So apparently the voice of Lobbyists from various organizations are being silenced at the time. It seems that they are barred from making any comments or suggestions about the Stimulus Plan. The reason? President Obama has tried to forgo this by hoping that the people would come to rely more on the government rather than lobbyissts, "The administration’s goal was to dispel any suspicions that special interests were working behind the scenes to influence the $700 billion spending plan."
A in meeting on Friday, representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, the American League of Lobbyists and the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told the ethics chief, Norman Eisen that the rules have unfairly singled out those who happen to be registered to lobby. The rules do nothing to prevent self-interested car salesmen, bankers, electric utilities or labor unions from meeting with administration officials. Instead, the rules shut out only the professionals whose job is representing others in public policy debates. Dave Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyists stated that Lobbyists “must legally report every contact they make with government officials while those not registered as lobbyists can do as they please. “You are banning the one group that is required to be transparent.” Whats even more surprising is that since this occured last Friday even representatives of non-profit and human-rights organizations have been withheld from speaking out. The interesting this these non-profit groups are being targeted as a means to exclude coporate interests.
So the question now is, do they still have a right to speak out?
Or is it because of these large corperations that they feel they ahve the privilage to speak out againts policies that were created to prevent the high industries from making any more drastic mistakes that help hurt their companies?
Link:http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/lobbyists-march-on-the-white-house/
1 comment:
I’m really not sure how I feel about Obama silencing lobbyist by barring them from making any comments or suggestions about the Stimulus plan. I’m not sure about this because lobbyists are supposes to represent the people. However the lobbyists were not representing the people they were only representing the people with money.
In the article Dave Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyist said “you are banning the one group that is required to be transparent.” But wasn’t that the problem we were letting them be transparent and as a result we saw a lot of bribery and corruption. A lot of bribery and corruption that was causing the American people to lose faith in their government, which is exactly why President Obama limited the influence of lobbyist, in order to help restore faith in the government.
I do agree with the administration’s goal to “dispel any suspicions that special interest were working behind the scenes to influence the $700 billion spending plan.”
I think that we have to start some were and although the barring of lobbyist may be the extreme something did have to be done to restore that faith back into the people. As for the lobbyist hiring ban, the Obama administration has already issued three waivers in cases of a special public interest.
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