Edwards Plans New Limits on Lobbyists

Sen. John Edwards, seeking to burnish his reform credentials in the Democratic presidential race, will propose today unprecedented restrictions on the activities of lobbyists. In a speech scheduled tonight at Iowa State University in Ames, Edwards will propose new limits on lobbyists as part of a broader plan to “clean up Washington” by reforming the federal budget process, changing the way contracts are granted for work in Iraq, and ending automatic pay increases for Congress and the president.

According to the speech, a copy of which was provided to The Times, the North Carolina senator would either sign executive orders or submit legislation to Congress, implementing these changes on his first day in office.

“If we’re going to change America, we have to change the culture of Washington,” Edwards’ speech says.

Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan group advocating government reform, after being read highlights of Edwards’ ideas to restrict lobbying, said the plan “might be the most ambitious in terms of scope of anything I’ve heard.”

“It’s more ambitious than what Ross Perot proposed in the early 1990s; it’s more ambitious than what Bill Clinton did,” Lewis said.

The plan comes as several Democratic contenders are intensifying their efforts to portray themselves as outsiders committed to reforming government.

At a town hall meeting in Iowa on Tuesday, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who has also stressed reform themes, said: “The government today ... is working for the large, corporate special interests who contribute to the campaign coffers of the Bush administration.”

Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry has recently run ads touting his commitment to “take on” pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and has issued his own lobbying reform proposals.

In the speech, Edwards will argue that the recently passed Medicare prescription drug legislation, and the energy bill that died in a Senate filibuster, were larded with provisions to benefit powerful industries and showed “Washington at its worst.”

Such legislation, he says, shows the need for several significant new restrictions on the way lobbyists work.

First, Edwards proposes to stop the “revolving door” of officials moving from lobbying jobs into the executive branch and vice versa. Edwards said he would restore a ban initially imposed by Bill Clinton -- and then rescinded just before he left the presidency -- that bars government officials from lobbying for five years after they leave office.

Kerry also recently said he would restore that ban if elected.

Edwards also would impose a 12-month prohibition on lobbyists taking federal jobs in industries they represented. That would prevent former business lobbyists from taking jobs in regulatory agencies that oversee those industries, or presumably prohibit union lobbyists from working at the Labor Department.

Second, Edwards says he would seek legislation requiring lobbyists to disclose every two weeks each meeting they hold with members of Congress or the executive branch, what issues were discussed and what campaign contributions they have provided the officials over the years.

Kerry, with less detail, has also said he would require disclosure of lobbyist meetings.

Finally, Edwards says he would seek legislation to bar congressional and presidential candidates from accepting any campaign contributions from registered lobbyists.

Edwards’ advisors say they are cautiously optimistic that such a ban could survive a legal challenge. But one prominent Republican campaign finance lawyer, who asked not to be identified, predicted that the courts would likely strike down such a plan if it ever became law.

“The idea of a permanent ban on people who, after all, are exercising their constitutional rights to redress the government, seems a little bit over the top,” the GOP lawyer said.

More broadly, the GOP lawyer argued that Edwards’ overall effort to restrict activities by registered lobbyists are hypocritical because they would not affect other groups that attempt to influence government policy.

“I wonder if he will include trial lawyers in there, or aren’t they special interests?” the attorney asked. Edwards, a former trial lawyer, has raised almost 55% of his presidential campaign funding from other lawyers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Lewis agreed that a ban on lobbyist contributions might be ruled unconstitutional, but added that even if the proposal survived it would not eliminate lobbyists’ power because much of their influence rests on their ability to direct contributions to candidates from their clients.

Thomas E. Mann, a political scientist who has extensively studied government reform at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said he was worried that the ban on former lobbyists could deprive government of needed expertise.

“When you are recruiting for an executive branch that has a large number of political appointees you really do need people who know something,” he said. “In my view, the idea is more rhetorical than substantive.”

Edwards’ plan also includes a series of reforms to the federal budget process. To give the executive branch more authority over spending, he would seek legislation allowing the president to excise individual provisions from spending or tax bills and then require Congress to cast a separate vote specifically authorizing them.

Edwards says that would give the president more leverage to resist “pork-barrel” spending or special-interest tax breaks. But that idea could also face legal challenge because the Supreme Court in 1998 struck down as unconstitutional an earlier law allowing the president to cast a “line-item veto” on specific provisions within legislation.

Edwards says he would also restore the federal budget “pay as you go” rule, which the GOP Congress has allowed to lapse, requiring Congress to offset any new spending with tax increases or spending cuts. And he says he would seek legislation repealing automatic pay increases for Congress and the president until the federal deficit, which is projected to top $500 billion this year, is eliminated.

On Iraq, Edwards says he would direct the federal Office of Management and Budget to determine the average profit rate on all government contracts, and then limit profits on future reconstruction contracts to that level or below.

Edwards also says he would seek to recover excess, or “profiteering,” in the Iraq contracts granted under President Bush.

Lewis praised Edwards’ call for limiting profits on Iraqi contracts, but predicted it would be extremely difficult to implement.