CQ Politics reports that health care related PACs accounted for the top or second highest source of contributions for 15 of the top 18 congressional leaders in the House involved in the health care debate.

Apparently, the $80 billion cost savings that the pharmaceutical industry agreed to with the Obama administration came with a price. In return, the White House promised to protect the industry from further attempts to extract cost savings from them including allowing the government to negotiate drug prices. Now we know what those trips to the White House were all about.

The House Selecte Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming is investigating the forged letters sent to three congressmen by a grassroots lobbying firm on behalf of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). ACCCE has been trying to distance themselves from Bonner & Associates, the firm in question, and has denounced the letters. In a new letter sent by Chair Ed Markey, ACCCE is questioned as to why they did not act on the forged letters after they discovered their existence on June 24, two days prior to the vote on the cap and trade bill.

A new hire by the State Department may exploit a loophole in the administration's lobbying ban.

The Washington Post has a useful interactive graphic to compare the various versions of health care reform in Congress.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget released the administration's new stimulus lobbying rules on Friday, as John mentioned earlier. In summary, the new rules generally expand who is covered by the ban on agency staff having oral communications regarding Recovery Act grants, although it shrinks the circumstances as to when the ban applies and what it covers. It also closes a loophole pertaining to written communications by lobbyists on policy matters.

The 787 billion dollar question is how does the OMB's July 24th guidance on stimulus recovery lobbying differ from its April 7th memo? (For a short video explaining the old rules, see this.) Here's how the rules have changed.

Who Is Covered?

The rule against agency officials engaging in oral communications with persons applying for federal financial assistance under the Recovery Act has been expanded to nearly everyone, instead of only encompassing lobbyists, as it did before.

However, the ban specifically exempts certain groups of people. It doesn't reach federal government employees. It doesn't cover the elected chief executive of a state, local, or tribal government (e.g., governors and mayors). And the ban doesn't apply to the Presiding Officer or Majority Leader in each chamber of a state legislature.

In addition, the ban does not apply if the subject of the communication to an agency official regards a purely logistical question, or was made at a widely attended gathering. Nor does it cover people responding to communications initiated by agency staff – that is, to answer agency staff questions.

Interestingly enough, it is not clear whether the new rules pertain to Congressional staff or Members of Congress. It seems reasonable to conclude that Congressional staff can communicate with agency officials under the “federal government employee” exemption. However, Members of Congress are not specifically exempted from these rules, although elected officials at the state and local level are specifically mentioned as exempted. (It would be a stretch to fit Members of Congress under the “federal government employee” exemption.)

The omission of Members of Congress probably is an oversight. If followed, banning communications by Members of Congress would likely be unconstitutional, as Congress has oversight responsibilities over agency activities.

When Does The Ban Take Effect?

The ban on oral communications set forth in the April 7th memo prohibits communications “regarding Recovery Act matters” that pertain to “particular projects, applications, or applicants for funding.” Under the old rule, oral communications are prohibited upon the first expression of interest by a party, or even earlier than that, if there's enough indication that the party is interested in a specific project or application.

The new memo changes this considerably. Now, persons interested in receiving Recovery Act money may communicate with agency officials up until the point they file a “formal application.” This is much later on in the process. Conceivably, persons interested in Recovery Act funds may hold off on filing an application for a grant while they lobby administration officials, and then submit the formal paperwork once they've laid the groundwork.

What Does The Ban Cover?

Under the new rule, the ban covers only oral communications concerning pending applications for a competitive grant or other competitive form of federal financial assistance under the Recovery Act. The previous rule covered oral communications regarding all grants, regardless of whether they were competitive or issued based upon a formula. The new OMB memo explains that only competitive grants are covered because “in formula-driven grant contexts, grantees . . . are designated by statute and do not have to compete with others to receive their awards from Federal agencies.”

Final Thoughts

The OMB memo says that the administration will soon release a “web tool” to “facilitate disclosure of lobbyist contacts concerning the Recovery Act.” This will go a long way towards making this a more transparent process. Hopefully, the form will look something like this.

Last Friday's memo also partially closed a loophole identified in an earlier post. Agencies are now required to publish online written communications from lobbyists concerning Recovery Act policies. This alleviates the concern about lobbyists can ask for the creation of specific grants that would benefit their clients without having to disclose their request. It leaves open, however, the ability of lobbyists to ask for the creation of formula-driven grants that would ultimately be distributed to their clients.

During the 2008 presidential primary campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, then-Sen. Obama promised to hold open, televised negotiations on health care reform, a direct swipe at his opponent's approach to health care reform when she was First Lady and in charge of the White House's health care reform efforts. As it turns out, that was all just politics. As President, Obama has not held televised negotiations on his health care reform efforts. Now, the Secret Service is refusing to release a list of health care lobbyists and executives visiting the White House for these not-so-televised negotiations.

Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Secret Service asking about visits from 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and other players in the debate. The group wants the material in order to gauge the influence of those executives in crafting a new healthcare policy.

While the administration required lobbyists to meet a pretty high transparency burden for the stimulus funds, health care lobbying is allowed to fester without the transparency Obama repeatedly promised during the campaign. Now, negotiations do not necessarily need to be televised -- in fact that's probably a bad idea -- but disclosing who is meeting with White House officials is crucial to gauging the power of groups and organizations trying to influence the final outcome.

The same is true with all major issues that the White House has put forward: cap and trade, financial regulation and health care. The New York Times reported that industry officials and lobbyists are seeking to work with the administration, in an effort to have their voices heard, rather than throw bombs from the outside. All of these organizations are seeking to influence White House decisions and ultimately to lobby Congress to set the final outcome, yet there is no mechanism for disclosure of their interactions with government officials.

If President Obama wants to meet his campaign promises of fighting lobbyists and increasing the transparency of the influence sector, he should consider applying the same disclosure rules (not the meeting restrictions) that cover stimulus lobbying to all lobbyists and executives. Or, at the very least, release a list of health care lobbyists and executives visiting the White House, per CREW's request.

According to First Read, Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus will announce his plans for health care reform sometime this week. Baucus and his committee are seen as the crucial stepping stone for the reform plan pushed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. The outline of Baucus' plans will likely determine the shape and fate of health care reform this year. Due to Baucus' import in the reform discussion, we decided to take a look at the circle of lobbyists surrounding both Baucus and the other committee members. By tracking former staffers turned lobbyists for committee members, we can see what other interests are involved in crafting the coming health reform compromise. Senators are not simply island unto themselves, but important pieces in a network of companies, interest groups and lobbyists trying to formulate policy. Hopefully, these visualizations help to make that a little bit clearer. You can see all of them on one page here.

The Washington Post reports today that the health care industry, in its attempt to influence the debate over health care reform, has hired at least 350 former government staffers and former members of Congress to lobby on the issue. With the many connections these former government workers have, particularly former members of Congress or congressional chiefs of staff, they will have near saturation coverage of the 535 current members of Congress. They also are operating with seemingly bottomless funding. The industry is currently spending $1.4 million a week on lobbying. Perhaps, the most unparrelled lobbying campaign ever.

Now the Post story has a few caveats that indicate that this lobbying campaign is probably larger than their reporting shows. For one:

The analysis identified more than 350 former government aides, each representing an average of four firms or trade groups. That tally does not include lobbyists who did not report their earlier government experience, such as PhRMA President W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana. Federal law does not require providing such detail.

Lobbying disclosure reports contain a field for listing prior government work, but this field is often left empty by lobbyists with government experience. If someone like Billy Tauzin, who is the poster boy for everything wrong with the revolving door, does not list his previous work as a leading lawmaker, what hope do we have for the many lesser former government workers to list their previous government work. I'd assume that the number of former government employees working in this campaign far exceeds 350.

One other aspect of the story highlights something which we've discussed here, lobbying contacts. The real problem with the revolving door is the unusual amount of access that former government officials, particularly members of Congress, have to current government officials. And that includes the ability to meet, call, or email with staffers or lawmakers to push their client's agenda. Of course, Congress does not require any disclosure of lobbying contacts, thus obscuring the role that these 350+ lobbyists are having in the process of crafting a health care reform bill that will affect everyone in the country.

If you want to see other reporting on the network of former government staffers turned health care lobbyists, we've been looking at the Senate Finance Committee -- "the central broker in the [health care] debate," according to the Post -- and the connections each lawmaker has with health care lobbyists. You can see our visualization of Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus' connections or our visualization of all Senate Finance Committee Democrats and their connections. I'll be posting about the Senate Finance Committee Republicans this week.

Today, former senators Tom Daschle and Bob Dole released a plan for health care reform that is being hailed a bipartisan way forward. Headlines blare about the Daschle/Dole plan for health care. But were these two to not have had illustrious careers in the Senate, the headlines would tell a far different story: "Health Care Lobbyists Release Health Care Plan."

Both Daschle and Dole work for a major Washington, DC lobbying firm, Alston & Bird. Many of Alston & Bird's major clients are from the health care sector including the American Hospital Association, HealthSouth Corp, and pharmaceutical companies Abbott Laboratories, Bayer, Celgene, and Mylan Laboratories. In total, Alston & Bird is currently representing 31 clients from the health care sector. Of the $2,730,000 reported income received from clients, nearly 50% of that, $1,070,000, comes from these 31 health care clients.

This looks like another benefit of the revolving door. You can release a legislative proposal from outside of Congress and the first thing anyone thinks of is your previous job and not your current one.

The following 31 companies and organizations are listed as health care sector clients of Alston & Bird:

I was reading this blog post that the Advocacy Director of End the Occupation, a pro-Palestinian organization, sent Sunlight over e-mail about the difficulty in obtaining a seat at a congressional committee mark-up session and was thinking about all those stories about homeless people working as line-sitters for corporate lobbyists. Lo and behold, The Daily Beast has a video report up today on that exact topic. Another aspect of the Washington influence game that most people are completely unaware of.

According to The Hill, only one political action committee (PAC) reported bundling campaign contributions for a political candidate during the first filing period for disclosed bundlers. The PAC of Gilead Sciences, a health care company, disclosed raising $17,500 for Rep. Henry Waxman's PAC, LA PAC. It should come as no surprise that disclosure is virtually nil since the Federal Election Commission (FEC) eviscerated the bundling disclosure law when it implemented its regulations for disclosure.

In 2007, Congress passed a large ethics and lobbying reform package, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, containing disclosure requirements for lobbyists bundling campaign contributions for candidates. The law for bundling disclosure was not implemented immediately as the FEC, then dormant due to controversy surrounding appointments, was required to set out regulations for the filing of disclosure reports. When the FEC finally issued their regulations, they took knocked the wind out of the law.

The two major rules that they issued were:

1. Candidates would have to show that, either, the lobbyist bundling contributions received a "benefit" -- i.e. a honorary award, an autograph from the candidate -- or the candidate must maintain a tracking system that gives credit to lobbyists bundling contributions for their campaign or PAC.
2. Lobbyists who are co-hosting a fundraiser for a candidate can divide the amount raised between them, thus circumventing the $16,000 disclosure threshold. This division of raised contributions goes so far to allow co-hosting non-lobbyists to be alotted a portion of the total raised amount.

Both of these rules allow bundlers to easily evade disclosure requirments. The second of those rules was denounced by then-Sen. Barack Obama, an early supporter of bundling disclosure, before the FEC enacted it, when he said on the floor of the Senate, "In a situation where a fundraising event is co-hosted by a number of different lobbyists, I am concerned that some might want to avoid reporting bundled contributions by dividing up the total receipts of a fundraising event among many sponsors or co-hosts of the event. Certainly, that was not our intention."

That was not their intention, but that is what the FEC enacted. And now we have one disclosure, despite bundling being a common form of fundraising in Washington.

BusinessWeek, in a good piece on the falling fortunes of car dealerships asks the following question, "Why has Congress not shown much interest so far in the plight of dealers, despite the fact that many dealers are big political donors?" The dealers may be big political donors, but they're failure to secure a bailout may stem from their contributions going to the wrong party.

Car Dealership Contributions to Congressional Candidates, by Party (2007-2008)
Dems:	$1,933,501
Repubs:	$4,866,533
Others:	$2,248

In the 2008 election cycle, car dealerships made 71.5% of their congressional campaign contributions to Republican candidates. The average contribution to a Republican candidate was nearly twice as high ($11,973 vs. $6,658) as the average contribution for a Democratic candidate. Excluding lawmakers running for the presidency (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Joe Biden), the top eleven recipients were Republicans. Only two Democrats, Reps. Ron Klein and Charles Rangel, received enough contributions to knock them into the top 20.

In a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, getting your voice heard when you've consistently contributed to the minority party may prove difficult. This may prove particularly troubling when your industry is in the dire straights that the American car dealership industry is in at this moment. Chrysler just sent out letters to 789 of its dealerships ending their franchise. General Motors is expected to follow suit on Friday by revoking the franchises of 1,000 to 1,200 dealerships.

Car dealerships, led by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), are sending over a hundred representative to Washington in a large lobbying campaign to push for federal relief for their businesses. So far this year, the industry has spent $1.14 million on lobbying expenses. That puts them on pace to match their record-setting lobbying year of 2008 ($4.48 million).

Still, all this lobbying may find the dealers coming up short. After all, they have to deal with the decades-long cultivation of a bad image. As BusinessWeek says, "As bad as GM’s image is with many carbuyers, the image of car dealers with just about everyone falls below lawyers and even journalists when it comes to public esteem." What part of public entertainment has not parlayed the grifting car salesman into a source of derision or comedy? And what congressman wants to be known for supporting an industry with such a poor reputation?

Still even more problematic is the overreach of American dealerships. The market for American cars has shrunk dramatically, but the number of dealerships has not. BusinessWeek states that the market share for American cars has shrunk from 90% to 45%-50%. No amount of lobbying or campaign contributions will save your business when you are over-extended to the point American car dealerships currently are.

Most lobbyists seeking earmarks for clients are likely trying to operate slightly on the sly. At least you'd think. That's why when, on a lark, I decided to search lobbying disclosures, under the "specific lobbying issue" field, for "earmark" I was surprised to discover my search return 42 reports. After weeding out duplicates, amendments and lobbying against earmarks, the total fell to 27 registrants seeking earmarks explicitly. Here's some of what I found:

Some of the registrants were very specific about what they were seeking. The University of the District of Columbia, a new registrant, ticked off five earmark requests it was making to Congress, mostly likely to Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. They included a green law school, and grant for agricultural facilities, the creation of a Veteran's Affairs Office, and the creation of a Career Center Program. The Virginia Police Chiefs Foundation is seeking an earmark for law enforcement training, while the National Safety Council is seeking funds for a teen driver training program.

The OSF Healthcare System was incredibly specific in its description of the earmark it is seeking, "OSF Healthcare System lobbied for Federal earmark appropriations in the FY09 budget for one project. For all of the System we requested $2+ million in federal earmark funding from various federal appropriations bills to support the purchase and installation of an electronic health record system. The total cost of the project is more than $36 million."

Some other slightly less specific examples include new buses for the Ft. Worth Transporation Authority and Metro St. Louis, funding to repair the St. Louis Flood Wall, research on chronic pain from The Jackson Laboratory, and an advanced electric vehicle project by Vectrix, Inc.

Of course, none of this information is complete. Most lobbyists do not list earmarks as an issue they are seeking action on. These are just a few of the ones who have decided to be open and up front about the type of funding they are seeking from Congress. Good for them.

Full list below: