Obama Vs. Lobbyists

New Federal Election Commission rules going into effect this month will require stricter disclosure for lobbyists raising funds for political candidates. 

President Barack Obama in last week's weekly address challenged lobbyists to a duel over the budget he sent to Congress.  "I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak," Obama said.  "My message to them is this: So am I."

In particular, the FEC rules address the practice of bundling - the collection of smaller donations grouped together for a single candidate. Bundling is typically used to circumvent the Federal law prohibiting large individual donations to any one candidate.

Under the new rules, campaigns, political action committees and party committees getting two or more bundled donations that exceed $16,000 must disclose the bundlers' name, address, employer and the total amount of the bundled contributions.

The new rules are part of recent efforts since President Barack Obama's election to rein in the influence of lobbyists, whose spending topped $3.3 billion in 2008. Since the November elections, Obama and the new Congress have taken the following actions: 

• Obama's transition team announced a set of rules shortly after the election - carried over from the campaign - barring lobbyists from raising money or being involved with transition planning. It meant no money from federal lobbyists, corporations or political action committees; publishing a list of contributors each month; and banning employees who worked as lobbyists within the last year from working in the policy area for which they lobbied.

• Just one day after his inauguration, Obama signed an executive order banning appointees from accepting gifts from lobbyists during their tenure in the executive branch, and from working on matters related to any former employer or client for two years. The roughly 2,600-word order also bars administration officials from lobbying the executive branch as long as Obama is in the Oval Office. And, lobbyists entering the administration are banned from participating in anything related to what they lobbied on within two years of being appointed.

• Meanwhile, the House killed a measure ordering the House Ethics Committee to probe ties between earmarks and donations to politicians. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., sponsored the resolution, but criticized current ethics guidelines governing earmarks and campaign contributions as "weak," adding in a statement that "when members of Congress can give no-bid contracts to campaign donors, we've got a problem."