From today’s Washington Post:
…Obama’s campaign pledge to keep his distance from the Washington lobbying culture may be tougher to fulfill than he anticipated.
“Nothing is going to change,” said Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton who did lobbying work for a range of companies after leaving the White House.
Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to change Washington, vowing to upend the K Street lobbying culture he encountered when he joined the U.S. Senate.
But more than a dozen members of President-elect Obama’s fast-growing transition team have worked as federally registered lobbyists within the past four years. They include former lobbyists for the nation’s trial lawyers association, mortgage giant Fannie Mae, drug companies such as Amgen, high-tech firms such as Microsoft, labor unions and the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress.
Obama’s formal policy during the campaign indicated that there may be some role for lobbyists in his administration, though his rhetoric did not always convey that. In a 2007 speech, he said he was “running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. They won’t work in my White House.”
A few days later, he changed the phrasing to say that lobbyists “are not going to dominate my White House.”
Some of the men in President Obama’s transition team who “are not going to dominate [his] White House:”
- Mark Gitenstein – worked on million-dollar lobbying contracts with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and promoted legislation for giant defense contractors Boeing and General Dynamics. Until this fall, he was registered to petition Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of AT&T, Merrill Lynch, KPMG, Ernst & Young and others.
- Ron Klain – Joe Biden’s chief of staff, had lobbied for Fannie Mae on “regulatory matters” until 2004, when the fraud got uncovered after years of Congressional interference with regulators. Klain also lobbied for companies defending asbestos lawsuits and for ImClone, the drugmaker that faced charges of fraud.
- John Podesta – The man running Obama’s transition spent the last few years lobbying for the far-Left group Center for American Progress.
- Patrick Gaspard – Lobbied on health care issues on behalf of the SEIU, now associate personnel director for the transition team
And I really thought an Obama administration was going to be different!
