the other thing we're seeing lots of examples of, i'm sure pat and jim have seen this a lot, congress is almost -- finds itself in a reversed situation with agencies. instead of agencies reacting to congress, we now see congress reacting to agencies. and they're doing it in a variety of ways trying to catch up, trying to maintain some degree of control over the bills they think they wrote. and rules are established through authorizing legislation. but appropriations bills can be used in effect to accelerate or decelerate rule making by removing funding on the one hand for a rule or increasing funding

to move the thing along quicker, you know, for research or for staffing. and then, as we saw, by the way, you know, in the bill that kept the government going for another eight months or so, we saw writers attach to that, you know, fundamental budget bill what was designed to affect derivatives risk. so congress is in it, they're in wit both feet, they're in it at the front end, they're in it in the middle, and they're in it in the back. there is something, and let me get to this one on the next slide -- yeah. >> a guest speaker said derivatives were defined three different ways in dodd/frank on purpose to give the agency more power to actually select the definition that they wanted because they could have more power not on the hill at that point but with the agency defining it.

>> yeah. well, i mean but if you're saying that the agency has the power, you're really saying that the groups that influence the congress to write those three different definitions were expecting some advantage from one or more of those definitions. >> right. >> right? yeah. so there's also something you should be aware of although it's used rarely, is congressional review act. the congressional review act you've heard part of. that's the element that set the gao up as kind of the reviewer of record. but congress can actually veto to a rule or regulation if it chooses to. but it basically takes a fresh act of congress signed by the president. it's only been used once, only successfully once. now, go forth with the agencies. this is where the core work is done. in my view, and i've been studying this now for more than 20 years, high quality information is the currency. you've heard in this institute, you know, you can use bad quality information in public deliberations once, but you're not going to get to use it

twice. well, that's very much the case with agencies. they have a memory just as long, in some cases longer than the congress. these are decision where is there is a great deal at stake -- health, welfare, life and death. so scientific and technical information, depending on the field of study, is crucial. if you don't have it, you're not going to be effective. you can write in and say, hey, i don't like this. but it's not going to get you very far. agencies not only need to know why you don't like it, you know

what they valued more often than not, you don't like it, what's better? and what's the scientific or technical information for or in support of your position? you know, if there's formaldehyde in your shirts or blouses, and by the way there probably is, trace elements of it, you ought to know the best science out there on how much formaldehyde it takes to hurt you. and that's -- you know, that research is done in the public sector, but it's also done in the private. nobody's got a monopoly on integrity. nobody's got a monopoly on high quality work. but in your business, where you're transmitting crucial information to agencies, you have a special obligation to understand that science and understand what constitutes good quality information or not, because you will be communicating. increasingly in this process, the impact of the rule on selected populations is going to be something very important,

because in most cases agencies can't ignore it. they can't ignore it either because they're required to study it under law or regulation or because practically they want to know what's coming in over the transom after they do it. you know? who is going to be making their life miserable once this thing hits the street? and this is all about winners and losers like all public policy processes. implementation information. how is the public -- how are universities going to react -- who in universities are going to take responsibility for changes in the rugs in their classrooms? how is this going to cur? how do you communicate with georgetown on the one hand or a.u. on the one hand and, you know, st. olive college out in minnesota? how do you get to these people? how do you let them know this is a change in what they've got to do?

cliens compliance information is at at what level at what point will the agency take action against st. olive or a.u.? all right? and then of course the political information which, by the way, is driven entirely by impact information. if you know who this is going to help and if you know who this is going to hurt, you've got the roadmap for whatever political information you're going to need out there. relationships are critical, political appointees are important. the key offices for rule making are the program office where the rule has been assigned. there is an overarching policy office in most agencies that weigh in on all significant rules. the general counsel is at the table always interpreting agency statutory authority. budget office is providing the resources to get the rule written.

the regional offices are critical because they're the ones who know the public. they're the ones that are out there interacting with people like a.u. all the time. all right. this is what makes sense. this is what doesn't. and then of course the communications office because, as i find out every day of my life, there is no one way to communicate with this community. no one reliable way to get it done. and as social media have diversified, agents' communication strategies had to diversify along with it. the white house, the office of information or regulatory affairs, every president has a general statement of regulatory policy. is the rule that he has just received from the office of radiation in epa consistent with his stated regulatory policy? does the appropriate cross benefit work there? now, in addition to old ira, the domestic policy staff may be

weighing in because the rule has such visibility. certainly on something like climate change you would imagine that to be the case. and then on the second generation of the work you're doing, trade. trade reps. finally, this is the evidence that if it goes to the white house, the white house pays it. to its credit, what the white house maintains a realtime analysis of -- and you can pull this right off their website, even though i just apparently destroyed it -- is month by month you can read the rules that have been received by the white house, the stage they're at, and the action that the white house has taken on. and what these data tell you is

that everything that goes to the agency gets serious scrutiny and almost everything that goes through it gets changed at some level. there is some change that the white house is taking credit for. now, the data that i'm prying to work on, i'm actually -- despite the fact that nobody seems to buy it, i'm going to write a fifth edition to the book. too bad i got to it so late because the christmas season as passed. i missed a marketing opportunity there. what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to get the information out of the general services administration which for some reason has been given responsibility to count rules and regulations across government and to see which agencies by proportion of rule are most likely to be reviewed by the white house. but i don't think our intuition is going to be terribly wrong on that. you've got to know anything that

comes out of epa these days. almost anything coming out of treasury these days. q$3 anything coming out of health and human services. and then finally the courts. i mentioned earlier this is not -- this is not likely the arena you'll be working in, but it is an arena that you will be likely a resource person for. to s5x57v@p ule, they will be working with you in large part on the data and communications that you've had with the agency during the course of the rule making. so with that, jim, whatever time i've got+9[1jur(juu questions. >> open it up to questions and comments. >> yeah. sure. lee? >> thank you. for those of us who have grown up in the era of jack abramoff, do you think there's a silver lining to be seen in the future for the continuation of transparent and efficient rule making processes?

>> well, look, i think that what you've got to be aware of is íi that every communication you make you assume is publicly available, because agencies are going to maintain dockets of yua every communication they receive.b%

implicitly relying on, you have contrary information or an opposing point of view, you don't even know whether he's been at the table. so i just think that from -- just if you're interested in high quality public policy, that's where transparency's big payoff is. yes. molly? >> do you think that the level of bureaucracy that currently surround the rule making process is necessary and/or efficient? and if not, do you see any change in the future? >> you know what, it's -- to be honest with you, i really think it's a function of a middle-aged democracy. and i mean that quite sincerely. when i'm asked to talk to groups -- and i don't get a chance to do it very often -- from other parts of the world that are developing democracies and are thinking about what's down the road for them, i always tell them to worry about this, because if their democracy functions well enough and long

enough, this is where they're going. when you take a look at the requirements that an agency has to meet to write a reg, i don't blame you for feeling the way you do, that this is -- who in their right mind is going to undertake this? because the paperwork requirements, there's small business requirements, there may be environmental requirements, data quality requirements. but if you think about it for a moment, those are a reflection of legitimate external interests who have every right to question what an agency is doing and how it's going about it. where i see a real danger is agencies moving to these mutations of rule making where the public has less and less input and where the agency feels it's so on its heels that that's the only way it can function to keep public policy current. i mean, what we found in derivatives, for example, you know, you could have three definitions of derivatives k

because the industry itself p

total of it, developing as they did in an uncoordinated way, from different eras, different parts of the congress, you know, an agency that wants to move fast let's say on climate change, it's just not going to happen. now, if you -- if you take it another step of that and elevate it one more level and you think about the founders and they put together a senate and a house and they expected the house to be impulsive and the senate to slow things down, well, they would have been appalled by rule making as they saw it in 1930. what they see in all of this procedural rule making requirement is ineffective momentum of the senate to cool off the rule making agencies to slow them down and to be deliberate. but in a public policy system where demands are incessant and speed is of the essence, it's not ideal. now, let me add this. there is ample opportunity and authority for agencies to act onw?wñ emergencies and then to go back

and do all the public k participation work after the fact. there's something called direct final rule making that allows for that. the faa, for example, puts out airworthiness directives with a minimum amount of interaction but there, you know, it's as much the development of very robust relationships with airlines, unions, airport authorities, so they know what the reaction's going to be in advance. when you start wandering into areas like derivatives or how much of deposit or money can be invested in nonbanking activities or climate change, you're going to bring people to the table who have either never

been there before or are nowhere near as uniform in their world view as the airline -- as, you know, the flying industry is. right? now, you'll remember, the one group i didn't mention were the passengers, you know? but i don't want -- i don't want to take responsibility for how thick a fuselage ought to be. i'd like to know that i don't have to sit on the tarmac for half a day. but fundamentally you've got to think about a process today where speed, at least using conventional rule making, is just simply not a characteristic unless you go to some of these exotic, direct forms. and you've got to do the work after the fact if you do.]xdñl)ñ >> neil, we have time for one more question. >> okay. sure. matt? >> yeah.

so i think we've seen two rules come out recently that got way more public attention than earlier, net neutrality and commercial drone use out of the faa, which they're taking their sweet time doing. >> what was the second one? >> the drone commercial use.30"óñ >> the drone. yes. >> do you think you're going to see a shift in groups using public comments in the way that people in john oliver's audience or do you think these are flashes in the pan and rule make willing go back to kind of behind the veil? >> no. i think anytime -- you take net neutrality or drones, they both have one characteristic in common. net neutrality can bring to the table broadly based largely unorganized interests, consumer groups. right? most of what's done at the faa keep the industry to me it seems the major focal point of interaction. but when you start introducing groups, you know, like the american viewing public, for god's sakes, i mean, all bets are off, you know, because you're going to get, among other

things, ad hoc organizations coming together just to influence that one rule. and we didn't get a chance to talk about that kind of dynamic, the coalition formation and the like. the other one, drones, i mean, everybody in this room ought to be worried about or concerned about drones either for good or for ill. right? if you're worried about bird strikes at airports, i would take drones pretty seriously, right? but drones bring to the table people that used to be worried mostly about the postal rate commission for god's sakes and what deliveries cost, you know, :xn÷ at u.p.s. and the postal service. i don't think they're flash in the pans at all. i think what social media has demonstrated, everything from arab spring to rule making, is that social media provides the capacity for large-scale organization of political action in a very short period of time. so if anything, i think it's more likely. >> thank you. >> okay. thanks. [ applause ]

>> so we're going to take a short break, come back a little bit before 11:30. >> good. okay.

>> back to the american university public affairs and advocacy institute for a discussion on lobbying and government ethics. jamesq):íñ thurber is speaking.

this runs an hour and a half. >> welcome back. if i could have your attention please. we're beginning. and as you know in this institute, this is the public affairs and advocacy institute. and it is an institute of two weeks of lectures of professors in the field related to advocacy and lobbying. today i'm going to give a presentation a bit on the causes of reform but also the characteristics of that reform and the impact of lobbying and ethics reform in the past few years. i'm jim thurber.

i'm one of the instructors in this class. and i've been writing in this area for a while. i was involved with it also recently in 2007 and after 2007 with some of the key actors on the hill in terms of drafting the reform. so i have some inside information on that also. to begin, reform courseoccurs here. it occurs in europe in the eu when scandal occurs. and we had a lot of scandal. this has occurred from the 1800s to present. in the 1800s we used to have senators and representatives that actuallyc5 i>g÷ could have outside income from banks, from railroads. and they actually gave speeches on if floor of the house and senate saying i want to thank

u.s. steel for their retainer for this last six months and i appreciate representing them here. that is illegal. that is not illegal even in the european parliament right now. european#n(7 parliament and other democracies allow outside income. in the 1800s there was a majorj> )6t6 scandal. early 1900s lots of reforms went through. i'm not going to talk about those. but then we went on really with very few regulations about lobbying and advocation until 1938. 1938 we had people here in the this united states from #rsggermany, not nazis that were lobbying trying to persuade people. and they were not diplomats. trying to persuade people in the united states in office but also among the public to organizations to stay out of world war ii. so we passed had foreign agents

registration act as a result of that. and with that act, as you know if you are not a diplomat and you don't have diplomatic immunity you must register if you are representing a foreign corporation or a foreign nation. this is enforced by the treasury department and is taken very seriously. people have been convicted and gone to jail and have had fines as a result of breaking that particular regulation. we're not going to talk about that today as much as regulating domestic lobbying activities and ethics here domestically. but ii in 1946. there was a major reform, not only the administrative procedures act that was mentioned before. but also there was a elaborate,

an attempt, to regulate lobbying. but there were so many loop holes -- i won't go through them -- that it was really quite ineffective. so 1995 we had the lobby disclosure act, the lda which i'll refer on that and i helped work on that in 1995 by appearing before the house and senate rules committee and drafted some things for it. and it became somewhat ineffective for variety of reasons. and then we had scandal. substantial doubt in the form of jack abramoff. he is the symbol of it. and ill eel and i'll tell you not only what we did. but there were a lot after oó÷ people in washington actually pushing the alw edges. jack abramoff actually biy the law. he had lots of friends on the

hill. would promise people jobs in his firm or help them get jobs in other firms. broke the -- a variety of rules and he went to prison. went to prison for five years and 10 months. for tax evasion, fraud conspiracy to bribe public official, including a chairman of a committee representative robertli?2a< nigh. he took money from one tribe in the south that had a casino to make sure that another tribe would not get a casino. :iujjz money from the other tribe to try a get a license for a casino. it is unethical. it is not illegal. we had the privilege of having a person from the tribe that didn't have a license years after this scandal occurred taking this class. i didn't know until the very end of the class. and he said professor thurber if we'd only known what lobbying was from your class we would

have said $21 million. the one thing abramoff did is took the money from these tribes. and he would use it for things unrelated to the lobbying activity. he used it to lease a corporate jet to fly to the u.k. and then to scotland. took staff member, robert nigh, other people to go golfing in scotland. and this pam the tip or the symbol of what he was doing wrong. but he was doing other things also. he hade signatures. signatures in town was an interesting place. it was primarily for republicans. you could go and have a wonderful meal. thick steak. vegetarian you have a vegan thing or whatever. a great meal and wonderful wine and you could have scotch

afterwards. or brandy. and all of a sudden the bill didn't arrive and you could leave. that broke existing rules of the house and the senate. at that time you could not give someone more than $50 a year, total. and one bottle of wine was much more than that. if you were a member of congress or senior staff person you could not receive it. this became the symbol. a symbol here but also a symbol in the e.u. i worked with the e.u. lobbying reform and they were very concerned something like abramoff would happen in the e.u. so they started had transparency initiative there by commissioner callous out of the e.u. commission that. commission has e involved and now the parliament is trying to this also. they have had their own scandals

but we won't go through that now. robert nigh was the chairman of the committee organize committee. and it authorizes your committee and personal staff and money you get for running offices and committees. he was in this golfing trip. and he also have the conviction of duke cunningham. any of you -- do you remember duke cunningham from san diego? no, good. i can teach you something. in a great story. it is like a movie. duke was the chair oaf the ix 9%qqzez defense appropriations of the house of representatives. some people call it "the candy store" if those days because it had so much money for earmarks. more than the other sub committees. and those were the days when you had earmarks. and he was also on the group of people that put together "the black budget."

the black budget is the intelligence budget for the house and senate and a separate ad hoc group out of the appropriation committee that would meet in top secret negotiations about what would be in the black budget. that budget would come out and all you could see was an up or down one number and it was an up our down vote for the entire thing. so well-being that within that you could do a variety of things. charlie wilson. how many have see charlie wilson's war. he used the black budget to set aside money for turned out the taliban in afghanistan to give them weapons to fight the russians to help defeat them by giving them shoulder miss to shoot down helicopters and it really changed the war there. he did it in the black budget. back to duke cunningham in the context. in that black budget set aside

$250 million for a firm in san diego to digitize u.s. army top secret material. now, i know from a former student that the u.s. army really didn't need that material digitized. but he set it aside and therefore it became authorized and appropriated at the same time. which appropriations committees are not supposed to authorize but they do it from time to time and it was for a firm that had no track record in san diego. it was just a shell. well it turns out that duke cunningham's house was purchased for over $700,000 above market value by this firm. now how did we find out about it? was that the house ethics committee is pretty more abundant in terms of investigation. did we find out about it through local investigations? >> yes. by a reporter from the san diego

union who loved to look at values of houses. when you get a house you like to look around and find out what's happening in your neighborhood. and he found this one house $700,000 above the price it was purchased for a year ago. turned out a corporation bought it. and turned out that corporation got an earmark for ñ$250,000. the corporation also turned out gave him a& e(z rolls royce, used. it broke down and had to get it fixed. antiques and a bunch of other things. well one thing led to another. the local prosecutor, federal prosecutor appointed by president bush. and then there was an attempt to fire him at one point. really had to pursue this. they pursued it. he was indicted and he was convicted of accepting a bribe. bribery. and he was sent to prison. during this period there were 26 indictments of members, staff, executive branch employees some from the gsa that had inside

deals with abramoff setting a i side sole source bids for excess property he wanted to buy for a variety of tm-reasons. there were resignations of white house staff. resignation of executiveb-lí appointees at this point. the then majority leader in the house of representatives, majority whip, was indicted convicted and then he got off during this period. but this was a big deal for the leadership to be indicted. for what? he took corporate money from taxes, put it into his leadership pack. turned it around and set sent it back to texas to help people in the texas senate get elected from the republican party,d changing the majority to the republicans. then they redistricted for a second time in the state.

that is rare. and drew lines to get rid of several blue dog democrats and helped bring about the majority eventually in the house of representatives. he was convicted because in texas you cannot use corporate money in the local elections. and he was convicted of this. and then the conviction was overturned. part of the scandal. the scandal also is associated with campaign bundling. now, bundling is -- anybody know what bundling is? help me out. >> you have multiple people of money to one cause but one person is organizing. emily's list. it says you have a $100. here is this pink envelope. send it it in and all goes to one political committee a

leadership pack so you know it all wam from one place. >> literally a bundle of checks they max at out at, say, 2600 per person for primary. and another 2600 for a general election. frequently firms in town,y sists and will punldbundle all the major people in the firm and try to get them to max out with their checksa cwez give it to the individual. and it is a very effective way to geth their attention. but many times th%ç officials are asking for more than people can give. well what happened was that the bundling by lobbyists just exploded in town. became controversial during this period. it was a huge increase in campaign expenditures. income and expenditures during

this period. ramping up to $5.29 billion in 2008. 2012 by the way it was almost $6 billion. 2014 almost $4 billion. so the amount of money coming in from campaigns got people worried. the size of lobbying and expendituresbl billion a year of those who were federal registered lobbyists became part of this picture. and then of course there was huge negative attitudes by the american public. part of my research in 2006 and 2008 surveying the american public through the cooperatj s congressional elections study. in the 50,000s. it was a huge survey. showed -- let me just assert if you have the literature to refer

to in the syllabus. but let me assert that lobbyists were lower than bedbugs, used car salesman even lower than members of congress in terms of attitudes about them and they all seemed to want to have some kind of reform. there were major problems with gifts and travel. there were huge loopholes in travel before the reforms went where people could say there was an educational event or something down in the bahamas and corporations could fly people down there and go to the event for a couple hours seminar and the rest of the time they played golf, tennis, at the beach with the entire family. this is going on now in europe. even though they say that they have a higher ethical core. these kind of activities are going all on the time in europe also with members of the parliament. and also in the u.k.

and france all kinds of other places. at the same time we had huge drop in support for congress from the 30 percentile, down into the teens. that was part of this environment. and during all this the ethics committees really didn't do anything. and with thurber's iron law of reciprocity, i'll help you if you help me or i'll hurt you if you hurt me. if you as an ethics committee member went after the chair of say the ways and means committee -- which happened for not paying taxes which is interesting. that is the tax committee -- you kind of go slow on that. you take years in terms of the investigation. the senate ethics committee almost did nothing. i worked for a man who was chairman of that committee for a while in the senate. and it was the worst committee

assignment. he got the committee assignment because the leadership promised him other assignments on other committees. and they really didn't want to go after their members. when you have peer review in a situation, and you have the iron law of reciprocity within the institution, if you hurt somebody, they are going to get back at you. then you either get rid of them totally out of the institution. or you go light. and they were going light. finally during this period and i will argue later that it is really going on now. we had weakhwblg enforcement. weak enforcement and also not very much transparency about who was lobbying who they were lobbying for and how much they were spending. but the enforcement thing ispy the u.s. district -- d.c. u.s. attorney for the lobbying law, the lda. and they were doing nothing. they prosecuted no one during this period.

all these other prosecutions were done outside of the lobbying law. but also nothing was done by congress in terms of censoring people. if you look at the increase in lobbying and expenditures we two from 1998 1.44 billion. and if you control for inflation, it hasn't increased dramatically. but the number -- you will see later on the number of lobbyists that are registered where you have to show how much you are spending has really gone down and the number has stayed pretty much the same during this period. if you look at campaign expenditures you can see that

a great deal of money.n$úo f1 o 2008, as i mentioned, 5.29 billion. off year elections is a little less. this year we had about a $4 billion cycle. and the super packs have been a significant part of that. super pack has been allowed as a result of a supreme court case where you can bring in unlimited amounts of money. you can spend it in a non trant transparent way as an outside group as long as you don't coordinate with a candidate or party organization. and coordination is as easy as watching television those days. it is very easy to coordinate. you can see what people are doing. in fact this cycle there was somebody who said, who put up on their website, a candidate. we need another thousand points purchased in this for our campaign in this sector. and if that is not coordination, i don't know what it is. but the money is being used

strategically and in competitive races. and it made a big difference in this thing. revolveing door and conflict of interest. another major reason for people pushing for reform. lobbying is the top career choice of departing members of congress and staff today. the latest most rigorous study was '98-2006 just before the reform which i'llt2 &k about. 43% of the members who left congress and were eligible to lobby have become registered lobbyists. 43%. nobody ever leaves washington. and a whole lot of people didn't bomb become registered but are still and doing a variety of things we would call advocation or lobbying. the k street project.

anyone remember this term reading about it? do you know what it is? you know where k street is right? what is the k street project? no. okay. >> isn't is that where they went through and the systematically had the companies hireu4 ñ republican advocates and push democrats out. >> right. now the republicans were well-organized. they called it something. they called it the k street project and would meet every tuesday morning in the house and senate. and figure who wants to leave. whose leaving as a staff member or member of congress. they would look at the openings at associations and corporations. and tom -- especially in the house of representatives the hammer would call him and say listen we will not allow anybody from your association into the republican offices unless you hire a republican and here are a couple of candidates.

they put great pressure on them. the democrats did that for years. both parties did. but they didn't call it something. they were disorganized. they didn't meet regularly. they also tried to get their colleagues jobs and subtly told individuals, well, you know it would be a good idea if you hired one of our people. you would have better access. there was also negotiation for jobs while you were in congress. this became very controversial because there was the -- a pharmaceutical -- major pharmaceutical reform for medicare. medicare part d. it was going through a variety of committees including the energy and commerce committee in the house of representatives. the chair at that time was an individual who was secretly negotiating a job with either big pharma or the american film

association. i'm not sure if that is the correct title. but it is the organization that represents hollywood. they are both bidding back and forth for him. he eventually got a job with pharma for $1.5 million at the same time they were negotiating what -- drafting what would be in the bill which would help the pharmaceutical industry significantly. and it was all secret. so as a result of that controversy controversy, the individual's name was billy towson. as a result of that controversy they put through some rules, which i'm talk about later, which if you are interested in a job you have to go to the ethics committee to talk to them about it and recuse yourself from it totally. and it has to be public. so that will no longer go on.

now, senator obama senator mccain both were sort of competing not only for the presidency but before that for reform. mccain first. republicans were in the majority pushing for major reform. didn't happen. when the democrats got the majority, obama was a freshman senator. and senator readid gave him the responsibility to push through the reform on ethics in lobbying. he therefore gave many speeches about what was wrong with it. he did in the campaign later on talk about it. but a major thing was revolving door. revolving door meaning people coming from the industry, getting in government, representing those interests and industry sometimes. there's been some research and i have a publication on this that

shows'@ a little bit about -- sorry. i'm used to a mac. can somebody come up here and help me get out of this problem. there is a thing that says "help." but i don't want that. i just want that thing gone.? ah good. that's very simple. so anyway. i've done some researchrf61 on revolving door. now don't worry this is not going to be on the final exam. but this is the white house right xohere. these are various dots of institutions. the thicker the line, the more people were going in and out. and obviously from the state department and in out of the white house there is a lot. patent bogs very thick.

department of labor. cassidy and associates. department of defense, justice etc. dashal. there is a variety of institutions daschle. let's show you what he was concerned about. this got rid of all the other institutions where people were going in and out of the white house. patton boggs, wechsler walker hill nolton, hogan, these are law firms timmons, others, had people going in and out of the white house. he promised to stop that in his campaign. he said he was going to change the way washington works. i intend to tell corporate lobbyists that the days for setting washington are over. they have not funded my campaigns. and from my first day as president, i will promote the most sweeping ethics performance

in history. we'll see whether he changed the way washington works. whether he changed pluralists democracy where people can organize and have people hired to represent their interests to see whether he did this in the affordable care act dodd/frank, or any of these major pieces of legislation. there's evidence that he was unable to do that. even though he had this goal. and in fact during the campaign, both mccain and obama were bragging that they had no lobbyists on their campaign. i did a little research on this looking at their back grounds. in 2008, 49 top campaign staff for mccain were recently lobbyists, and advocates at that time. even though he said he had none. 23 top campaign staff members for obama were recently lobbyists and advocates. obama later on said he didn't want people going from

government out and lobbying. he closed the revolving door in as well as out. many of the people on his campaign, as is the case in america, continued their work as public relations professionals, government relations professionals, firms giving strategic advice. and they're making millions. they still are to this day. and they call upon their relationships with people, not only the president, but people in the administration that they work with in the campaign. i read in a piece called "from campaigning to lobbying," and so campaign firms frequently have an increase in income and then it goes down. so one of the ways these professional firms continue to have income, and be viable is that they do issue campaigns. they do issue campaigns after they -- election campaigns, but sometimes the election campaign and issue campaign are together. so you have somebody on your

campaign that actually is pushing for a position for an association, labor unions, or corporations, where they're getting paid to do that as they're on the campaign and active in the campaign. very few people write about that conflict of interest. but it goes on all the time. the reason people get involved in campaigns frequently is to influence the campaign strategy theme and message, trying to have them go in a particular way. and sometimes they're being paid by clients at the same time. there's a top-level campaign staffer that was fired in the middle of the -- of hillary's campaign for pushing a position on columbia. it was very different than her position in the campaign. and it became public, and he was fired. has obama changed the role of lobbyists and the way washington works? does he really care in 2015?

we'll get into that. when we conclude, we'll look at that more carefully. but just to talk about it a little bit in advance, it is very hard to get any legislation passed in washington unless you bring in the interests that are directly involved. the affordable care act had people come in dozens of times into the white house from the american hospital association, from the ama, and of course the aarp, the director of the aarp's lobbyist at the time came to our institute and talked about that. they negotiated what was acceptable to the groups, made compromises there in the white house, and eventually that became the vehicle that came out of the senate, went to the house and was passed. and that's true also of dodd/frank. it sounds simple that all you do is get a bunch of vested

interests together. it's much more complex than that. but they have to be there they have to know what the reaction is going to be for certain positions. so obama very quickly, in my opinion, learned that you need to have those people at the table. you need to work with them. so he really didn't outlaw gravity in washington, d.c., meaning pluralist representation from specialized interests. you know what a lobbyist is. we've talked about this before. i remind you of this two contacts with congress and staff, and executive branch, executives, 20% of your time in lobbying activities, paid for by a client. $5,000 per lobbyist, or $20,000 for an organization reported annually. now it's indexed slightly higher than that. that's the formal definition under the lda, the legislative disclosure act, as admitted in 2007.

but as you know in this class, advocacy, or lobbying is a lot of different things other than that. that's really related to direct lobbying. the rest of these things rarely do people register when you are a person giving strategic advice, oríey2y you're managing a big,xd&ñ campaign, or you have an advertising campaign. you do grass roots coalition building, survey research. people are certainly not registered. and op research. that's all part of the lobbying world in washington, d.c. and there's also lobbying not only just with congress, which the act primarily deals with congress and the executive branch, but there's a form of lobbying trying to get issues on the agenda, lobbying certainly on budgets and appropriating. but also there's procurement lobbying going on, people selling things in washington. i mention this because i'll get to how many people are in the

advocacy business in washington and how many are regulated, and you'll see that i assert, and you know i'm out there by myself a little bit, that there are 100,000 people probably in washington that are in the advocacy business compared to 11,000 that are registered. 2013 we had 12279. this year we have, 11,800 or so. i don't have that on this slide. so what happened. in 2007 we had 14,000. it's bouncing around 14 13 12 now sort of going down. we had huge battles during that period. first two years of the obamabaa administration, he passed 338 bills, the affordable care act, stimulus package. there was battles lobby5÷ing over t.a.r.p., giving money or not to general motors. and the banks.

there was lily ledbetter money for the same job forn stopping discrimination against women in the workplace. the s-chip, insurance for major battles from the pharmaceutical industry from the health care industry generally. and the number of lobbyists stayed about the same. it seems unrealistic to me that that's the case. so let's look at what i've said in the class earlier. let's look at the data. if you look at the government affairs directory, it's published here locally it comes out annually. there are about 40000-plus people in it that were?(t(g the principals that are in the -- in my opinion, in the@pzv advocacy business.

i call it lobbying. and with support staff of 87,000 or more, that's doesn't include a whole lot of lawyers in town who are in the advocacy business who feel they don't have to register because they don't meet that definition. it doesn't include all of the people in washington, d.c. that are marketing for contracts marketing for military expenditures, or a.i.d., or all kind of other things. they are trying to influence public policy. and if you're trying to influence public policy i would think it would be good in a democracy to have a little more transparency about it. and a whole lot of former members that are limited in terms of their rules about when they can go out and become a federal registered lobbyist. there are a whole lot of members that are strategic advisers. and a lot of people call it the daschel issue. who's called a lobbyist. in this class, we have a very broad definition of an advocate

or lobbyist. certainly senator daschel, making a good living giving strategic advice to health care health care industry banking industry, and others, it seems reasonable that since that's his primary business, that maybe we should have him register and tell us what he's been doing. if you look at the recent reforms that have passed, it's not only 2007 lobbying reform, but it is also ethics reforms that went on inside congress. there were changes in the gift rules. there were changes in revolving door, inside -- in and out -- not in but out of the house of

representatives, and out of the senate. a variety of other reforms. there were rules and procedural reforms, the prah had an impact is there were new rules on earmarks and it dropped from 15,000 to 8,000 earmarks as a result of these rules, was involved with that, drafting it. what it didzb is it required a member who wanted an earmark. in other words, a designated expenditure of money. but also earmarks on taxes, which people don't talk about a lot. there are billions of dollars of tax breaks. that have been designated for very narrow companies. but also individuals sometimes. those rules and procedure reforms, they had an impact. the earmarksm%q for spending required the following. you had to say who was doing it what it was for, you had to put

it up on a website, where it was going. you had to sign an affidavit which went up on a website that said that your family would not receive any benefit from this. and what was that about? that was about speaker hastert at that time had purchased a couple of years before6új% a particular earmark 136 acres of land in illinois around an interstate highway. that was going69ááu illinois. and he got it for a reasonable price. there was no off-ramps or anything, there was just this road that went through this land. well, he was able to put through an earmark that established an off-ramp off that highway into a side road. do you know what that is? it's like printing money. because if you have an off-ramp you get motels, you get

7-elevens, you get gas stations, and all of a sudden, boom the value of the land goes up. so he sold the land. he made a significant amount of money out of that. and so that was why that provision was in there that you had to say that nobody in your family, you or your family would benefit from this. there's also campaign finance reform that led up to this stemming from back in the '70s. watergate, where money was brought in in bags and put into safes and handed out without any accountability. there was a series of reforms until we passed the m mccain/feingold bill, and then came citizens united versus the federal election committee that has really allowed for unlimited amounts of money coming into these, quote, superpacksuperpacs. there have been some other supreme court decisions that

have done that also. there was an attempt during this period in the late '90s, early 2000s to have redistricting reform. i was part of that also. it was the idea that citizens should be on commission to do redistricting reform not the party. not the governor and the state legislature, controlled by one party or another. drawing lines to protect people. if you have citizens doing it, as we do in 11 states one way or the other, you have a little more competition. we saw that in california. it was an initiative in california. they did it at the state level, state legislative level and then they did it for the congressional districts. there are 53 districts in california. there were years when people won by 55% or less. since we had citizens doing the redistricting in california, as we do in the uk australiax

canada new zealand, they notca only meet the law of compact districts, equal districts within one percentage point or so and also contiguous state, try to bring in the ideah of r competition, we've gone from one or two districts competitive in california to 11 in the last two elections. the idea is that if you have competitive districts, people will move to the middle. you have more moderation. you'll get more people coming to the house of representatives. at least that would be willing to compromise, sort of a dirty word in this highly!4.ç,h situation back here. and therefore, you would have more functional government. we also had reforms when the president got into office the first executive order that!1%ñ he had was related to, i'm going to have the most wide sweeping

ethics reforms that anyone has had in the history of the presidency. well, maybe. he had a series of reforms for the executive branch, and executive branch lobbying which we'll get into a little later. so there's a lot of reform going on. basically we're going to focus on lobbying reform, a little bit on ethics and executive branch reform here in terms of what happened. the major the honest leadership and open government act of 2007. and just -- there's a lot of words here. let me just summarize it by saying that there was an attempt to have more transparency, about who was lobbying for what and how much they were spending what they were doing, and secondly, more enforcement. more enforcement of existing law, the lda of 1995 but also the new rules in 2007.

they made it easier for the public theoretically to know about the topics that people were lobbying, the targets, and expenditures. now, before this act you had to go to the house and the senate to a particular room and everything was filled out in -- on paper. and you had to go through the paper to figure out who the lobbyists were and what they were doing. and there was no enforcement in terms of what they put on those forms. very difficult to get the information. so part of this, and some of us were pushing for this in '95 it was in machine readable form. you could go to a website and figure out who was doing what, and put in a key word index. but still, there are problems. there's great vagueness in terms of what people are doing. some people say we're lobbying for energy. okay that's good.

before the energy and natural resources committee in the senate. others say, well, we're very interested in ethanol we're very interested in this provision in this act for solar energy. and we're lobbying these people on the energy and natural resources committee about it. and these other people on the commerce committee. some people are very specific. some people are very vague. it's my experience by looking at these registrations and helping to analyze them and looking at the center for responsible politics the way they analyze them, sometimes the larger firms are better than the smaller firms. the larger firms are a little more responsible. they have a lot of legal guidance, and they're trying to lean over backwards to do the right thing. you may disagree, we can talk about it from your experience here in a second. but that's my experience here. the reform earmarks we had more

transparency as i described. so we west from 15000, dropped to 8,000, then they started climbing back up. they had so much transparency, people were putting them up on their websites and bragging about them. people were also getting upset because people who wanted earmarks from their district and didn't get them they could see who got them and they came in and they got very angry. and they were lobbying for more of them. it got to a situation where earmarks were so unpopular with the general public, that they have currently a moratorium on earmarks on spending. not on taxes. not on taxes. and not on authorizations. you can have an earmark on an authorization. you can put a provision in an authorization that says no money is authorized to be spent on research on ergonomics by osha. and they also rolled it into appropriations bills.

and even though you're not supposed to de-authorize an authorization bill, those things are in there. appropriations bills are pretty thick. even though in the old days they were very thin, it was all just numbers and agencies. now they're thick. there's all kinds of provisions in them that says what you can and cannot do. the moratorium on earmarks deals with spending not with taxes, not with authorizations or de-authorizations. this is the next item in terms of enforcement. it's that there was increased criminal and civil penalties for violating the lobby disclosure actíy and five years inran9 prison for willing and knowing violations of the act. this scared everybody in washington. you're going to send me to jail? oh okay. and sandler, one of the premier

lawyers giving advice to people in washington about lobbying ethics and campaign finance, he'll talk about this a lot of people were given advice, well, you know you really don't need -- if you're careful you really don't need to register. you can say that you're doing strategic advice, or you can -- if you're invited to go to the hill, that doesn't count. get invited to go to the hill. have somebody talk to them to invite you to go down there to talk to them. then that doesn't count as one of the contacts. i think that this scared a whole lot of people. and so they began to become very reluctant to register, and some de-register. there are a whole lot of people that should be registered who aren't. because if you register and break the law, you can go to prison. the honest leadership and open government act of 2007 also required lawmakers related to

that problem before to disclose job negotiations for post-congressional employment. and that's worked pretty well. there are lots of media that cover the hill. and roll call, and political others who watch this very carefully. and people have asked the ethics committees for -- they've told 2aqs his is going on and they've recused themselves. and that seems to have worked pretty well. they ban senators and their staff from lobbying their colleagues for two years in the senate, one year in the house. the house would not go to two years. very controversial. one person stood on the floor of the house of representatives and said, you're trying to take away my ability to have a job after i leave congress. and he saw nothing wrong with it. the idea is that there's a conflict of interest, that you work -- you're a member on the ways and means committee that deals with taxes. if a bank hires you immediately

afterwards because they're very interested in taxes or tax firms, that you have inside information, lots of contacts. it's a conflict of interest. they ban senior executive branch officials from lobbying their colleagues for two years. that existed before. by the way under the clinton administration, it existed in 60 days before the end of the administration. he suspended it. it was an executive order that established it, so that people in his branch could go out and get jobs. others that are associated with the class don't talk about that. but that was very controversial at the time. they prohibited any official contact between a lobbyist who is the spouse of a lawmaker, and that lawmaker's staff on behalf of the spouse's lobbyist's client. there are a whole lot of people who would hire family but also

spouses. and that was part of the abermoflt scandal. he helped to arrange some of this. and yet there was -- they grandmothered, or grandfathered some of these. and there were some great exceptions to that. but generally now, when people come in, they know they can't do that. there was a gift ban, charter jet travel reform. so this was a major issue. the aspen institute flies people to aspen to go to seminars. i taught one of them one time. during the height of the recession, i counted it there were over 180 private jets on the aspen tarmac. some of them huge jets. during the height of the recession. but i went out there anyway. on a commercial flight. and the issue was the aspen problem. okay. so aspen and others associated

with aspen pushed for an exception, well, if there's a seminar going on we need an exception for that. not just one of these phony one-day seminars in the bahamas or something but established facility. so there's an exception to that. and there was a rule in this reform that said lobbyists may not fly on that aircraft with members of congress and senior staff. so this is very interesting. the ceo who actually gives a lot of money to the candidate, and the treasurer of you know ge or whatever or the attorney there that aren't registered lobbyists can fly on the aircraft, right? going out to the seminar where the corporation and others give aspen a lot of money to run

these seminars on all kinds of policy issues. and where members can hang out with them in the winter and in the summer at music festivals and things like this. the big loophole on jet travel right now is if you are -- if you have campaign fund-raiser somewhere in the united states, that may be paid for out of your campaign funds. and there's no restriction from corporations flying you out in a corporate aircraft to that fund-raiser, if you pay the equivalent of a first class ticket out of your fund. now, you know, flying a bombardier 18-seat corporate aircraft from here to las vegas would probably cost about $20,000 per person in the aircraft. but you pay the equivalent of a first-class ticket and it's okay

out of your campaign fund. it's a loophole that's very controversial these days in my opinion. they ended the pay-to-play k street project played up by abermoth in his book. he said this is a form of lobbying on the hill. he is wrong. it is not. it is much more complex than that. but they did shut this down and prohibited their members and their staff of hiring decisions on private organizations. it's a partisan political gain. boy, that's a hard thing to define. it's a very difficult thing to define. but it shut down the k street project job. yes? >> was there a benefit from the lobbying, from people like sales element? known for being a crooked lobbyist. is it kind of in his interest to emphasize these -- what people think of it? because he's trying to sell his

story of being a bad guy? >> i don't know what his motivations are. i'm sure he believes in what he wrote. but i just disagree that that is the form of lobbying that really worked then and now in washington. that is getting people jobs. but it does happen today. but it's not based upon partisan political gain. sometimes it's just personal relationships. you work on the hill, you become a staff director you hire a member, other people on the staff. you leave, you work in an organization as the head of an association. not a lobbyist, you have lobbyists working for you. you know people on the hill. they're going to answer your telephone. if they want a job, they know this guy's going to help him get a job. it's sort of an unstated dance that goes on. but that is not the primary way policy gets formulated and gets passed in washington. certainly not in the regulatory

side either. as we're learning in this class it's much more complex. i had a sleight on that earlier. it's not personal relationships and getting people jobs. although when you dok people remember it. and that helps. that doesn't mean that you're going to change policy as a result of that. i think that was a good reform. and it's been relatively successful. at least they don't call it the k street project or thevpv"ñsybt m street project or something else these days.0vañ they require disclosure to the fdc now when the lobbyists bundle over $15,000 semiannually in campaign contributions for any elected federal official or leadership pac. there are a bunch of leadership pack pags leaders create their own pacs and you can give to them, et cetera. lobbyists love this. why? because they were always getting hit up for money.

you talk to any of the lobbyists, we don't have any in this class but the ones that were giving money, and even april gave money to people for campaigns. they would rather not be hit on all the time for : criticized because you didn't give money to an individual. so they would like more regulation in this area, generally, than less. they could save a lot of money. it requires lobbyists to disclose to the clerk their campaign contributions, and these are federal registered lobbyists, and payments to presidential libraries inaugural committees and entities controlled by and named for ron hear members of congress. what's that about? well members of congress frequently are honored by associations, by veterans associations, or by the national education association, or the chamber or something. and they -- before the reform

they were given within limits a certain amount of money for their speech. but then, also, lots of money was sent to a charity under their name. related to the awards that they were given, and so abermoth actually hired a spouse of one of the leaders in the house of representatives to figure out members members' favorite charities and other entities where if$ wanted to lobby them, they would give money to that, and that would help you, because you would be at a dinner with them, and they would remember it and it would help ingratiate that particular interest with that individual. that's cut off. their annual reports bottom line is that there's an annual audit by the gao. it makes good reading. it's a good research paper

actually auditing what's going on in terms of implementation of the lobbying also the ethics committees are required to issue annual reports listing the number of allegations and what happens to them in the senate and the house. we just saw some of that. it usually occurs at the end of a congressional session when nobody's around. sorry. and it's not as useful as a lot of people wanted. the one thing that is the house of representatives created a -- the office of congressional ethics. the oce. it's reestablished annually, reauthorized annually. there was a big battle whether it would be reauthorized for this congress. it has been. 2 called the ethics reform group. and we pushed the speaker and

the minority leader hard to phykykyá0 reestablish it, had articles to do this. so we were lobbying. i'm not a federal registered lobbyist, i didn't meet them, but i was in on the meetings for strategy. i gave strategic advice. and it has been established again. the chair rig>""á now on the democratic side of it and he's a former member, is david skaggs and the republican member passed away, they'll be appointing him they're effective. they don't have enough money. they have $1.5 million for investigations. they don't have the right to investigate certain kinds of activities. but they take their time. they investigate allegations of unethical behavior. they make a report public, and the public can see it.

and that goes to the ethics committee. the idea is that the ethics committee would be embarrassed into doing something about it. generally, in the house, they have moved slowly about some of these things. the senate, and again, i was involved with this during the period of reform with senator obama. obama pushed it very hard. he got 36 votes in the senate. for one of these kinds of institutions in the senate. they do not have it. the ethics committee in the senate is really somewhat morebunned in my opinion. it's not working very well. if you look at many other reforms in the readings there's a reference to an aba handbook on lobbying reform. and sandler will talk to you a little bit about the law there. if you want to drill down more and get it, these are the top

lines. but when obama came into office the first executive order that he had as i mentioned before was that he -- very controversial -- he stopped the revolving door into government as well as out of government. out of government was there. he was reestablishing that rule. but in the government meaning if you had been a] (% registered lobbyist, let's say for human rights, actual case, and you went to the head of the a.i.d. you couldn't. unless you got a special waiver. there's been a few waivers. the waiver process means you go to omb, they made a recommendation, it goes to the white house counsel, and then to the president. the first one was assistant secretary in the army. but generally a whole lot of people like pat griffin who's in this class were ineligible or

they were perceived to be ineligible to serve in government because they had been in the advocacy business and he was stopping thatfna"xuju)jt door. not only for about 6,000 political appointees in the executive áé over the membership on over 1,100 committees and commissions that give advice to the government. it's controversial because it restricts some people think important knowledge from people. yes, there might be auq? of interest that they could determine and not appoint that person. but there's just an overall restriction of anyone who was a federal registered lobbyist from doing these things.86 they restricted gifts to the executive branch. he made a big deal about it, but the law was already there.u íñ we have an office of government ethics that has a clear code for

the entire federal government. and then there's the offices ofá ethics within each executive branch. he, in this executive order, required all lobbying for t.a.r.p., to not be in person at one point, but to be in writing and up on a website.hn&)tes that didn't work out too well. and it didn't get totally implemented. t.a.r.p., as you know is the program that bush established to give money to banks, and also eventually to gm and others to get us out of the recession to save some of these financial institutions. the stimulus package, the american recovery and o áz reinvestment act was very important at the beginning of the administration. and he had restrictions on lobbying there also. you had to do it in writing. he finally changed that. you could go in in person but you had to have on a website who you were, who you were going to

see and who you were going to talk about. and the executive branch agencies involved with that had to have that up within 24 hours on their websites. that certainly was not fully implemented. there are some agencies, like the department of energy, who had real problems getting anything up. they had billions of dollars of stimulus money going through d.o.e. the white house has done a better job of this. they have a website, maybe some of you have seen it, where you can figure out who's coming to the white house and who they're going to talk to and on what topic. a lot of research has been done with that. i've done it. unless it's related to the intelligence community or national security. so it's late. it comes out six months late. maybe it's a little better now. lee, is it better now? >> i'm sure. >> yeah, right. that was a problem. but at least you get more

transparency about what's going on. and then there were serious restrictions on the serving on commissions and advisory councils.1ms maybe you were a federal registered lobbyist for something unrelated to a commission where they wanted to appoint you and they wouldn't appoint you, and then they removed a whole lot of people on commissions. some people argue i'm one of those, that it really got rid of a lot of expertise that maybe you could have been a little more careful about how you determined conflict of interest with these people who serve there. what are the consequences? well, i've indicated some of them as we go through this. there were÷vsrr intended and non-intended impacts of the lobbying and ethics reform. one is de-registration. it certainly didn't encourage people to, at a minimum, to register.tn'7.a%q restricts expertise into the executive branch. by the way, there's no rule of

revolving door into the congress. and as aa7l8 staff member, gary andress who used to speak here directly is a staff director in the commerce committee, he used to work for dutyco and handled environmental issues within the jurisdiction of this committee, and there's no restriction in doing that. gary's a great guy, but i'm just saying that there's no restrictions on that as there is in the executive branch. they made the determination that that was all right. transparency, i think if you had to look at this there's less transparency rather than more transparency, because there was an incentive people for people you know the transparency is absolutely necessary in this democracy in order to n figure out who's doing what, make determinations about whether it's right or not. and enforcement.

when i appeared before the rules committees in the house and senate for the 2000 act, i led with those two points. transparency and enforcement. we could have gone back to the lda, the '95 lda had no amendments, if they'd just enforce the existing laws. in my opinion, they're not enforcing it adequately now. there have been a few minor prosecutions. but one way to get people to change their behavior is to figure out well, gee, this man or woman seems to be at this table talking about this law all the time, but he's not registered. no one reportsp@ no one enforces the gao when it doesm doesn't look at people who are actually lobbying that aren't registered. they're looking at people who are registered who are lobbying, and whether they're breaking the law or not. huge loopholes in the act. i mentioned a few of those. which is related to a great extent to campaign finance, and campaign finance activities.

and so i think thattot the president probably hasn't changed the way washington works, even though he had a good goal to do that. it's reasonable. but i think it hasn't happened and he's moved on. the

lobbyist to broaden it, including broadening who was involved with helping people that are lobbying. and they should be registered also. to disclose more and be more specific and enforce what the lobbyists are doing, and we came up with a way to do that, to force people who are registering to be more specific about they were lobbying, ¤w8 they were lobbying ák for, and the amount of money spent. and better records of lobbyists, and lobbying with the idea of merging the registration data with the campaign data, which is something i've been pushing for for years. the senate for responsive politics does this as much as they can. but there's no reason the federal government that the congress cannot do this for the

lobbying activities and campaign activities on the hill. corporations are giving hundreds of millions here and spending millions over here, and it shows the power of both sides of the lobbying campaign. it requires a report on those involved in professional lobbying campaigns. campaigns generally. that's where i sort of define what a campaign was out of this class, which included strategic advice. it includes survey research. very controversial. and i would not have liked that. it includes all elements, because i think that's important to understand that. in a democracy, who's involved in all of this. it expanded the reporting of campaign contributions by lobbyists beyond what it has. the reform of earmarks was

similar to t controversial, because some people think earmarks allow congressñ!úó;s building coalitions around the appropriation bills or service transportation bill, or whatever. but that was part of it. and it improved enforcement, establishing more power by the justice department rather than the d.c. district court to enforce this, to empower the treasury department to do more enfoya)áent, b to do more enforcement. don't worry it hasn't gone anywhere. although the ethics working group has a bill that we've drafted, and there are several members that are interested in it that are democrats. the problem is you can't get a bipartisan approach if you don't have a bipartisan approach, it's not going to go anywhere, so the

idea is to get both democrats and republicans to endorse this reform. my hypothesis is all it takes is a scandal, and there's something going on right now in washington, d.c., that will create scandal. don't worry, it happens every few years. and it will happen again. so we're all ready with this package. which includes, by the way, an office of congressional ethics in the senate as well as other expanding the power of the gao and other things in this reform. so let's open it up to q&a. roy? >> yeah, my question is just -- you kind of talked about the reciprocity and how it operates particularly how the senate was very reluctant&óñ'x to pass any major -- or have any major implementation of lobbying

reform itself there. >> i don't want to overstate jfí(t&háhp &hc% that. it did pass the bill. >> right. >> the point is they don't really enforce it. >> yeah. well, i was about to get on to that. you talk about how scandal is necessary for anything to really emerge in the first place. but do you see any way that there's going to be any policemk patrol, oversight, or really any concrete enforcement will ever be in place? from what you said, i mean attempts to kind of reform the process of being around for decades. since the actual oversight, it seems to be very weak still. >> i think it's getting better. i sounded very negative. over the years we've made progress. many times coming from scandal i think that we're likely to have a scandal again and we're going to have a whole package of bills that people want to grab and move ahead. and so john kingdon has a book

about agenda setting. so we're there in the ready with the package, when the window opens with the scandal, we're going to give them some reforms. there are members on the hill that would like to do that too. we're just an outside group of common cause and there are a bunch of these organizations, and tom mann and myself are part of this. we're going to push it. i think it will come. the one area where i don't think it willú) come is redistricting reform. i've almost given up on that. that means that we'll continue to have a polarized situation in the house of representatives especially. but in state legislatures and it's not going to change soon because the parties are drawing lines in a way«@ñ that it creates safe districts for liberals or conservatives with nobody in the middle. another question right here? matthew? >> do you think that implementing term limits for

officials will help reduce the power and influence like the revolving door? >> we have term limits. they're called elections. but the elections are not working too well. yeah, you know, in '95 when the republicans came in, after the '94 election, and newt gingrich pushed through a series of reforms, the first one that he wanted -- and the democrats had tried it earlier, a lot of people forget this -- is term limits. people voted yes prayed no didn't pass the house, never came up in the senate. a lot of people love term limits. but for a.j. not for you. or not for me. they want it for somebody else. i don't think it's going to work. i think we have to have redistricting reform. if you have term limits, as you do in california and elsewhere it forces power outside the legislature frequently by former members that are actually writing the laws and there are

lobbyists, and they're introducing it, and they're sort of amateurs. you would not want an amateur voting -- pardon me operating on you188 if you had a tumor in y>s=j]ñdrain, right? you want somebody who's had some(l8 experience. but john dingle was there for over 55 years. but john dingle still knew in his little finger more than what most people did about the process in the clean air act. he was very good. the idea is that you have local districts determining when you get rid of people. but let's make the way you do that a little more competitive. that's my position. because you give too much power to interest groups and lobbyists, staff, the executive branch. >> right here? >> you mentioned that the rule that there's no coordination and independent expenditures is

kind of toothless. i was wondering if your ethics reform group has any suggested f>p reforms to kind of control independent expenditures oru(s make them more transparent? >> yes, there are lots of them. you've overstatedq[ kyk position a bit. but yeah, everybody looks the other way in coordination. i think one of the next supreme court cases on campaign finance, and campaigns, will be on coordination. i turlactually had the privilege to write a brief for the department of justice when the mccain/feingold came before the supreme court. i basically said, it's going on all the time. there are all kinds of situations where if you're -- there are firms that actually say, well, we're not coordinating. one's hamming a candidate and one's handling the party over here. we have a chinese wall. we're not talking to each other. by the way, i have people tell me this, we go out to lunch and there's a poll, you know, a survey that's fresh and

important, that's just left open on a desk. and somebody comes along and happens to see it. and they can coordinate. i think coordination in the wisconsin case is maybe going to go forward on coordination. i think coordination is -- i think it will continue. and i think the supreme court may say that it's okay. but i'm not sure. i'm not answering your question but i'm going to move on to molly. yeah? >> so on this issue in the campaign finance reform there seems to be a sentiment that a solution isn't going to come from inside government. because why would people -- >> like redistricting, right. >> so if that's the case, is there an impetus to turn to the outside and kind of stress public engagement? and if so how would that come about? what can the public do to influence the problem? >> i disagree with the original

hypothesis. there are a lot of people in government who would like finance reform. republicans and the like mccain is still in office, he's pushing it, a whole lot of other people. mcconnell does not like campaign reform. many republicans feel the same way. on the outside the change did come from scandal. but it also came from a whole lot of organized common cause, others that have been pushing this. league of women voters very powerful group that's pushed it. it's a source of campaign funding, there are a lot of organizations out there that are not in the press right now, i think, that if we see another scandal, i think we've got one with superpacs superpacs with money from the left and the right. not only the koch brothers, but also sorross. not democrat or republican. i think this is scandals

personally, and i think it will build up and we'll see some pressure for change. but as long as the supreme court is set up the way it is right now, in my opinion we're not going to see them going back on their recent decisions about campaign finance. another question? yes, right here. >> several of the references, scott walker in -- >> implicitly embedded. >> a lot of things about that situation seem implicit. that there seems to be two different regimes governing campaign finance and sort of what happens once you get elected. do you think a comprehensive regime about -- covering from when you retire, from when you declare, would be more effective? >> yes. next question? >> do you have any ideas how that would look like? or is it possible? >> i've been in discussions on that. it's too complex to answer right now.

but yes, i think that would be reasonable. another question? yes, back here. >> you mentioned that as we've moved away from this plan in having all of the scandals, i'm wondering if that's why we've seen lobbyists and the common model for being a lobbyist go from just kind of knowing peoplet= nuj)q hill to knowing how to talk to people and having more skills other just a large rolodex? >> no, i don't think so. i think that your hypothesis is because of regulation because we got rid of the k street project, because of scandal that was involved with abermoth and others, we've gone to a more sophisticated lobbying thing no, i think after when abermoth said when we -- you can go back many years, go back to the civil rights movement. you had grass roots. you had grass tops. you had a variety of tactics to

focus on as shown in selma to focus on the problem through the media, through earned media. and through mobilization of people. that's been going on for a long time. so i think the people that said that 50 people ran washington in the 1960s, and if you knew everybody, and you knew the speaker, and you knew the rules committee chair and the majority leader in the senate they got it wrong, in my opinion. if you talk to the people who were around then they will say that also. it's just grown. the issues have grown. they're very complex. and you need more than anything to know the process, but also know the subject matter then and now, and now you need to have pressure from the outside from grass roots, from the media earned media from coalitions and other things. i have time for one more question. yes, right here.

>> [ inaudible ]. my question for you is which do you think is more effective at forcing lobbyists and advocates to be ethical and honest? is it the legal restrictions or is it more of the environment in lobbying that provides incentives for honesty for your reputation and to maintaining? >> excellent question. i teach a course called lobbying and ethics a workshop. i think it's filled already. but i would love to have you in it. it's coming up. and we take up the question of shades of gray. that, you know, here's the law and you've got to figure out what's ethical. personally. and we have all kinds of case studies where people have not broken the law, but they have crossed the line ethic live. and so my europe colleagues will say, we have a different core ethical value in europe. that's great okay. in greece? in europe.

generally, romania? no offense to those countries. but we have a different value system here. we don't need all these rules and regulations because we know what is right and wrong. well, i think we need a certain amount of regulation and law, but we also have to have people who are going into public service who remember why they went into it, which is public service. maybe to shrink government but also to solve problems. and they.vbp that sometimes. because absolute power corrupts absolutely. sometimes they arec x pursuing things for themselves, their family. they forget. and this class that i teach we start out with some philosophy from madison, and others, to talk about that. because it is something in your lives that you have to figure out what you're willing to do. and you will face that. i have faced that.

you'll face it. and you'll have to determine what's right and wrong. and there's no -- sometimes no right answer. like pat was talking about proximity of fund-raising in townhouses on the hill to votes. there's no rule on it. it's just the optics of it are, well politically, it would be stupid to do one of those and have it reported a week before a vote. or even a month before the vote. you've got to sort of figure out the ramifications of what you're doing, not only on your reputation, but the reputation of the organization that you work for. there is an expression that it takes a lifetime to build your reputation, and five minutes to lose it. this happens all the time in washington. not because of the law, but because people cross the line ethically. let's take a short break. joe sandler will come in and tell you what the law really is, in greater detail. thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> we'll take a five-minute break if we went over a little bit. i apologize for that. >> the house has passed legislation to overturn president obama's immigration actions and remove protections for immigrants brought illy to the country as children. . the measures were part of a $39.7 billion spending bill for the department of homeland security. the vote was 236-191. the legislation now goes to the senate and faces a veto threat from the president. also, an amendment to block the president's executive order on immigration passed 237-190 and an amendment to block the childhood immigration program passed 218-209. here's part of today's floor debate leading up to the votes.

>> mr. chairman i rise in strong opposition to this poison pill amendment, which is a laundry list of attacks on anything the executive branch has done to improve immigration and border security policy. it caters to every whim of the republican conference's most extreme elements. it would de-fund the secretary's southern border campaign designed to unify border security efforts. it would de-fund policies to improve employment-based immigration and to bring highly skilled workers into our country. it would de-fund the policy to parole in place family members of citizens or lawful permanent residents who seek to enlist in the u.s. military. a policy supported by the department of defense. incredibly, it would de-fund the department's provision of temporary relief to individuals who are brought to this country illegally as children. those covered by the dream act, and to the parents of u.s.

citizens who meet certain criteria. and, of course, it would de-fund the secretary's policy of immigration enforcement priorities. every prosecutor in this country exercises some level of discretion to make the most of limited resources. we want our police to pursue murderers over traffic violators. we also should want dhs to focus enforcement efforts on illegal immigrants who pose a threat to our communities. now, it would be preferable as the president is the first to acknowledge, to pass comprehensive immigration reform to address our country's festering immigration challenges. but in the face of house republicans ' failure to act, the president has taken well-considered steps each of them well grounded in his legal authority. if the republican majority wishes to change the law in some way to deny him such authority, they should introduce legislation to do so. but an option of this amendment would sabotage the funding bill and undermine our nation's security at a time of great

danger. i urge colleagues to oppose this amendment. and i reserve the balance of my time. >> gentleman reserves. gentleman from alabama is recognized. >> thank you mr. chairman. i'd like at this point to recognize the majority leader of the house of representatives and thank him for his leadership and yield him one minute to speak. >> the gentleman from california is recognized. >> i thank the gentleman for yielding.vt0ús mr. speakerqcz]ç when the president was asked about his deportation policy e!h `llf, mr. speaker, president obama said, quote, i'm the president of the united states of america. i'm not the emperor of the united states, my job is to execute laws that are passed. a few days earlier, he said mr. speaker, and i quote i'm not a king. i'm the head of an executive branch of government, i'm required to follow the law.

22 times mr. speaker, the president said he couldn't ignore immigration law and create new laws by himself. but now, mr. speaker, president obama has done exactly what he said he could not do. what changed between then and now? nothing. our constitution is exactly the same. and congress still retains the sole power to legislate. mr. speaker, presidents do not have the right to re-write any law in any instance. the fact is explicitly clear in regards to immigration. actually, when it comes to immigration, supreme court stated and i quote. over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of congress more complete. this is not a battle between democrats and republicans. or a battle between pro-immigration and anti-immigration. it doesn't matter whether mr.

speaker, you like the results of what the president did or not. this is about resisting the assault on democratic government and protecting the constitutional separation of powers. and let me be clear this bill funds the entire department of homeland security. so that is not an issue here. so when we vote today, there's only one question to ask. do we weaken our constitution by allowing the executive to legislate? or do we defend the most fundamental laws of our democracy? there's no middle ground. i yield back. >> now that congress has gavelled out house and senate republicans are meeting in hershey, pennsylvania, thursday and friday for their4a)s÷ first joint retreat in ten years. they'll be strategizeing on how to work together while republicans control both houses of congress for the next two m years.

reuters reports that comedian jay leno and tony blair will speak at the retreat. senate democratso s will be in baltimore for their retreat today through thursday. news reports say president obama will be there but they don't say when. senate minority leader reid will not attend. doctors have advised him to continue to work from home while he recovers from an exercising accident. house democrats are holding their retreat later this month in philadelphia. c7í here are some of our featured programs for this weekend on the c-span networks. on c-span 2 saturday night at 10:00 on book tv's "afterwards," brett stevens argues our enemies and competitors are taking advantage of the situation abroad created by the u.s. as it focuses on domestic concerns. and sunday night at 10:00, democratic representative from new york, steve israel on his recent novel about a salesman and a top secret government surveillance program.

and on "american history tv" on c-span 3 saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history. george mason university professor john turner on the early mormons and their attempt to create a new zion in the american west during the 1830s. and sunday afternoon at 4:00, on "real america," the 1964 academy award winning film about the forced desegregation of the all-white central high school. find our complete television schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. e-mail7gc comments @c-span.org. or send us a tweet. join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. >> now, our coverage of the american university public affairs and advocacy institute concludes with a look at the current state of federal lobbying laws.

campaign finance and election law attorney joseph sandler discusses rules on giftsaa(& and disclosure requirements as well as the transition of lawmakers into lobbying.7bl this is an hour.d1? >> welcome back, everyone. this is the public affairs advocacy institute. it is about the strategies and tactics of lobbying and one key aspect of it is certainly knowing the law, the federal lobbying law. our next speaker is, i would say one of the world's experts, certainly in the united states on lobbying law, lobbying regulations, ethics, regulations, campaign finance. joe sandler is with a firm here. that is his primary area of expertise as well as tax issues affecting political andh' advocacy

activities. his scope of presentation today, he's going to talk about the law. i talked about some of the reasons for the reforms a little bit about the reforms generally. he's going to drill down and tell you about the law. and i talked about some of the consequences of the reforms in terms of lack of expertise coming in on commissions and on the revolving door in problem. and some of the other problems of people giving strategic advice they're not really lobbyists. you know, the daschle problem. he, in his background, you have his biography. but let me mention a couple of things. one, he was the in-house general counsel for the democratic national committee for years and continued that years through 2008 as general counsel for the dnc. but from his firm. very interestingly, he was a key person on the gore recount committee in 2000.

now, i guess you didn't know how to count votes on the supreme court or something. i don't know what happened. but he was involved in that for two months in florida. so he was on the inside of that. he's the co-chair of the election law committee of the administrative law and regulation. he was for the apa. we worked together on the task force on lobbying regulation as i've mentioned before. and i enjoyed that very much. there are many other things that you've done but we don't have time to go through all of them. welcome, joe. >> thanks very much. thank you. and thank you, professor, and i will say that only professor therber couldcjs federal lobbying law was an exciting enough topic to put at the end of a friday afternoon when you guys have been sitting here for a full week. but hopefully this will be -- >> a friday afternoon at 5:00. >> exactly, 4:00. hopefully this will be of some things that are -- of int