Tag: lobbyists

Reps. Phillips, Cline Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Fight Lobbyist Influence in D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) along with Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) introduced legislation to reduce the influence of lobbyists and provide greater transparency into who is influencing our political process. The Lobbying Disclosure Reform Act would limit the ability of former members of Congress to influence the legislative process from the shadows, modernize lobbying data to make it more accessible to Americans and provide multiple reforms to strengthen enforcement. 

Rep. Phillips said, “I am on a mission to restore Americans’ faith in our government, which begins with reducing the corrupting influence of special interest money in our political system. Lobbyists spent nearly $3.5 billion to influence our elected leaders last year. As the Congress continues to grapple with the response to the COVID-19 crisis, spending trillions of taxpayer dollars in the process, our constituents deserve know which interests are in the room.” 

Rep. Cline said, “At the core of this bipartisan bill is the public’s right to know. Americans are dissatisfied with the way things get done in Washington, and updating the LDA with these common-sense provisions is a strong step to modernizing our lobbying laws and placing more power in the hands of the people rather than the lobbyists.” 

Continue reading “Reps. Phillips, Cline Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Fight Lobbyist Influence in D.C.”

How Trump’s trade war is making lobbyists rich — and devastating small businesses

AlterNet logoMike Elrod voted for Donald Trump in 2016, hoping for a break from tight government oversight that his business had endured for years, which he often found unreasonable.

“There was a time when every day I dreaded opening the mail,” said Elrod, who founded a small firm in South Carolina called Eccotemp that makes energy-efficient, tankless water heaters. “The Department of Energy would put in an arbitrary rule and then come back the next day and say, ‘You’re not in compliance.’ We had no input into what was changing and when the change was taking place.”

Elrod also thought that big businesses had long been able to buy their way out of problems, either by spending lots of money on compliance or on lobbyists to look for loopholes and apply political pressure. Trump, of course, had promised to address that — to “drain the swamp.” Continue reading.

The state of lobbying is, well, pretty darn good

Last year, Julian Ha of Heidrick & Struggles said the swamp was “constipated,” as the lobbying world continued adjusting to the Trump administration and Congress. And now? Things are starting to flow again. Ha and CQ Roll Call lobbying reporter Kate Ackley discuss the state of lobbying, 2019 edition.

View this February 13 post and listen to the podcast by Jason Dick and Kate Ackley on The Roll Call website here.

The ‘Swamp’ Donald Trump Promised to ‘Drain’ is Growing Again

The following article by Emily Cadei was posted on the Newsweek article February 8, 2017:

Instead of draining the swamp, Trump might be the best thing that’s happened to lobbyists since expense accounts.

Al Mottur admits to not only counting his chickens before they hatched but putting out all the fixings for a fried chicken feast. The veteran Democratic lobbyist went into Election Day assuming Hillary Clinton would be America’s 45th president, and as a member of Clinton’s national finance committee who helped raise more than $1 million for her campaign, that would have been a victory not just for his party but also for his bottom line. “I was thinking, This is going to be great for my firm,” recalls Mottur, a senior partner at D.C. lobbying powerhouse Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Schreck, which represents such companies as Anheuser-Busch, FedEx and Comcast. Continue reading “The ‘Swamp’ Donald Trump Promised to ‘Drain’ is Growing Again”