Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer and longtime fixer, has recently become the most notorious influence peddler in America, but he is only one man in an army of shadow lobbyists whose power has been growing for years.
Much of Mr. Cohen’s headline-making behavior is outrageous even by K Street standards. But one of the many alleged misdeeds for which he is reportedly under investigation — knowingly failing to register as a lobbyist, a felony — is routine in Washington. There are thousands of unregistered lobbyists operating off the books thanks to loophole-ridden disclosure rules and lax enforcement of the federal laws on lobbying. Unless these rules are tightened, people less infamous than Michael Cohen will continue courting officials of both parties on the behalf of private interests, out of public view.
Federal lobbying is governed by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. It requires that people who receive more than $5,000 a quarter from lobbying provide basic information about their activities and clients. But there are gaping loopholes in the law. One of its provisions says that you are required to register as a lobbyist only if you spend at least 20 percent of your time over three months directly contacting more than one public official.
Ethics officials loosely interpret that 20 percent rule to include only attempts to persuade. “Routine information gathering” doesn’t count as lobbying, so if you set up a meeting with a member of Congress, but doing so required only a five-minute text-message exchange, did that count toward the 20 percent threshold? You can meet with a cabinet secretary’s aide to discuss policy, but who can say if that meeting was to persuade, rather than to collect information? It’s a subjective call within an entire system dependent on self-reporting.
ADVERTISEMENT
That points to a related problem: There are few, if any, cops on the beat. Although the disclosure law was updated in 2007 to add criminal penalties for failing to register as a lobbyist, there has never been a comprehensive effort to scrutinize noncompliance. According to Tim LaPira, a professor at James Madison University who studies Washington’s revolving door, there has never been a single case of criminal enforcement for flouting the registration requirement.
The ethics offices on Capitol Hill, the Senate Office of Public Records and the House Legislative Resource Center, are supposed to manage the registration system for lobbyists, but in practice, they are ineffective: The two offices put paralegals and clerks in charge of detecting noncompliance but give them no real authority to initiate investigations.
In 2007 and 2008, when Barack Obama was a presidential candidate, he seized on voters’ frustration with the influence industry. On the campaign trail, he argued that lobbyists for special interests “exercise an effective veto on our progress.” And on his first day in office, Mr. Obama enacted what his White House called the “most sweeping ethics reform in history.” Among other stipulations, it barred registered lobbyists from “work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.” (Notably, some waivers were issued.)
Thousands of lobbyists responded by deregistering from the ethics system. Few actually changed careers. Most simply reclassified their companies or created subsidiaries that performed nearly identical services. The American League of Lobbyists, the professional society for the lobbying industry, rebranded itself as the Association of Government Relations Professionals. Figures maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics show that the number of registered lobbyists in the United States peaked in 2007 with 14,824 registrants. The number has steadily declinedto a low of about 9,443 lobbyists registered this year.
To avoid registering, shadow lobbyists use euphemistic titles. A South Korean aerospace company that just obtained a large Defense Department contract hired Mr. Cohen, a former personal injury lawyer, as a consultant on American accounting standards. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, once claimed that he didn’t need to register as a lobbyist for the government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac because the $1.6 million it paid him was for his services as a “historian.” Mr. Gingrich later modified his statement to claim he was hired for “strategic advice.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate majority leader, only recently registered as a lobbyist after spending about a decade as a “policy adviser” — a tactic that became known in Beltway circles as the Daschle loophole.
With so much lobbying done off the books, it is difficult to know the true size of the influence business. Figures from the federal lobbying registration rolls indicate that special interests spend a little more than $3 billion a year on lobbying. But estimates that include unregistered lobbying put the number closer to $6 billion a year. The number of lobbyists, too, may be much higher than 9,443. James Thurber, an American University professor who advised the American Bar Association’s bipartisan lobbying-reform task force, calculates the number of working lobbyists is closer to 100,000.
The recent collapses of several coal companies and for-profit colleges have revealed the extent of lobbying in those industries. The bankruptcy filings of Corinthian College, for example, showed that it hired a firm that bills itself as a specialist in obtaining “political intelligence,” not lobbying.
These unintended effects of the Obama administration’s lobbying rule changes were readily apparent by its second term. Mr. Obama floated the idea of an executive order forcing government contractors to disclose payments to outside political groups, but backed down under pressure.
President Trump issued his own executive order on lobbying soon after his inauguration, but it was far more porous. Among other loopholes, it allows registered lobbyists to become immediately eligible for a government appointment simply by deregistering.
Many in the White House orbit will not even need that loophole; they have simply joined the influence industry without registering. The former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, for example, is the head of a “strategic advisory” firm, but he is not registered as a lobbyist. Rick Dearborn, the former White House deputy chief of staff, is now a partner at Cypress Advocacy, a lobbying firm that represents Goldman Sachs and a payday lending company, Advance America. Mr. Dearborn is not a registered lobbyist, either.
It would be naïve to expect Mr. Trump to suddenly crack down on an industry that has been so welcoming to his friends and former colleagues. But the next White House can move anti-corruption policy forward by instituting more disclosure rules and making enforcement a priority. The definition of who qualifies as a lobbyist should be radically expanded, and all the current loopholes should be closed, as a task force convened by the American Bar Association has recommended.
A better legal standard isn’t enough. The next administration should also convene a broad inquiry into the effects of special interest lobbying. As long as so much influencing is done off the books, Americans are robbed of the chance to know how their democracy is truly governed.
Lee Fang (@lhfang), who covers money in politics for The Intercept, is the author of “The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right.”
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Will We Ever Drain the Swamp?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment