Groups may sue Obama admin for 'demonizing lobbyists' Rachel Oswald

Published: Tuesday March 31, 2009





Print This Email This In a pairing of unusual bedfellows, two public interest groups have joined with the American League of Lobbyists to protest an Obama memorandum forbidding oral contact between administration officials and registered lobbyists over bailout funding.



The American Civil Liberties Union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have allied with ALL against a section of March 20 memorandum by White House Counsel Gregory Craig entitled Ensuring Responsible Spending of Recovery Act Funds.



Language in the memorandum that the groups are objecting to includes statements like this: An executive department or agency official shall not consider the view of a lobbyist registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 concerning particular projects, applications or applicants for funding under the Recovery Act unless such views are in writing.



CREW, ACLU and ALL want the White House to rescind and reissue that section to allow telephone and in-person communications between registered lobbyists and Obama officials.The groups sent a letter Tuesday afternoon to Craig summarizing their grievances. That letter can be read here.



In a Tuesday conference call with reporters, Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said she could not answer one way or another whether CREW would consider suing the Obama administration over the memo.



"We would certainly look at whether theres a legal basis for a challenge," she said.



Dave Wendhold, president of ALL told Roll Call earlier in the day Tuesday that legal action was seriously [being] discussed, if the Obama administration chose not to amend the memo.



Sloan described the March 20 memo as really a case of the emperor having no clothes and that administration efforts to curb the influence of special interests in Washington will actually be subverted by the new restrictions on lobbyist interactions with government officials.



Business executives and corporate interest groups that contribute heavily to Congressional campaigns will continue to enjoy close access to senators and Congressmen, Sloan said, while lobbyists that work for public interest groups will see their access to the Obama administration curtailed.



Demonizing lobbyists is not the solution, Sloan said. There are good and bad lobbyists like there are good and bad members of Congress.



From the letter to Craig: Instead of increasing the transparency and accountability, this action will encourage participation by people who are not required to register and abide by the rules set forth in the stringent regulations that govern lobbyists. To be clear, this action will decrease transparency and accountability. Moreover, it will also discourage accurate reporting under the Lobbying Disclosure Act  especially for those who are on the cusp for meeting the definitional requirement of a registered lobbyist.



CREW and the ACLU want the Obama administration to take the March 20 memo one step further, and rather than just disclose all conversations with registered lobbyists, provide details of all contacts with all private interest groups. This database should be available to the public on the Web and include such details as the name and business affiliation of the individual meeting with the administration, which government officials they met with, at what time and what subject matters were discussed.



This will just turn all of these [business executives] into de-facto lobbyists who dont have to go through the same rigorous registration process of lobbyists, Sloan said.



Also participating in the conference call were Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLUs Washington Legislative Office and Wendhold, the president of ALL.



While applauding the Obama administrations efforts in improving transparency in areas such as the preservation of presidential redords, Fredrickson said the executive branchs reasoning in the memo was highly flawed.



We are not against transparency, Fredrickson said. We are not saying that meetings can be had in the dark and that our taxpayer money can be spend on projects that have not been appropriately vetted. That is not what we are talking about.



Rather than targeting only registered lobbyists, who include lobbyists for the ACLU and other public interest and rights groups, Fredrickson said the administration should focus on limiting the influence of special interests overall.



Clearly angered over the Craig memo, Wendhold called the action an unprecedented, unconstitutional breach by the administration.



No president, regardless of his approval rating, should be allowed to discriminate or take away a right, Wendhold said of the right to petition the government, which is spelled out in the First Amendment of the Constitution. This is not how a democracy works, it is how a totalitarian government works.



Added Fredrickson, The First Amendment is clearly implicated here. The issue is very much about freedom of speech and the ability to petition the government.



The trio of groups came together after CREW contacted the ACLU and ALL with its concerns over the memo.



Wendhold said the wide political spectrum represented by the groups demonstrates the seriousness of the matter.





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