Change We Can Issue Waivers For
Way back on August 4, 2007 I was watching a Presidential Debate at Netroots Nation and wrote in defense of Hillary Clinton, my least-favorite candidate, on one specific point:
Hillary Clinton got some boos for her defense of lobbyists and, indeed, her initial response — which amounted to pointing out that some Democratic-leaning interest groups have lobbyists, too — wasn’t very compelling. The second time around, though, she got the right answer, namely that lobbyists do their jobs because they get hired by people and Obama and Edwards take money from the executives and so forth who do the hiring, so the whole distinction is basically meaningless.
As best I can tell, that’s totally correct; refusing to take money from lobbyists is just a kind of meaningless grandstanding.
But Obama’s lobbyist grandstanding has continued and in one of the first acts of his administration he issued an executive order banning lobbyists from all kinds of administration work. But then he wanted William Lynn to be Deputy Secretary of Defense. So it turned out that the order had a waiver process and Lynn was granted a waiver on basically the grounds that, well, he was the best man for the job. And now comes this news:
Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration, a recent lobbyist for investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is in line to serve as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Mark Patterson was a registered lobbyist for Goldman until April 11, 2008, according to public filings.
I don’t have particular views on the merits of Lynn or Patterson, but I think the whole thing illustrates the lack of merits of this anti-lobbyist posturing. Among other things, the distinction between “lobbyists” and other forms of influence-peddlers is pretty irrelevant. I do worry about putting too much of our regulatory authority in the hands of people whose primary allegiance is to friends on Wall Street rather than to the public interest. But if instead of being a lobbyist for Goldman, Patterson had been some other kind of Goldman employee, that wouldn’t actually ease my concerns. Meanwhile, you do need some people in government who know the private sector world so it’s not possible to totally avoid these kinds of ties. Either way, the way you take on the entrenched interests of the wealthy and powerful is by taking on their interests not by promulgating ethics rules so tight that you immediately start searching for loopholes in them.
32 Responses to “Change We Can Issue Waivers For”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
January 27th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Re Matthew’s comment “I think the whole thing illustrates the lack of merits of this anti-lobbyist posturing. Among other things, the distinction between “lobbyists” and other forms of influence-peddlers is pretty irrelevant.”
—————–
I still don’t have my $40 DTV converter rebate, Matthew.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Seems like its more important to prohibit or discourage bureaucrats and regulators from taking jobs as lobbyists or employees of companies they oversee after they leave government.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I think Obama is serious about curtailing the lobbyist’s activities. These allegations will be better suited when applied to his second term should it come to be.
Allegiances change with jobs. It seems to be ideal to have a few former lobbyists in the ranks, insiderers who knows the intricacies of how lobbyists work. It is what Patterson and Lynn do henceforth that will be noteworthy.
I also don’t think there should be exclusions for gift giving between formerly associated individuals in the administration. Send a card.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:20 am
The whole ignorance surrounding “lobbyists” serves to distinguish those with political savvy from those who know nothing about the legislative process. The term is so broad as to be meaningless, but it sure get’s otherwise well-informed folks panties in a bunch.
Are there bad lobbyists? Sure. Are lobbyists bad? That’s just silly. My wife’s the director for public policy of a national youth service organization. Officially she’s a “registered lobbyist.”
January 27th, 2009 at 10:40 am
How ironic that one of the appointments where the rule would do substantial good, its waived.
At the margin, putting sand in the tracks of the revolving door is good, and greasing the tracks bad, but its only a marginal difference.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Don Williams, the DTV coupon program is out of money, but may issue more coupons as unused discount cards expire.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:53 am
I don’t agree.
If we have a situation where 5 or 10 former corporate lobbyists wind up in high government positions, and every time it happens people are whacking Obama over the head for “hypocrisy,” the country is far better off than it was before, where corporate lobbyists infested Bush’s entire government. (And we’re not even talking about how the old GOP Congress invited them in to actually write legislation — something even the bad old Jim Wright Democratic congress never did.
Perfection has not been achieved, but there is a substantive and important difference between what existed before and what exists now.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Well, whatever the merits of your argument Matt, the ban on lobbyists was an Obama promise. And it wasn’t just a promise, it was one of the signature promises of the campaign. It doesn’t fall into the category of one of those small, off-hand stump promises we expect to be broken. For the sake of his credibility, I think Obama should ditch these guys and find other people.
The “best man” waiver is laughable. Is Obama now saying he only meant to exclude lobbyists who would be inferior appointees in any case?
January 27th, 2009 at 11:32 am
The “best man” waiver is laughable. Is Obama now saying he only meant to exclude lobbyists who would be inferior appointees in any case?
If you’re a lobbyist, you won’t get a job in the Obama administration.*
*unless the Obama administration wants to hire you
January 27th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Seems to me the order is doing what it’s supposed to. When a lobbyist is hired, which the order specifically contemplates, a waiver has to be issued in a transparent fashion. This gives some public notice of the appointee’s potential conflicts of interest and creates a political cost for the president–discouraging the practice of hiring lobbyists.
It does not, however, immediately create a utopian, former-lobbyist-free environment. In my view, it’s pretty foolish think we could have gone from the interconnectedness between government and lobbying that characterized the Bush era to a situation where an administration could be formed with zero former lobbyists whatsoever. In the real world, a waiver process is a pretty good pragmatic compromise.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I totally agree Matt. Democracies, and to a lesser extent all forms of government, will always be affected by influence peddlers. Pretending that we can outlaw their influence is an act of denial.
January 27th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
matt, you should look into “nice” lobbyists (read, human rights) who have been prevented from working in the administration because of this ban. A few questions to the right people could give you an interesting story
January 27th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
NPR had something on this, and made it seem that Gates was trying to call Obama’s bluff w/ what was Gates’ choice for the position. Obama backed down. Now that he backed down, there’s no way he can justify not issuing more waivers. It seemed like the problem was really the whole waiver thing, not that Obama was acting in bad faith from the get-go.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Well, whatever the merits of your argument Matt, the ban on lobbyists was an Obama promise. And it wasn’t just a promise, it was one of the signature promises of the campaign. It doesn’t fall into the category of one of those small, off-hand stump promises we expect to be broken. For the sake of his credibility, I think Obama should ditch these guys and find other people.
And if he did…more power to him. I think my beef and Matt’s is with the promise itself, and the existence of the lame waiver to circumvent the promise. If you want to be a purist on such matters, well that’s admirable if a little naive.
But the minute we start making exceptions for this guy and that, then can’t 500 people legitimately wonder where the hell their waiver is?
And yes, it’s personal in my case. My wife is arguably more qualified than anyone in America for an important job in this administration. But she’s blackballed based on the fact that she’s been doing for several years the very lobbying work that makes her so qualified for the job.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
A modest proposal to help clear the lobbying air:
If someone needs a waiver, let them write a detailed account of the issues they worked on over the last two (or maybe three?) years. If they are willing to expose their previous activities to the sunshine (?) of public discourse then maybe we can afford to give them influence “inside” the process. Otherwise, I think not.
I guess this should be submitted as a sworn statement so they’d be guilty of some crime if they lied or “forgot” material information…
Obviously this would be no problem at all for “public interest” lobbyists. On the other hand it would be a major problem for the worst operatives. So at least it is correlated with the distinction we’d like to make.
Plus, think of how useful it would be to have detailed internal accounts of what was going on from well placed actors. At least we’d get something of value in return for giving them the opportunity to betray our trust.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Actually, I like the ban on lobbyists and the waiver system. Because the waiver system grasps the pragmatic stance that you, Matthew, endorse (there’s no getting rid of lobbyists) but makes it the subject of debate. As a matter of fact, if I had my druthers, it would be in the hands of Congress to approve the waiver, and only on the grounds of “extensive experience in the field.”
What would that do? It would separate lobbyists like, say, the head of an Environmental Organization and lobbyists like, say, the head of a logging firm. One would be an appropriate appointment to the head of the EPA, and the other would not.
Hilary Clinton got rapped not because she was inclusive of lobbyists, but because of the ridiculous way she phrased it. “Lobbyists are people too.” What? Really? What does that even mean? She would have been more successful if she’d started out by saying, “Some lobby groups, like Unions, organize and represent masses of people; other, like the Tobacco Lobby, represent vested interests that only benefit a narrow segment of society. My Administration will separate between public interest lobbies and private interest lobbies.” Instead, she said “Lobbyists are people too.” In other words, her solution to the lobbyist “problem” is to say that there’s no problem. That’s not what I wanted to hear.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:50 am
I believe the wiggle room in Obama’s pledges vis a vis lobbyists was pointed out way back in 2007 – no money from “registered” federal lobbyists but still accepting donations for lobbyists at the state level and from people at lobbying firms who were not registered as lobbyist at the time of their contribution.
from the way back machine in NYT 12/29/07
“I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists, and I have won,” Mr. Obama said at the time. “They have not funded my campaign, they will not get a job in my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.”
But he later amended his position, saying that lobbyists would not “dominate” his White House.”
January 28th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Aren’t elected officials like lobbyists ?
They do get paid to represent a certain group of people who select them for the position.
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 am
levitraI bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 11th, 2009 at 4:41 am
It is the coolest site,keep so!
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:16 am
tramadol
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:29 am
buy viagra online
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 29th, 2009 at 4:43 am
Can you provide more information on this?
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:20 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:13 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 6:07 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right viagra