With Bush, Happy Days Here Again for Business Lobby
During eight years of the Clinton administration, business lobbyist Dan Danner was invited to the White House once. In two months under President Bush, he has visited seven times, three of them for events attended by the president.
For business lobbyists like Danner, the good times roll.
“We’d forgotten what it’s like to have a business-friendly president in the White House,” said Danner, who works for the National Federation of Independent Business. “I think people underestimated George W. Bush. Things are happening more quickly than even people in the business community expected.”
Business lobbyists say they suffered eight years of over-regulation under Bill Clinton. The new administration, they contend, is not so much giving them everything they want as simply listening to their concerns.
Suggesting otherwise is their recent string of victories: Ending costly ergonomic rules. Rolling back tough standards on arsenic levels in drinking water. Proposing to suspend a requirement that miners post a bond to clean up damage to the environment they create. Persuading Bush to back away from a pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions at power plants.
Business isn’t stopping there. The next targets include gaining greater access to federal land for oil and gas exploration, striking a Clinton administration policy banning road-building and logging in back-country national forests and suspending a proposed rule to make nutrition labeling mandatory on meat and poultry products.
And individual industries have their own agendas. The health care sector, for example, is seeking to stop a regulation to protect medical privacy from going into effect, arguing that the rule is expensive, burdensome and unworkable. The regulation, finalized in December, would set strict limits on disclosure and distribution of patients’ medical information.
Nowhere are the good times better than at the National Mining Assn., which has scored three victories since Bush took office.
The industry group lauded Bush’s decision to overturn the Clinton administration’s stringent regulations on arsenic in drinking water. It opposed the rule--suspended Wednesday--that would have held miners responsible for the environmental damage they cause on public lands. It was pleased by Bush’s decision not to seek to regulate carbon dioxide emissions at power plants.
And the industry has been buoyed by the administration’s promotion of coal as a partial solution to the nation’s energy woes.
But its wish list calls for much more: relaxing regulation of mercury in coal plant emissions and forgetting about a proposed rule requiring updated equipment at old power plants near national parks.
Association spokesman John Grasser was steamed about speculation in news reports that the new administration is rewarding the industry for generous campaign contributions. “It’s ridiculous,” he said, to suggest that “we make contributions and they turn around and give us our wish list.”
Business’ success with the administration has become a sensitive subject on K Street, the Washington corridor lined with lobbyists’ offices. “The whole issue of whether big business is dominating this administration is extremely touchy,” said a spokesman for a trade association who declined to comment on business’ run of victories.
Business lobbyists say they are not getting everything they want. For example, Bush upheld a Clinton plan to require a drastic reduction of sulfur in diesel exhaust from big trucks and buses.
Still, business lobbyists say the atmosphere in Washington has changed dramatically.
“We’re being listened to a lot more attentively by an administration that includes in its senior ranks people for whom business is neither defined as an enemy or an abstraction,” said Michael Baroody, executive vice president of the National Assn. of Manufacturers.
During the Clinton years, the manufacturers’ group struggled to get senior administration officials to appear at its policy breakfasts. The group’s first speaker from the Bush administration: Vice President Dick Cheney.
Bill Fay, president and CEO of the American Highway Users Alliance, said he received no response to a report he sent to the Clinton White House estimating that fixing the nation’s 167 worst traffic bottlenecks could save 1 billion gallons of fuel a year. He recently mentioned the report to a Bush aide working on the president’s energy policy who he said enthusiastically wanted more information.
And Jerry Jordan, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America, never set foot in the Interior Department while Bruce Babbitt was secretary under Clinton. But he said he already has been there to meet with Bush’s secretary, Gale A. Norton, to talk about easing restrictions on oil and gas exploration on federal lands.
Some Frozen Out
On the other hand, those whose politics are out of sync with the White House say they are getting the cold shoulder. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked weeks ago for a meeting with Bush to talk about California’s electricity crisis but has received no response.
Mary Sophof, senior vice president and chief government affairs officer of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, said that the new administration is insisting that regulations be supported by science.
During the Clinton years, said Dick Newpher, executive director of the American Farm Bureau’s Washington office, “there was a tendency of regulatory authorities to feel like they had all the answers. That is not the case with the Bush administration. They are very open and willing to listen, even if they don’t go your way every time.”
“With the previous administration, business was in the mode of damage control,” said Tim Hammonds, president and CEO of the Food Marketing Institute, among a group of business owners who recently met with Bush at the White House on tax cuts.
“With this administration, you have a president that understands that a healthy economy needs a healthy business community,” Hammonds said. “So they are at least willing to listen.”
Although Bush’s pro-business tendencies are no surprise, lobbyists are astonished by how fast the administration is moving. Though lobbyists would love to take credit for the rapid-fire successes, Danner said the White House is setting much of the agenda.
In fact, the National Federation of Independent Business’ nine lobbyists--who helped kill the ergonomic rule and are now working to repeal estate taxes--are looking forward to Congress’ Easter break. “We haven’t had time to celebrate,” Danner said. “We’ve been too busy. But it’s a heck of a lot more fun.”
Under Clinton, the federation devoted 98% of its lobbying time to Congress. Now the group, which counted Bush among its members when he was a Texas oilman, expends about one-third of its effort on the White House, Danner said.
Despite the recent successes, business lobbyists say they’re not getting cocky. The narrowly divided Senate means they can’t afford to ignore Democrats.
“It’s hard to feel euphoric when really any senator can hold something up,” said Scott H. Lane, also a lobbyist for the auto dealer association. “You still need to get bipartisan support.
But he said the recent victories have created a momentum for businesses. “It’s a much more exciting time for lobbyists in town. There’s more optimism with Bush. There are new people, new faces. That’s what lobbyists live for.”
Put on the Defensive
Business’ usual opponents suddenly find themselves on the defensive, and they don’t like it.
“There’s a new environment that has emboldened the business community and demoralized those in opposition,” said Travis Plunkett, lobbyist for Consumer Federation of America, which recently lost its battle against legislation making it more difficult to qualify for bankruptcy protection.
The reform package--which credit card issuers and banks have been pushing for years--became a “train coming down the tracks” once Bush administration officials expressed their support, Plunkett said.
“What’s different now is the speed at which things are moving,” Plunkett said. “They clearly wanted to time this so it would hit before campaign finance and tax cuts.”
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Times staff writers Elizabeth Shogren and Alissa J. Rubin contributed to this story.
