Lobbying in the Trump era: Californians say little has changed but the language
For the most part,
Lobbying in 2017 means translating these pitches into Trump-ese -- talking about how clients' pet projects will create American jobs, help the country compete around the world, and save federal funds.
"We're trying to fit our clients' agendas to match the flavor of the day," said one lobbyist, who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly about the business. When pitching green energy projects to Trump officials, for example, "we still talk about sustainability, but we talk about it not from a climate change perspective but from a cost-reduction basis."
"It may not be called green infrastructure, it may be called something else," added
So far, there's been no sign of a backlash from the federal government in response to
"It's pretty much the same," said
It seems like almost every government agency in
During and after his presidential campaign, Trump cast the influence of lobbyists as one of the ills of
So far, however, Trump's "drain the swamp" rhetoric has amounted to more bark than bite, observers say. In January, he implemented an ethics pledge barring officials in the administration from working on issues that they lobbied on in the past two years and preventing them from lobbying agencies they worked for five years after they leave the federal government. It also prevents administration officials from ever becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.
But unlike a similar policy in the Obama administration, the Trump pledge allows former officials to lobby parts of the government they didn't work in. The Trump administration has also doled out waivers to the policy, but has resisted publicly releasing the waivers.
"His revolving-door restrictions are more loosey-goosey than what Obama had," said
The
Many
"People will be arguing over how to pay for these things, but there's a lot of agreement on what needs to be done," Gwinn said. A priority for many local governments, he said, are efforts to speed up federal environmental impact assessments, which can stretch on for years, holding up infrastructure projects.
Others are also trying to get a word in the capitol's more contentious political debates, with the
The apparent death of the repeal effort in the
"There's a temporary sigh of relief," said Cardoza, whose clients include the
Cardoza, a Democrat, said he hadn't seen any specific animosity toward funding for
Some of the biggest difficulties lobbyists say they're facing is just dealing with empty offices. Trump has yet to fill the vast majority of the 3,000-some political appointee positions across the administration.
One
"It's a little bizarre for the secretary to do the meetings that should be the deputy secretaries or assistant secretaries," the lobbyist, who also asked not to be named, said. "But the only person there was the secretary."
Overall, Painter said, the "swamp" is alive and well -- although
"People think of us as slick people with suede shoes, getting our cronies to do our bidding," Cardoza said. "The reality of what we do is very different: It's more imparting information to members of
What they're lobbying for: (spending
BART, spent
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