I can’t tell what’s more outrageous and disgusting: The fact that lobbyists have been permitted to serve on the federal advisory boards that oversee policies affecting their clients, the fact that that has been occurring with almost no Establishment outcry for years, or the fact that lobbyists have the sheer audacity to publicly scream at the Obama administration for trying to end this form of institutionalized corruption.

That latter point is, of course, the good news announced on the White House’s website on September 23rd:

We wanted to take this opportunity to announce the next step in the President’s efforts to reduce the influence of special interests in Washington. The White House has informed executive agencies and departments that it is our aspiration that federally-registered lobbyists not be appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions. These appointees to boards and commissions, which are made by agencies and not the President, advise the federal government on a variety of policy areas.

The administration had previously been criticized – rightly, IMHO – for issuing a series of waivers on its much-touted lobbyist/ethics reforms. So this move is a welcome change in direction that suggests the White House is getting (at least a tiny a bit) more serious about rooting out some of the worst corruption in the government.

Then again, the reaction on K Street to even this minimal clean-government step shows just how institutionalized that corruption is. Though, as OMB Watch notes, there will still be many ways for corporate interests to get around this latest directive, those interests are nonetheless going crazy.

Over here and here you have corporate trade associations freaking out. Over there you have the American League of Lobbyists screaming bloody murder. And at U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk’s press conference last week, he was barraged with questions about how he could dare try to remove lobbyists from the major federal advisory boards that have shaped our destructive “free” trade policies.

Kirk answered the question judiciously, saying that while “There is a role for representatives and lobbyists in the development of the policymaking process, the president felt that that role in Washington had been enlarged to perhaps an unhealthy degree.”

That’s an understatement, if there ever was one. On trade policy alone, CongressDaily estimates that of the 700 representatives serving on government advisory panels, about one third are registered lobbyists.

To be sure, some might say that hey, it’s not a big deal for lobbyists to serve on advisory panels, because those panels are only “advisory.” But that label is deliberately deceptive.

These panels issue very influential reports and edicts with the stamp, seal and credibility of the federal government. These are documents that begin the long process of policy formation and that, for example, congresspeople hold up in floor debates as proof that they are doing the right thing. And so the reason why corporate lobbyists are going crazy about being barred from these advisory panels is because they know that those panels – despite their “advisory” billing – are extremely powerful in corrupting policy at its very origin. Remove the lobbyists from these positions, and you begin removing the spores that ultimately germinate into stuff like NAFTA, the Medicare prescription drug giveaway, corporate tax loopholes, etc.

To that end, I expect this story isn’t over by a long shot. The anger about this modest proposal is so intense on K Street, you may see the administration back off. I sure hope not – and I give the White House a lot of credit for moving forward knowing full well this would be the reaction.

But that gets back to the original point of this post: just how deeply rooted corruption really is in Washington. It has become such a part of Beltway culture that lobbyists now feel fully entitled to be able to corrupt public policy with the seal of the government – they expect it so much, in fact, that they spaz out whenever anyone tries to stop it.

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David Sirota is the bestselling author of the books “Hostile Takeover” (2006) and “The Uprising” (2008). Find his blog at OpenLeft.com or e-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com