Several of the biggest departments in the federal government plan to adhere to the White House prohibition on lobbyists serving on their advisory boards and committees.
The Hill contacted all 20 Cabinet-level agencies to see if they intend to follow the guidance issued two weeks ago by the White House.
Twelve agencies returned messages before press time and all said they would adhere to the guidelines.
A spokesman for the Defense Department said that it plans to stick to the guidance but is reviewing how best to implement it for now.
K Street Lobbyists Say Latest Restriction to Reduce Registrations
By Kevin Bogardus
The Hill
September 25, 2009
More lobbyists are expected to terminate their registrations because of the White House’s announcement this week that federal agencies should not appoint them to advisory boards.
It is unclear how many people will be affected by the decision, but at least 1,000 federal advisory committees report to the General Services Administration under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and many of them now include registered lobbyists.
Calman Cohen, president of the Emergency Committee for American Trade, a pro-trade coalition of business leaders, sits on a 27-member panel that provides advice to the Commerce Department on trade policy in the electronics industry. He is one of 14 panel members who were registered to lobby last quarter for clients that include IBM, Oracle and eBay Inc.
Cohen said he hopes the White House will institute a waiver process to exempt lobbyists from the policy, much like they have done with an executive order Obama signed on the first day of the administration to stop the revolving door between K Street and government.
Big companies that spent hundreds of millions lobbying successfully for a tax break enacted in 2004 got a 22,000-percent return on that investment — proof that for those who can afford it, hiring a lobbyist can pay handsome dividends.
The figures, compiled by professors at the University of Kansas for a study to be released Thursday, offer a rarely seen glimpse of how the lobbying business works, and why — even as President Barack Obama vows to curb lobbyists' influence — the industry is booming as never before.
The report details efforts by hundreds of companies in 2003 and 2004 to push through a one-time tax "holiday" that lowered for a year the tax rate they paid on profits earned abroad. All told, U.S. companies saved about $100 billion in taxes, with pharmaceutical behemoths Pfizer and Merck & Co., technology giants IBM and Hewlett Packard, and health products maker Johnson & Johnson among the top beneficiaries.
