While you we worrying about Aqua Buddha, and whether you were about to vote for a candidate who was a witch or wasn’t, financial services companies and their hired Washington guns blitzed the federal regulatory agencies charged with crafting and implementing new tough rules for Wall Street.

Overall, more than 720 clients focused some of their third-quarter lobbying efforts on the Democrats’ landmark Wall Street reform legislation. And these companies and organizations hired 2,879 lobbyists between July 1 and September 30 for work on all federal priorities, the Center for Responsive Politics has found.

President Barack Obama signed the measure into law on July 21, six days after the Senate passed the final version of the bill. The legislation was written by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

The 723 companies and organizations explicitly mentioning the Dodd-Frank bill in their lobbying reports during the third quarter represents a 44 percent increase above the number who mentioned the bill during all of 2009, according to the Center’s research. Between January and September, 904 clients mentioned the bill in their lobbying reports — or 80 percent more than who explicitly lobbied on the bill in all of 2009.

Additionally, the number of lobbyists employed by these clients represents a 22-percent increase above the number of lobbyists who worked for clients that lobbied on this bill during all of 2009.

And clients who did at least some lobbying on the financial regulatory reform legislation employed 54 percent more lobbyists during the first three quarters of 2010 compared to all of 2009. Between January and September, 3,659 lobbyists worked for companies that explicitly lobbied on the Dodd-Frank bill, according to the Center’s analysis. During 2009, 2,375 lobbyists did.

Here’s a table showing the number of clients who explicitly mentioned the Wall Street reform legislation in their quarterly lobbying reports, and the number of lobbyists they hired each quarter for all lobbying work.

Q1 09 Q2 09 Q3 09 Q4 09 ALL 2009 Q1 10 Q2 10 Q3 10 YTD 10 Total # of Clients 77 124 153 485 501 517 807 723 904 Total # of Lobbyists 356 687 795 2,255 2,375 2,235 3,263 2,879 3,659

Furthermore, some federal agencies — not just the two chambers of Congress — were targeted by lobbyists, particularly those with rule-making and oversight responsibilities.

Shown in the graph above are the lobbyists targeting the Securities Exchange Commission (in red) and the lobbyists targeting the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (in green). The number of all clients lobbying on the Wall Street reform legislation is shown in blue.

Between July and September, 123 companies, trade associations and other groups — or 17 percent of all clients that lobbied concerning the Democrats’ Wall Street reform legislation — targeted the Securities Exchange Commission, the Center’s analysis shows.

That’s a 45 percent increase above the number of Wall Street reform-related clients who lobbied the SEC during the second quarter of 2010.

This flurry of activity also represents a 273 percent increase above such lobbying during the first three quarters of 2009.

Moreover, during the third quarter, 93 clients who lobbied on the Wall Street reform bill targeted the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — a 22 percent increase above the second quarter and a ten-fold increase above such lobbying during the first three quarters of 2009, the Center’s analysis indicates.

Such lobbying comes as both the CFTC and SEC have struggled with limited financial resources.

In late October, Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Michael Dunn described his commission as “underfunded for years” and in dire need of additional funding. “To be blunt, we cannot implement the entire Dodd-Frank Act and complete our pre-Dodd-Frank duties without a substantial budget increase,” he said according to Global Financial Strategy News.

The SEC, meanwhile, has been seeking a 12-percent increase in its budget for next year. That’s about double the increase the agency saw between fiscal years 2008 and 2009. And during parts of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency, the agency’s budget was flat or even cut from year to year.

SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro has said the 12-percent increase to $1.26 billion for fiscal year 2011 “will do a great deal to help us keep pace with the continuing growth of the markets and provide necessary resources to support important regulatory initiatives in 2011.”

Among other responsibilities, the CFTC and SEC will be responsible for implementing new regulations on derivatives, the investment vehicles that have been almost completely unregulated, often allowed investors to make risky bets and that played a substantial role in causing the nation’s economic crisis.

Clients that targeted the Wall Street reform legislation increased their lobbying at numerous federal departments and agencies during the first three quarters of 2010 compared to the same period last year as well.

Lobbying by groups mentioning the Wall Street reform legislation in their lobbying filings increased between two-fold and eight-fold at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Council of Economic Advisers, the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President, the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, the Federal Reserve System, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Economic Council, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of U.S. Trade Representative.

Here is a table showing the number of clients — who explicitly mentioned the Dodd-Frank legislation in their lobbying reports — who lobbied these federal agencies and departments each quarter.

Agency or Department 2009q1 2009q2 2009q3 2009q4 2010q1 2010q2 2010q3 Dept of Treasury 26 61 60 147 160 205 213 Securities & Exchange Commission 14 30 28 80 67 85 123 Commodity Futures Trading Commission 5 5 9 52 45 76 93 Office of US Trade Representative 5 14 15 59 66 91 85 Dept of Commerce 8 15 17 58 67 97 82 Federal Reserve System 11 17 21 56 54 65 72 Executive Office of the President 4 13 13 44 45 79 68 Office of Management & Budget 4 8 9 37 42 55 56 Internal Revenue Service 3 13 15 38 37 53 54 Federal Deposit Insurance Commission 4 8 9 29 33 39 43 National Economic Council 1 9 11 18 16 24 24 Office of the Comptroller of the Currency 3 5 5 16 19 22 23 Consumer Product Safety Commission 2 2 3 10 7 15 10 Council of Economic Advisers 1 2 2 6 5 5 6

And here is a table showing the unique number of clients mentioning the Wall Street reform legislation who lobbied these agencies and departments during the specific time frames mentioned.

Agency or Department Jan – Sept 2009 Jan – Dec 2009 Jan – Sept 2010 Jan 2009 – Sept 2010 Dept of Treasury 78 165 265 291 Securities & Exchange Commission 37 89 138 152 Dept of Commerce 20 62 116 127 Commodity Futures Trading Commission 11 56 110 115 Executive Office of the President 18 50 103 115 Office of US Trade Representative 19 62 108 113 Federal Reserve System 29 67 82 101 Office of Management & Budget 10 39 81 90 Internal Revenue Service 19 43 67 77 Federal Deposit Insurance Commission 11 31 56 63 National Economic Council 13 22 34 42 Ofc of the Comptroller of the Currency 6 18 27 30 Consumer Product Safety Commission 5 13 15 19 Council of Economic Advisers 2 6 7 9

This analysis was based on a Center for Responsive Politics review of lobbying reports filed with the Secretary of the Senate that explicitly mentioned in the “specific issue” field of the forms the Dodd-Frank legislation by number (H.R. 4173), by title (Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act), or by partial phrases such as “Dodd-Frank,” “Wall Street reform” or “finance reform.”

The specific issue field is designed as a place for lobbyists to identify the bill number, bill title and other additional information about their activities.

The amount of additional information detailed in this field, however, can vary and is subject to human error on the part of filers. Lobbyists are not required to provide such details in a standardized format, so any search of this information may not perfectly capture all lobbying activity.

Lobbying disclosure rules do not require an itemization of how much money was spent per issue, so it is impossible to discern how much money was spent strictly on Wall Street reform lobbying.

Similarly, the overall figure of lobbyists represents all individuals hired by companies to carry out all lobbying priorities; the database maintained by the Senate Office of Public Records does not allow one to link a client’s lobbyists and the specific issue lobbyists worked on.

Center for Responsive Politics researcher Matthias Jaime contributed to this report.



For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: [email protected]

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