Obama's broken pledge over lobbying

Obama soared into office promising to reduce the impact of lobbyists in the government. Ironically, the president's own insistence on health care reform left that pledge in tatters.

Special interest spending on Capitol Hill broke records in 2009, topping $3.47 billion. And almost half of the president's recess appointments last weekend were tied to or work for so-called special interests.

Finance figures show those interests are giving huge sums to Democrats and Republicans alike -- but while the influence game is hardly the problem of one party, the legislative frenzy on Capitol Hill has only inflated it over the past year.

And those figures don't reflect free face-to-face time that lobbyists got with the president. During the health care debate, Obama spent untold hours with representatives from PHRMA, the pharmaceutical company lobbying group, hammering out a deal. The numbers also don't include people who aren't lobbyists but really should be. Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, is the most frequent guest at the White House, having visited 22 times in six months. Things got so bad that Americans for Tax Reform filed a complaint that Stern was lobbying the president illegally. The Secretary of the Senate later reprimanded Stern and requested that he follow the law.

And while both Democrats and Republicans play the lobbying game, they can't be equally implicated.

The biggest increase in spending last year -- 3,000 percent -- came from the food and beverage industry, which spent $18 million on lobbying and more on campaign donations to kill a national soda tax.

While each party likes to claim the other is in the pocket of special interests, both parties are guilty and, in many cases, corporations favor the party in power.

Sixty percent of Wall Street campaign money last year went to Democrats. Eighty-three percent of the food and beverage spending also went to Democrats.

Obama has spent a good part of his president bashing Wall Street for alleged greed and corruption. But he's more than happy to take their money and spend it on political campaigns where he bashes Wall Street for alleged greed and corruption.