20 per cent of their time doing advocacy work for a client, and file quarterly reports to do so.

But President Barack Obama has declared war on the lobbyists by announcing plans for new rules that would close a loophole under which they can avoid registering if they spend less than 20 per cent. His planned crackdown would bring in new disclosure rules about who is lobbying whom, and additional financial restrictions.

In his State of the Union address in January he explained that the root of the problem was the "deficit of trust - deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years". The "credibility gap" had to be closed "to end the outsized influence of lobbyists".

In his first year in office, he brought in strict ethics rules for ex-lobbyists in his Administration.

It is now impossible for ex-lobbyists to work on issues on which they lobbied for two years. The President has stopped the federal lobbyists from giving presents to Administration officials, and he has begun naming those who visit the White House daily.

The new ethics rules have already caused a major headache for the Administration which has nominated a former lobbyist for the defence contractor Raytheon, William Lynn, as the number two at the Pentagon.

His Senate confirmation is on hold while the Senate Armed Forces Committee decides whether it is appropriate for him to recuse himself from taking part in certain Department of Defence decisions because of his past.

A question mark also hangs over Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader with unrivalled access to the White House who is employed by the lobbying firm Alston and Bird. He has managed to evade the new restrictions, it seems, by not picking up the phone.

"I've not made a call nor made a visit since I left the Senate on behalf of a client. And I don't have any expectation that I'll do that in the future," Daschle told the New York Times.

In a further setback for Obama, the US Supreme Court has lobbed a hand grenade into the next election campaign, with the mid-term elections looming in November.

In a narrowly approved decision handed down in January, the court overturned restrictions on campaign financing and opened the door to corporate lobbyists.

"The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections," Obama said.

It remains to be seen whether Congressional leaders can agree to override the decision. Obama turned on the Supreme Court justices in his State of the Union speech in which he publicly upbraided them for their decision.

Obama accused them of having "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections."