Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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New Batch of White House Visitor Logs Released
Last Friday, the White House released a new batch of visitor logs covering last October, fulfilling a pledge they made last month. Over here at the Sunlight Labs, we took the logs and added them to the handy online, searchable database we created last month, so that you can see for yourself who is coming to the White House and why.
This is the first full month that has been release by the administration and adds almost 100,000 new records for October. As we mentioned back in January, this is a positive step by the Obama administration, and we are happy to see that they are committed to releasing this data in a timely basis.
We still don’t know how many records are being withheld, and for what purposes. It would be nice for the White House to release at least a number, and ultimately a justification (read: national security) for why those names have been redacted. None the less, this is still part of a much larger, unprecedented level of transparency on behalf of the administration.
One of the other problems with the White House visitor logs is that there is no real accurate way to ensure that if you see a “Samuel L. Jackson” in the logs, it’s actually the actor. It could just be another Sam. That’s why we caution you, when you are reading through the records and doing your own independent research not to jump to conclusions. Otherwise, happy hunting!
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Why Look At Former Staffers Turned Lobbyists?
Throughout this year I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at the connections between powerful players in the health care debate and their former staffers turned health care lobbyists. The reason to highlight these connections is simple: it shows how outside organizations get the ear of key lawmakers.
You and I can’t hire a the former chief of staff to Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, but America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) can. Nor can we hire Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s former chief of staff, but a dozen health care companies can. These people have connections that worth more than gold in Washington. They have the ears of the players in Washington.
Roll Call did some more reporting on this and brought us some crucial information on these lobbyists. In particular, I’d like to point to one relationship that I’ve written about more than once. That’s Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s former chief of staff Kelly Bingel. Here’s a visualization that we created showing Lincoln’s connection to Bingel. And here’s what Roll Call has to say:
In the case of key fence-sitter Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti lobbyist Kelly Bingel is said to have the ear of her former boss. Bingel declined to be interviewed for this article, but a former colleague called her “first on the list” of the Senator’s callbacks.
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“She’s Sen. Lincoln’s alter ego,” a former colleague said.
Organizations with a stake in legislation know that the best way to get the attention of lawmakers is to poach their most connected, most knowledgable staffers and hire them as lobbyists. The ordinary constituent can’t call up a senator and lobby them on a policy issue, but their close buddy and former employee can. Just look at this quote from the Roll Call article:
“It is helpful. We have lines of communication open,” a lobbyist and former Senate Democratic staffer said. “We have access to lay out our argument.”
Without that access you can’t get anything done.
(Most of our coverage of health care lobbyists and the revolving door can be found here.)
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Reid Gives Nelson, Lincoln What Their Lobbyist Friends Want
TPM is reporting that Majority Leader Harry Reid is going to exclude a provision that would remove the anti-trust exemption for health insurers from the Senate health care reform bill. The move is apparently being made to grease the gears for Sen. Ben Nelson, one of three Democratic hold-outs, to vote for procedural motions in the run-up to a final vote. The provision was a huge fear of health insurers, particularly of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and Blue Cross Blue Shield. Both of those organizations are represented by former staffers to Sen. Nelson and fellow hold-out Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
As documented in this post from two days ago, Sen. Nelson’s former legislative director now lobbies for three top health insurers: Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna and UnitedHealth Group. Sen. Lincoln’s former top health adviser Elizabeth Barnett lobbies for the same three health insurers. Kelly Bingel, Sen. Lincoln’s former chief of staff, lobbies for AHIP. Since 2005, Blue Cross Blue Shield has contributed over $80,000 to Sen. Lincoln and over $65,000 to Sen. Nelson.
Blue Cross Blue Shield is the largest provider of health insurance in both senator’s states. In Arkansas, Blue Cross holds a 75% market share and UnitedHealth Group is second with 6% market share. Blue Cross’ market share in Nebraska is 44% and UnitedHealth Group has a 25% market share. In both states, the removal of the anti-trust exemption could cause serious loss of market share for these companies.
The exclusion of the provision to remove the exemption would be a big win for these former staffers turned lobbyists. Not only did they get what their clients wanted, but the utility of their connections has been publicly touted.
The provision to remove the health insurer anti-trust exemption was included in the House bill and supported by President Barack Obama. It was used by the House and the White House as a stick to keep the health insurance industry from waging a public campaign of opposition. When the industry finally decided to publicly oppose the bill, the provision was included in the final House legislation.
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Chamber of Commerce Deploys Former Government Officials to Lobby On Financial Regulation
Billed as the biggest opponent of financial regulatory reform, the US Chamber of Commerce is deploying former government officials to lobby the House Committee on Financial Services as the mark-up on legislation begins today. Fifty-five percent of lobbyists registered to lobby for the Chamber of financial regulation are former government officials, including the former chief of staff to a key committee member.According to second quarter lobbying disclosure reports, the Chamber currently employs, directly or through outside lobbying firms, thirty-four lobbyists registered to lobby on financial regulation. Nineteen of those thirty-four are former government officials. Lobbyists with prior work in government are well-suited to quickly get results as they have established relationships with important actors on Capitol Hill and in the Executive Branch.
John Michael Gonzalez is one of the nineteen former government officials hired to lobby with the Chamber of Commerce. Up until this year, Gonzalez was the chief of staff to Financial Services Committee member Melissa Bean. Bean is currently pushing to remove a provision from the Consumer Financial Protection Act that would allow states to craft stronger consumer protections. The move is backed by national banks and trade groups like the Chamber of Commerce. Bean has received over 40% of her 2009 campaign contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate sector.
Gonzalez works for the lobbying firm Peck, Madigan, Jone, & Stewart Inc. His company bio specifically hightlights his relationship with the Chamber when working for Bean, “Mr. Gonzalez successfully planned and executed a winning re-election strategy, raising $4.3 million and earning the most support of any incumbent from the US Chamber of Commerce.”
Ethics law preclude Gonzalez from lobbying Bean’s office, but do not keep him from lobbying the Financial Services Committee. This could include key committee members who may support Bean’s preemption policy. CongressDaily reports that Rep. Dennis Moore is in discussions with Rep. Mel Watt about a compromise. Both Moore and Watt have received over 45% of their 2009 campaign contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate sector.
There is little doubt that lobbyist pressure is being put on members to support Bean’s preemption policy given the preponderance of lobbyists in attendance at the committee mark-up. Gonzalez’ long-time Hill connections, especially through Bean’s office to the Financial Services Committee, will give the Chamber a boost in its lobbying effort.
Bean is being opposed by Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jon Corzine and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Madigan has gone so far as to tell Bean to, “put the interests of our consumers before those of the banks that led us in part to this financial crisis.”
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Chamber of Commerce has spent over $26 million so far this year on lobbying expenses. This total, if spending remains the same across quarters, will exceed their spending for 2008 and become the largest amount ever spent on lobbying by the Chamber.
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Lawmakers Pushed FDA To Approve Device
The New York Times reports on a really ugly confluence of politics and campaign contributions. Four New Jersey lawmakers pressured the Federal Drug Administration to approve a medical device after receiving campaign contributions from the New Jersey-based device manufacturer. This was after F.D.A. reviewers ruled that the device “was unsafe because the device often failed, forcing patients to get another operation.”[A]fter receiving what an F.D.A. report described as “extreme,” “unusual” and persistent pressure from four Democrats from New Jersey — Senators Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg and Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. and Steven R. Rothman — agency managers overruled the scientists and approved the device for sale in December.
All four legislators made their inquiries within a few months of receiving significant campaign contributions from ReGen, which is based in New Jersey, but all said they had acted appropriately and were not influenced by the money.
Now one could argue that the lawmakers were simply standing up for a local business. Constituent service is constituent service even when the service is for a business. However, the device had not been approved for years because it was found to be ineffective. Lawmakers should be standing up for a sensible approval process for medical devices, rather than standing up for companies that make defective products while providing campaign contributions.
Another thing that may have helped ReGen, one of their lobbyists, Michael Hutton, is the former chief of staff to Sen. Robert Menendez.
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Rep. Frank Extends Communication Ban on Former Staffer Turned Lobbyist
Michael Paese used to be the chief of staff to Finance Committee Chair Barney Frank until he took a job as a chief lobbyist for Goldman Sachs last September. Congressional ethics laws forbid former staffers from contacting the office or committee of their previous employment for one year. Paese’s year was about to be up, just in time for him to lobby his former employer and coworkers as they took up work on an extensive financial regulation package. Frank, however, took the rare step of prohibiting Paese from communicating with any staff of the committee for an undetermined amount of time to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.
This continues a trend in Washington where decision makers understand where the the lines of a conflict of interest could be crossed. The White House has instituted new lobbying policies for both the TARP and stimulus funding (with many loopholes, as Daniel Schuman has pointed out). A former lobbyist turned chief of staff to Rep. Jim Matheson turned down an invitation to a lobbyist thrown party. And now, Frank has refused to allow his staff to talk to one of Goldman Sachs’ prime hires.
This could point towards a moment where Congress could enact further lobbying reforms to strengthen those passed in the 2007 ethics bill. More transparency should be shed on the meetings between lawmakers, staff and lobbyists. Simple disclosure of names and clients simply serves to provide a listing for lawmakers to know who they are talking to and does little to provide real information to the public.
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AM Links
Politico looks at health care lobbyists-turned-staffers on the Senate Finance Committee with the aid of LittleSis. For a look at staffers-turned-health care lobbyists you can see our research here.
Former Abramoff lobbyist Kevin Ring is on trial in, perhaps, the most interesting corruption trial in Washington in quite some time. Neil Volz, another Abramoff crony and former staffer to Rep. Bob Ney, testified the other day and included tons of gory details:
Volz described his lobbying team’s practice of giving tickets, meals and drinks to public officials and staffers who were deemed valuable, as well as taking those individuals on trips.
“Really we just wanted to party,” Volz said about a trip he took to New Orleans with Ney, former Ney chief of staff Will Heaton, and other lobbyists. He said the group met a client and toured some homes, but those were not the main objectives of the trip, which he described as “part of the corrupt relationship” he had with Ney and his staffers.
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Volz described a discussion he had with Ring about “getting the joke,” a term used for a lobbyist getting a staffer to prioritize an issue because the lobbyist is “taking care of them,” after the Abramoff scandal began to surface in 2004.
“We thought, ‘Boy, it would be pretty difficult to defend the idea of getting the joke,’” he said of his conversation with Ring.
Over the weekend, the New York Times posted this great visualization of Clean Water Act violations and the lack of enforcement in all 50 states. One of the primary reasons why government data needs to be online and in accessible formats is for news organizations, designers and coders to create visualizations or databases that can concisely explain an issue, or reveal a problem, to the public at large.
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What’s Up With the Baucus Bill?
The health care reform debate has reached the final stretch and all eyes are Sen. Max Baucus and his bipartisan negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee. During the last few days, details of Baucus’ plan have leaked through various outlets, often coming with differing details. Some initially reported that the plan would contain neither a public option or a cooperative system, but later reporting showed that the plan did contain a health care cooperative system. To make matters worse, it appears that lobbyists were given copies of the health care plan before the White House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and, well, everyone else.We can probably deduce who some of those lobbyists are by viewing this graphic. Baucus has many former staffers working as lobbyists for the health industry. He also has two former health industry employees working on his committee staff. Baucus’ chief health aide Elizabeth Fowler is a former executive with Wellpoint, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies. Fowler is also the apparent author of Baucus’ health reform plan according to the properties of the .pdf file uploaded to his web site.
So, let me get this straight. A former lobbyist for a health insurance company writes a health reform plan, which is then leaked to lobbyists, some of whom were likely former Baucus staffers, and public disclosure is delayed by a couple of days — the plan was released to the media and lobbyists over the past few days but only posted to the Finance Committee web site today. To paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks, it just doesn’t sound good when you walk it out.
It’s almost like they don’t want the public to really play a role here or know what’s going on. One can only hope that this won’t be the case with the actual legislation that Baucus’ committee comes up with.
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Key Democrat in Health Care Talks Receives Large Health Industry Contributions in 2009
As the summer of the Democrats’ discontent winds to a close, the head count for health care reform in the Senate begins in earnest. One of the key Democratic senators on the fence is Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the 2010 election. Lincoln jumped into the news today with a quote to a reporter stating her opposition to a public option plan in a health care reform bill. “I would not support a solely government-funded public option. We can’t afford that,” Lincoln said. The senior Arkansas senator is also the 2nd highest recipient of campaign contributions from the health industry among senators this year.According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Lincoln has received $325,350 in contributions from the health industry, as of June 30. The large amount in contributions underlies a constantly shifting position by the senator on health care reform.
(Continue reading…)
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Heavy Health Industry Presence In Baucus Schedule
Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus is one of only five United States senators posting a daily schedule on their official web site. (See Baucus’ schedule here.) Baucus’ schedule lists numerous meetings with health care industry executives, lobbyists and union officials with a stake in the health care reform debate. The schedule shows meetings with health industry groups make up the plurality of the senator’s listed meetings that relate to health care, sharply ahead of pro-reform non-profits and labor organizations. Health industry groups were involved in 20 of the 55 meetings Baucus lists that relate to health reform discussions involving individuals or organizations outside of Congress. This is compared to 12 for pro-reform and labor organizations.
The list of attendees at meetings in Baucus’ office reads like a who’s who of the health care heavy hitters. Among those attending meetings with the senator were PhRMA President & CEO Billy Tauzin, Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer, Aetna CEO Ron Williams, Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly, Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler, Abbott Laboratories Chairman & CEO Miles White, AstraZeneca CEO David Brennan, GlaxoKlineSmith CEO Andrew Witty and Blue Cross Blue Shield President & CEO Scott Serota. These executives represent key industry groups that are opposed to many provisions in the currently offered health reform bills in Congress.
Contributions to Baucus from attending organizations (2003-2008) Amgen $70,750 Blue Cross Blue Shield $62,350 Aetna $53,250 Pfizer $47,100 AstraZeneca $37,300 Abbott Laboratories $34,000 GlaxoKlineSmith $29,500 US Oncology $14,750 Wellpoint $11,250 SEIU $10,000 AFL-CIO $5,000 HCA $1,000 The organizations run by the attendees are also large contributors to the Max Baucus’ reelection campaigns. All of the above mentioned organizations contributed at least $10,000 to Baucus’ last run for reelection in 2008. Leading the pack is Amgen, having contributed $70,750 to Baucus’ 2008 campaign. Close behind is Blue Cross Blue Shield with $62,350 in campaign contributions to the senator’s campaign. Blue Cross Blue Shield President & CEO Scott Serota and Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer were the only health industry executives to receive more than one meeting with the senator.
Some of these organizations currently employ former Baucus staffers as lobbyists. David Castagnetti, formerly Baucus’ chief of staff, lobbies on behalf of Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, General Electric Health Care, and PhRMA; Scott Olsen lobbies for Amgen, as does another former chief of staff, Jeff Forbes; Forbes also lobbies for PhRMA. There are no meetings disclosed in Baucus’ schedule that include any of his former staffers turned lobbyists. The connections these former staffers have with Baucus’ office may have aided in getting the corporate executives into the door.
Baucus also held a number of meetings, albeit fewer than with corporate interests, with labor organizations and non-profits supportive of reform efforts. These organizations include the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Kaiser Family Foundation, Families USA and Doctors for America. Unlike the corporate attendees to Baucus’ meetings these organizations did not provide substantial campaign contributions to the senator’s campaigns. The two labor organizations, AFL-CIO and SEIU, combined to contribute only $15,000 to Baucus’ 2008 campaign war chest.
Sen. Baucus began posting his daily schedule in September 2007. None of this information would be available if Sen. Baucus had not made the decision to make his schedule available to the public, a personally brave decision in favor of greater transparency. While it took the pressure of a lawsuit to get the White House to release their health care visitor logs, Sen. Baucus’ has made the decision to run his office in a transparent manner. If only all congressional offices provided this level of transparency. While this schedule is in no way official or authoritative, and may not include meetings that Sen. Baucus does not wish to reveal, it provides a unique view into the meetings of one of the most influential members of Congress involved in the debate over health care. (Continue reading…)
