The pros and cons of corporate influence in the White House came up for debate last fall when President-Elect Joe Biden began assembling his transition and administration teams. When Biden tapped several top staff members with backgrounds in the lobbying and corporate worlds, some progressives worried that the administration could favor the interests of big business over those of everyday Americans.
For example, Biden’s choice for White House counselor, Steve Ricchetti, came under fire when reports surfaced that his brother, Jeff Ricchetti, had lobbying contracts with at least two pharmaceutical companies and Amazon. Ethics attorneys argued that Steve Ricchetti, a former lobbyist who served as chief of staff for Biden in the vice president’s office during the Obama administration, should recuse himself from working on certain issues, including drug pricing.
Much controversy surrounded Biden’s transition team for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which included executives from Lyft, Amazon Web Services and an executive from a Washington lobbying firm with clients in the pharmaceutical, technology and financial services industries.
“This puts us at a state of high alarm,” Jeff Hauser, director of the watchdog group Revolving Door Project, told The New York Times of Biden’s OMB selections. Hauser also warned against appointing “shadow lobbyists” or individuals who work in advising and advocacy roles in corporations or organizations but not to the extent that they would need to register as lobbyists.
The Revolving Door Project was one of several groups that penned a letter to Biden, asking him to rethink his appointments of lobbyists and corporate executives and to consider individuals “who have proven track records of prioritizing the general welfare,” especially “after four years of Donald Trump’s unfettered governance in service of powerful corporations.”
The Nov. 12, 2020, letter, which was also signed by groups such as Demand Progress and the Center for Disability Rights, acknowledged that corporate “self-dealing” has a long history in both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations but said Biden could be in position to end it. “The revolving door limits the trust Americans have in government and has time and again led to bad policy outcomes,” the letter stated. “We urge you to take advantage of this historic and unique moment in American history to shut the revolving door closed and rebuild that trust.”
During the 2020 presidential election, several candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), promised to fight the influence of money in government as part of their campaigns. After losing the nomination, Warren continued the fight when she, along with Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), wrote a letter to Biden asking him to commit to an ethics pledge barring corporate lobbyists from working in the presidential administration. Other progressives, meanwhile, asked Biden to commit to an ethics pledge that would mirror policies from the Obama administration, which prevented White House staff from working on issues that they had lobbied on during the previous two years.
Some took issue with the Obama-era policies, saying it didn’t reduce the influence of lobbying in the White House but simply made it harder to see and track. Critics of limiting lobbyists from joining the White House also say it could weaken the incoming administration’s diversity of experience and policy knowledge.
The bipartisan political reform group Issue One, for example, stated that while it is pushing for a strict ethics policy from the Biden administration, “we also understand that corporations make up our economy and they should have a seat at the table,” Danielle Caputo, the organization’s legislative and programs counsel, told The Hill newspaper.
After coming under fire for his OMB appointments in the fall, Biden’s transition team addressed the value of appointing staffers with experience working in business or as lobbyists on policy areas important to the administration. “Talent will be evaluated carefully to ensure important perspectives are not excluded,” the transition team said in a statement. “Some of our nation’s brightest policy minds are also fierce advocates on issues from criminal justice reform to health care and workers rights.”
The statement also noted that Biden was committed to the idea that “public servants serve all Americans, not themselves or narrow special interests.” Biden’s ethics policy will likely be announced in the early days of his presidency.
For more background, see the May 2006 issue of Congressional Digest on “Lobbying Reform.”
