Turning to campaign promises in which he pledged sweeping ethics restrictions, US president-elect Barack Obama will bar lobbyists from helping to pay the costs of his transition to power or working for it in any area in which they have represented clients in the last year, his transition team said on Tuesday.
Obama’s aides indicated that they expected the rules to apply to his inauguration as well as the transition, but said they had yet to make a final decision on how the inauguration would be paid for.
John Podesta, a co-chairman of the Obama transition, called the restraints “the strictest, the most far-reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.”
“If someone has lobbied during the past 12 months, they’re prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied and will have to cease all lobbying activities during their work on the transition,” Podesta said, speaking to reporters in the first official briefing by the transition team.
But the new rules do seem to leave some wiggle room. Aides to Obama, who declared during the campaign that lobbyists would not “find a job in my White House,” said the guidelines allowed for lobbyists to work on the transition in areas where they have not done any lobbying.
Further, the rules apply to lobbyists who must register with the federal government; many people who work for lobbying firms or in other areas of the influence business in Washington do not have to register, because they do not personally lobby federal officials on specific issues.
Podesta said he expected the transition to employ some 450 people and have a budget of about US$12 million. Of that amount, US$5.2 million will be paid by the government, with the remaining US$6.8 million coming from private sources, he said.
Contributions will be limited to US$5,000, he said, and the transition will not accept money from political action committees.
During a presidential campaign in which he raised US$650 million, Obama changed the rules of fundraising, declining public financing and creating his own multimillion-member chain of donors. At least some of those contributors will be solicited for the transition.
As a candidate, Obama laid out more detailed and onerous ethics rules than any previous prospective president, pledging to bar appointees for two years from working on matters involving their former employers, to prohibit departing officials from lobbying his administration for its duration and to require all political appointees to disclose publicly every meeting with registered lobbyists.
The rules have led to some grumbling that at a time of immense challenges, an Obama administration could be excluding a pool of substantial talent by stopping people from working for the White House in the areas they know best.
“I’ve heard the complaint,” Podesta said, “which is we’re leaving all this expertise on the side, because we’re leaving all the people who know everything out in the cold. And so be it. This is a commitment that the American public expects, and it’s one that we intend to enforce during the transition.”
To head his transition teams at the Pentagon and State Department, Obama has hired veteran Democrats Sam Nunn and Warren Christopher, senior government officials and others said on Tuesday.
Nunn is a former Georgia senator who was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was once rumored as a potential running mate for Obama this year. Christopher was former US president Bill Clinton’s first secretary of state.
They are part of a national security brain trust for Obama that is heavy on former Clinton administration officials.
Obama’s national security transition offices will work with the outgoing Bush administration to hand off management of two wars and complex diplomacy with North Korea, Russia and other nations. Obama has not announced his choices to be defense secretary and secretary of state.
Nunn will lead a large transition office at the Pentagon that also includes former Clinton Navy secretary Richard Danzig and former Clinton-era Pentagon comptroller Bill Lynn, officials said.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because the Obama transition office has not announced the names. The announcements are expected later this week.
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