Candidates' plans to curb lobbyists draw skepticism
WASHINGTON - Lashing out at lobbyists has become an easy applause line for presidential candidates: The term "lobbyist" was mentioned 20 times by the three participants at Monday's Democratic debate in South Carolina - more often than race, the economy or Social Security. Osama bin Laden was mentioned once.
Keeping lobbyists out of government is the centerpiece of John Edwards's campaign and a major part of Barack Obama's "new politics." Both Edwards and Obama have said that priorities such as universal health insurance would be possible with lobbyists out of the picture. The message has been powerful enough that Hillary Clinton has tried to tie Obama to lobbyists as a way of discrediting him.
But in Washington, where attempts to restrict and restrain lobbying are a constant part of political life, few believe that any of the prescriptions offered by the candidates are likely to bring about the dramatic changes being promised.
Interviews with leading government watchdogs and veteran lawmakers say the proposed solutions - such as banning federal candidates from accepting lobbyists' contributions, and preventing lobbyists from serving in White House roles - would do little to stop the influence lobbyists have in crafting policy in Washington.
Members of Congress cannot legally be prevented from meeting with lobbyists or any other advocates for a cause, government watchdog groups and the professional advocates say. They noted that corporate interests also have other avenues to promote their views, ranging from face-to-face meetings with lawmakers to television commercials making their case to the public.
Even if lobbyists were barred from making campaign donations, political action committees representing corporate or other special interests could still make donations lawfully. "If you can be bought by a lobbyist, you can be bought by a nonlobbyist," said Representative Michael Capuano, Democrat of Somerville.
All government watchdogs agree that attempting to limit the ways lobbyists can influence members of Congress is a laudable goal, and that the new ethics law requiring more disclosure of lobbyists' activities was a useful step. But demonizing the lobbyists themselves will not fix a system that is rooted in the need for candidates to raise money, according to government watchdogs. Public financing of campaigns, they believe, is the only way to remove the financial connection between special interests and candidates.
"Lobbyists in and of themselves are not bad. We need lobbyists," said Bob Edgar, a former congressman who now heads Common Cause, a government watchdog group. "People like [Jack] Abramoff and [former House majority leader Tom] DeLay have really given lobbyists and lobbying a bad name," Edgar said, referring to the jailed super-lobbyist and the lawmaker who resigned from Congress after his ties to the disgraced Abramoff were exposed.
Presidential candidates, however, have cast lobbyists as a public enemy, and have accused their foes for the Oval Office of being tainted by lobbyists' money and influence.
Clinton, a Democratic senator from New York, and Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, have excoriated lobbyists during debates and on the stump, blaming them for thwarting important legislation and vowing that lobbyists will not control their administrations. Several GOP candidates have also slammed lobbyists on the campaign trail.
Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, has put forth the most aggressive proposal to control lobbyists' influence. His plan would bar federal candidates from accepting campaign contributions from federal lobbyists, and prohibit lobbyists from "bundling" contributions by lining up large numbers of people with special interests to contribute to a campaign. Edwards also vowed that no corporate lobbyist would work in his White House, though he does not include former labor union lobbyists in his pledge.
But that approach would do nothing to change the system of campaign financing and policy-making, campaign finance specialists and lawmakers say.
"The real corrupting influence is that over time, if you want to stay in office, you figure out the money system," said Edgar, who served seven terms as a Democratic representative.
Campaigns cost money, and all contributions - whether from an individual or an interest group - arguably come with an agenda, say current and former lawmakers. Self-financed candidates can be free of pressure from campaign contributors - but that just limits the field to wealthy contenders, government watchdogs note.
Given that candidates routinely collect money from people with business before government, lobbyists' contributions - which are limited, just like any citizen's - are no more tainted than anyone else's, Capuano said.
"I find it simplistic. It's offensive because it is nothing but simplistic," Capuano said of the Draconian proposals to control lobbyists.
Edgar, however, said that banning lobbyists from bundling contributions would eliminate one way in which they seek to influence candidates. But he and others noted that even if such bundling by lobbyists was banned, it would not prevent any special-interest group from deciding on its own to bring people together to each give the maximum allowed contribution to a particular candidate.
Obama and Edwards, for example, eschew money from political action committees and registered lobbyists. But both men collected about $8 million each in the first nine months of last year from lawyers. Clinton accepted $568,000 from lobbyists during that period, but the amount is a fraction of the more than $4.7 million she received from individuals in the securities and investment field.
Fund-raisers - which nearly all campaigns hire to collect money for their campaigns - corral individuals, including those representing special interests, to attend dinners and other events with a hefty entrance fee, Capuano noted. "I don't technically bundle that I'm aware of. But I have a fund-raiser. Is that bundling? What's the difference?" he said.
Nor is it practicable to take lobbyists out of the equation, said Brian Pallasch, president of the American League of Lobbyists. Virtually all Americans - if they have a bank account, pay taxes, or have a hobby - are represented by a lobbyist, even if they don't know it, Pallasch said.
The only way to take money out of the equation is to go to public financing, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Until such a time, people who need money are members of Congress, and people who are offering it are lobbyists. You're not going to break that connection," she said.
But again, the realities of modern campaigns have interfered with the public financing proposal. All of the Democratic candidates, for example, have endorsed the idea of public financing - yet both Obama and Clinton, both of whom have raised well over $100 million apiece, have forgone federal matching funds, which would have required them to limit their spending.
"We need to fundamentally reform the campaign finance system if we're going to dramatically reduce the role of lobbyists and special interest groups in Washington," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group which seeks to limit the influence of big money in politics. 