Bailed out firms should not be able to lobby

Some political questions are easy ones but the politicians in our system get them wrong because the contributions and the momemtum are all on the wrong side. It is clear that any company that is receiving billions in federal dollars shouldn't be lobbying the government at the same time. They should be forced to the sidelines, and their 1st amendment rights curtailed. Anything they want should be disclosed in a transparent fashion, and their opinion should be severely discounted. Of course they might have good ideas that benefit both them and the nation, but in a country where billions can be lost and not even recognized we have to set up rules to prevent waste fraud and abuse so that it is unlikely to happen in the first place.

Firms that got baiout keep lobbying

WASHINGTON — The financial giant Bank of America says it is no longer lobbying the federal government about its unfolding bank bailout. After receiving $45 billion in bailout money, lobbying was just too unseemly.

“We are very sensitive to the fact that we have taxpayer money,” said Shirley Norton, a spokeswoman for the company.
Citigroup, recipient of another $45 billion, made the opposite call. While trying to keep a low profile, the company is still fielding an army of Washington lobbyists working on a host of issues, including the bailout. In the fourth quarter, it spent $1.77 million on lobbying fees, according to its lobbyists’ filings.
The different approaches from the two banks that have received the most money underscores the growing dilemma facing private companies, which increasingly deal with the federal government not only as rule-maker but also as shareholder, lender and trading partner.
Pressing federal policy makers risks the appearance of recycling public money to advance a private agenda, while staying on the sidelines could put a company at a comparative disadvantage.
Citigroup and Bank of America are hardly the only two financial firms to confront the issue. During the last three months of 2008, at least seven other firms receiving bailout funds — American Express, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, KeyCorp, Morgan Stanley, PNC and Bank of New York Mellon — all lobbied the government about the bailout, according to a review of their most recent disclosure reports.
The automakers that received billions under the same program lobbied as well: including General Motors; its financing arm, GMAC; and Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that controls Chrysler. Other recipients of federal financing also lobbied Congress, the Treasury or both about other matters.
The American International Group, taken over by the government during an injection of more than $40 billion last fall to prevent the company’s collapse, has discontinued all its federal lobbying; it is now in effect government-owned. But its former executives continue to lobby.
Its former chief executive, Maurice R. Greenberg, ousted a few years ago amid allegations of securities fraud, is leading a group of shareholders lobbying for a chance to renegotiate the terms of the government takeover or buy back a bigger stake in the company.
According to a recent filing, A.I.G. shareholders paid $90,000 in the fourth quarter to a lobbying team at Ogilvy Government Relations that includes the Republican lobbying powerhouse Wayne L. Berman, a former assistant secretary of commerce under the first President George Bush and a major fund-raiser for the second.
The group also includes three Democrats who had been top aides to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi; Senator Edward M. Kennedy; and the former House majority leader, Richard A. Gephardt. (Mickey Kantor, secretary of commerce under President Bill Clinton, has advised the group as a lawyer as well.)
Lawmakers, troubled by the prospect of taxpayer-subsidized influence-peddling, are threatening to crack down. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican, are pushing legislation that would explicitly bar companies from using bailout funds for lobbying or campaign contributions.
Although hard to enforce, the measure puts banks on notice that aggressive lobbying could set off a Congressional backlash.
“That taxpayer dollars intended to stabilize the economy could find their way into the bank accounts of lobbying firms” is “completely unacceptable,” Ms. Feinstein said in a speech supporting the measure.
On Friday, President Obama issued his own call for more oversight and transparency, citing “companies that have received taxpayer assistance then going out and renovating bathrooms or offices, or in other ways not managing those dollars appropriately.” This was an apparent allusion to reports of office renovations by the former chief executive at Merrill Lynch, a recent acquisition by Bank of America whose heavy losses led to an expanded bailout for the bank.
Bankers, though, defend their right to a voice in public policy debates about the industry’s future. “Nobody mentioned that you are giving up your Constitutional right to petition the government” when accepting federal money, said Edward L. Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association.
He acknowledged, however, that Citigroup and Bank of America were in a more ambiguous position than the rest of the roughly 200 banks that accepted money from the Treasury and agreed to pay it interest as part of the bailout program. While most banks are required to demonstrate financial health to qualify for the deal, the two giants received $90 billion in emergency measures to prop them up and agreed to give the government a larger say in management.
The two banking behemoths had entered a “middle ground,” Mr. Yingling said, between the other private banks accepting federal investments and the three financial firms under full federal control: A.I.G. and the failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “I would expect that institutions in that middle ground would be well aware that they need to be careful about the tone and manner in which they lobby,” he said.
Citigroup and Bank of America say internal policies prohibit the use of any bailout money for lobbying. Neither, however, has stopped pressing its interests in Washington, albeit more quietly.
Though Bank of America says it has stopped lobbying about the bailout legislation — the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP — it continues to lobby on other matters. The bank spent about $1 million on federal lobbying in last year’s fourth quarter, including $820,000 for its own lobbyists, according to filings.
Ms. Norton, the spokeswoman, declined to comment on whether Bank of America was lobbying on other financial crisis proposals, such as creation of a government-controlled “bad bank” to take over toxic securities.
Nicholas Calio, Citigroup’s top lobbyist, handled Congressional relations for both the first and second President George Bush. Its team of outside lobbyists has also included a former Congressional liaison for President Clinton, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a former deputy assistant Treasury secretary and the veteran Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf.
The two banks’ dilemma is an increasing problem for the industry, said Scott Talbott, top lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable. “There is a TARP blowback problem,” he said.
Ron Nixon and Kitty Bennett in Washington and Charles Duhigg in New York contributed reporting.