| Lobbying for reform BY MIKE UNGER 
Photos by Jeff Watts
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) delivered the keynote address during Thursday’s Lobbying Reform Summit cosponsored by AU’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. The center’s director, SPA distinguished professor James Thurber, is seated to Obama’s left. “I believe a serious conversation about reform would be one that would be good for this town to have in the coming months,” Obama said. Lobbying has become American politics’ eight-letter, four-letter word. Ever since former Washington superlobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty earlier this month to a host of public corruption charges including fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials, the media, politicians, and increasingly, the general public, have cried out in moral indignation over the amount of power wielded by K Street. But problems surrounding the relationship between lawmakers and those who try to influence them—through means spanning the legal and moral spectrum—is nothing new. James Thurber, SPA distinguished professor and director of AU’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, is considered a foremost expert on lobbying and the political process. CCPS’s Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute has been educating lobbyists for 14 years, and Thurber himself teaches a course on lobbying and ethics. Perhaps no one is better positioned to evaluate the mistakes of the past and analyze the myriad proposed reform measures now circulating through the halls of Congress.
Among the summit’s speakers, above from top, were former rep. Lee Hamilton, former rep. Martin Frost, and Fred Wertheimer, president and CEO of Democracy 21. |
“Every generation that comes along seems to distrust Congress more and more. We need to have more transparency and have people start to trust the process,” Thurber said. “We have a fragile democracy, and if you dissipate trust in democracy, it’s very hard then for the institution to implement policy and have it accepted. Most Americans think Congress is corrupt, that lobbyists are corrupt, they don’t think of it as First Amendment rights, and that’s bad. “It undermines democracy, and I don’t think there’s anything bigger than that.” Thursday, a panel of experts headlined by Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats’ point man on the issue, gathered at the National Press Club downtown for a summit sponsored by CCPS and the Committee for Economic Development. What emerged from the series of speeches was a consensus that America’s political system is now broken, and significant change is necessary to begin freeing it from the stranglehold of those with money, power, and inside access. “I believe a serious conversation about reform would be one that would be good for this town to have in the coming months,” said Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois. “Instead of meeting with lobbyists, we should meet with the 45 million Americans without health care. All these people do to influence the process is cast their vote. In our democracy, it’s all they should have to do.” 
Both parties have introduced bills that would tighten some of the current restrictions—which often go unenforced—placed on lobbyists. In the coming months, positions such as banning privately-funded travel for legislators and barring lobbyists from paying for members’ or staffers’ meals will be debated. Thursday, one of Congress’s most respected former members, Lee Hamilton, weighed in. “It should be said up front that trips by lawmakers is a very good thing,” said Hamilton, who served as a representative from Indiana for 34 years. “I think you can get a lot of insight by getting out there and poking around. I think there’s good travel and bad travel that serves a recreational purpose or the interests of those who are bankrolling it. If a member of Congress needs to travel, the United States government should pay for it. If a trip is not important enough for the United States government to pay for it, it is probably not important enough to the people’s business.” Under current rules, private groups can fund congressional information-gathering junkets. Often, these trips are taken to major metropolitan cities or warm weather climates in the dead of Washington’s winter. Even when the agenda is more legitimate, Hamilton believes the trips can have a damaging effect. “They control your life; they control the agenda; they control your schedule,” the Democrat said of the lobbyists who foot the bill. “It gives the special interests a huge advantage in the legislative process.” Regardless of what reforms eventually are adopted, the key to their successful implementation will be enforcement, said Fred Wertheimer, president and CEO of Democracy 21, an advocacy group he founded in 1997. “We have proposed to create an Office of Public Integrity in Congress. If you do not change the way the rules are enforced in Congress, in the end you will have new rules that are just as unenforceable as the old rules,” said Wertheimer, whom the New York Times called “the lobbyist most closely associated with pressing to change the system.” Despite calls for bipartisanship during the reform process, Republican and Democratic proposals do contain some differences. Democrats, for example, want to prohibit lobbyists from paying for any meals for members, while Republicans would like to cap meal spending at $20. “Real reform means eliminating all gifts and meals from lobbyists, not just the expensive ones,” Obama said. “Ninety-five percent of the American public spends less than $20 on lunch. I get paid enough to buy my own lunch.” As the focus surrounding this issue intensifies in the coming months, Thurber will continue examining its many aspects. While the Abramoff scandal clearly has delivered the lobbying profession a black eye, Thurber has not lost faith in its importance or the ability of its men and women to affect change in a legal and ethical manner. “The most effective lobbyists in town have coalition building, advertising, they have blogs, Web sites, they use e-mail. They also have issue campaigns,” he said. “They have grass roots, top roots, and Astroturf. Grass roots, they have people out there. Top roots, they can mobilize them. They have leaders out there, leaders in every little town in America. They have state offices everywhere. Astroturf, that means fake top roots. They can mobilize people like that [he snaps his fingers]. They are most effective, not because of money, but because of people. People can vote.” 
An engaged audience looks on as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) makes a point during Thursday’s Lobbying Reform Summit. |
