Tag: K Street

Twenty months after the financial meltdown of 2008, the U.S. congress is moving ahead with its financial system reform. In the following weeks, the Senate and House bills will be combined. While many details are still to be ironed out around issues like derivatives and consumer protection, it is clear that the legislation will not break up the massive banks that are blamed with the crisis. President Obama says the legislation will ensure the U.S. taxpayers never again bailout Wall Street, but Public Citizen’s David Arkush says that until the banks influence on Capitol Hill is broken up or countered, there is no way to guarantee an end to bailouts.

Spending eye-popping sums of money, deploying armies of lobbyists, dispatching grassroots foot soldiers as agents of disruption, the special interests have fought fiercely to derail the White House reform agenda. It’s now apparent that Obama and his advisers, including Rahm Emanuel, underestimated their strength. Even if Congress were to move in all four areas targeted for reform, the concessions already made, the softening of prospective regulations and restrictions, would likely signal a series of genuine victories for those special interests.

What does it mean when an intelligent, ambitious, and well-liked president, who broke through one of the nation’s most glaring racial barriers and enjoys majorities in both houses of Congress, can’t overcome the deeply rooted interests that now seem thoroughly embedded in the American political system? A look at the unprecedented opposition to Obama’s plans reveals why Rahm Emanuel might want to pocket that scorecard.

An Opposition That Knows No Limit

The sheer presence of lobbyists cannot be underestimated. Case in point: the legislative battle over health-care reform. As of mid-August, there were six lobbyists trying to influence health-care legislation for every single member of the House and Senate, Bloomberg News reported.

That’s 3,300 lobbyists working on a single issue (three times the number of defense lobbyists) with nearly three new lobbyists joining the fray each day. So far this year, $263 million (or more than one million dollars a day) has been shelled out just for lobbying health-related issues, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Industry players have waged war to sway public opinion, spending $75 million on TV ads. Lawmakers up for election in 2010 have already seen $23 million flow into their nascent campaign coffers.