AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Some of you are probably old enough to remember when the Democrats were making demands about getting “dark money” out of politics and closing the “revolving door” of lobbyists going in and out of plush government jobs. That was way back during (checks notes) the 2020 election. Sadly, how people campaign and how they govern are not always the same. One ethics rule regarding keeping lobbyists on the outside for a set period of time has already been taking a beating under the Biden White House and it may come as no surprise to learn that it’s being done at the behest of the labor unions. One official that Joe Biden tapped for a senior position at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) shouldn’t have been able to function in that job due to her prior work as a lobbyist for one of the largest government employee unions in the country. Alethea Predeoux’s job as a lobbyist should have barred her from communicating with her old clients at the Americ
May 07, 2021
12:09 PM ET
Font Size:
President Joe Biden is exempting several top administration officials from ethics rules that would restrict their work with labor unions that previously employed them.
The White House waived ethics rules in an April 29 memo for Celeste Drake, who Biden appointed to lead the new Made in America Office. She previously worked at the AFL-CIO and Directors Guild of America, and ethics rules would have otherwise prohibited her from working or communicating with either of her former employers, Axios reported.
The Office of Personnel Management similarly waived ethics rules in a March 15 memo for Alethea Predeoux, the agency’s director of intergovernmental affairs. She was the top lobbyist for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers, Axios reported.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Switching between working for a public interest organization and for the government doesn t involve switching teams, it just involves switching offices. Your North Star remains the same trying to vindicate your view of what is broadly right or wrong,” said Jeff Hauser, Revolving Door Project executive director.
“Lobbying generally is constitutionally protected and is not the problem with government; corporate lobbying is,” he added.
Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said: “Public interest lobbyists are generally not an issue. The issue is corporate lobbyists who could, with one exemption in the tax code or one alteration to regulation, skew hundreds of billions of dollars to their former industry.”
POLITICO
Get the POLITICO Influence newsletter
Email
Sign Up
By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or updates from POLITICO and you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Presented by the Household & Commercial Products Association
With Daniel Lippman
DEMOCRATS UNLOCK ANOTHER GO AT RECONCILIATION, PER SCHUMER AIDE: “Democrats can pass another major piece of legislation such as President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan by revisiting the budget process they used to approve his coronavirus relief package without Republican support,”