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Lobbyists get a lift from Obama plans

Arkansas Democrat Gazette
By Alex Daniels
Monday, March 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s budget proposal and his desire to overhaul the health-care system won’t necessarily mean dramatic changes in policy. For that to happen, Congress must pass bills, and Obama must sign them into law. There are no guarantees.

But the sheer volume of policy proposals thrown into the hopper at the start of the Obama administration make one thing almost certain: Lobbyists will see an increase in billable hours this year.

Six weeks into his presidency, Obama has taken issues that have been simmering for years, such as civil liberties and climate change, and put them onfull boil. And he has rekindled matters that were thought to be at least temporarily closed, such as the next few years of farm policy, which was set into law last year.

As Congress sorts through Obama’s proposals and deals with the implementation of the economic-stimulus package passed in February, lobbyists will try to make sure their clients have a say in the outcome.

Those with ties to Democratic leaders in Congress and the administration are at a premium.

“It doesn’t hurt when a lot of your friends are now staff directors, as opposed to working for ranking members” on congressional committees said Ben Noble, a lobbyist with Troutman Sanders Strategies, who worked for former Sen. Dale Bumpers and current Sen. Blanche Lincoln, two Democrats from Arkansas.

Since the election, the Republicans who used to hold the top lobbying jobs at Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. have been replaced by Democrats. Comcast Corp.’s top Republican lobbyist is out the door. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has added two Democratic Capitol Hill veterans to its Washington office, and lobbying firms that historically tilted Republican, such as BGR Government Affairs, have acquired lobbying firms with staffs packed with Democrats.

During the first full day of his presidency, Obama signaled a desire to end the city’s revolving-door lobbying culture, in which individuals rotate from public service to positions with business groups and special interests, from which they then lobby their former co-workers in the government.

On Jan. 21, Obama signed an executive order that prohibits political appointees in the executive branch from accepting gifts from lobbyists. It bars lobbyists entering the government from working on issues on which they have lobbied over the previous two years. It requires, as a condition of employment, that those leaving the administration promise not to lobby senior federal officials for the remainder of the Obama administration.

But those restrictions seem unlikely to deflate lobbying activity. Last year, lobbyists billed companies and associations a record $3.24 billion, although the actual number of federal lobbyists declined slightly, from 15,405 to 15,150, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington research group that tracks money in politics.

ROILING THE WATERS
“With the amount of money we are talking about in the stimulus package, it has generated a great deal of interest, a lot of concerns and, quite frankly, a lot of confusion,” said Noble, the Troutman Sanders lobbyist, who represents clients in the agricultural, health-care and construction industries and is the current executive director of the Arkansas Rice Federation. It’ll be a busy year, predicted Ray Bracy, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president for U.S. government relations.

“It’s fair to say it looks like there’s momentum for legislation to occur in matters where we think we can be a resource for the government,” Bracy said, citing health-care and energy policy, in particular.

Last year, Wal-Mart spent $6.6 million on federal lobbying activities, up from $4 million in 2007.

To help make its case in Congress, Wal-Mart has added twolobbyists with Democratic histories to its Washington team, bringing its staff to a total of 12.

Jason Hill, who worked for Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and for the Obama campaign in Ohio, now focuses on health care for the Bentonville retailer.

Bruce Harris, who according to National Journal, a Washington policy magazine, was the chief policy adviser for the Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, became the company’s director of federal relations for sustainability issues, a new position.

Harris worked for former Sen. David Pryor of Arkansas, for Lincoln when she was a House member, and for her successor, Rep. Marion Berry. His grandfather, Carleton Harris, was chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court for more than two decades, ending in 1980.

Bracy said Wal-Mart doesn’t look at people as Democrats or Republicans. “We’re a bipartisan shop,” he said. “It does us no good to be more Democratic or more Republican.”

Still, Bracy said, it was “helpful” that the two new hires come from the party that controls the executive and legislative branches of government.

BUSINESS AS USUAL?
Some, however, see a distinctively Republican tilt to the Bentonville retailer. Many of its top executives have donated to Republican candidates, and, during the presidential campaign last year, The New York Times reported that some Wal-Mart managers exhorted their workers to vote Republican.

If any of the company employees did so, “they were speaking without authorization,” said Wal-Mart spokesman E.R. Anderson. The addition of the two Democrats at Wal-Mart doesn’t signal a big change, according to Meghan Scott, spokesman at WakeUpWalMart.com, a laborbacked advocacy group that is critical of the company’s personnel policies.

She said Hill, who in addition to working for Levin and Obama lobbied for health-maintenance organizations, did not represent the liberal wing of the Democratic party. “It’s business as usual at Wal-Mart,” Scott said.

Levin, who has a large union constituency, supported some policies that are anathema to the retailer, such as the Employer Free Choice Act - the proposed “card check” legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize unions.

Asked whether his old boss’s position on the issue was at odds with his current employer’s position, Hill said, “card check is not an issue I’m doing professionally. It’s out of my bailiwick.”

Hill’s predecessor, Kate Sullivan Hare, left the company to start a consulting firm, Health Policy Insight and Strategy, which counts Wal-Mart as a client.

“I advise my clients on the ins-and-outs of the policy,” she said. “It’s up to them to go out and do the lobbying.” “Democrats,” she added, “are in very high demand.”

Sullivan Hare said that since the change in administrations, she has gotten lots of e-mail messages from Republican friends. They don’t come from government computer addresses, she said. Nor do they originate from lobbying firms on Washington’s K Street. Rather, they are from personal e-mail accounts.

And what do the messages say?
“Well, they’re not announcing great new jobs.”