Health Care Reform's 'Starting Point,' Guns in National Parks and More in Capital Eye Opener: February 22

Your daily dose of news and views from the world of money in politics:
WHITE HOUSE, REPUBLICANS READY FOR HEALTH CARE SHOWDOWN: President Barack Obama is slated to today release text of a broad "starting point" ahead of a televised health care reform summit later this week with congressional Republicans. Any good reason to think that lobbyists won't be hard at work, too, as politicians attempt to restart all-but-dormant reform efforts? Probably not. Consider that in 2009, health care-related companies and special interest groups spent more than $544 million on federal lobbying efforts -- obliterating their previous high from the year before. And a number of companies and entities that have lobbied heavily on health care reform -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, AARP, Pfizer, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the American Medical Association -- all rank within the United States' top 10 federal lobbying clients of 2009. While federal lobbying disclosure reports for the first quarter of 2010 aren't due until mid-April, it's all but certain the above-mentioned, and other health-related organizations will continue to pour millions of dollars more into this months-old debate.
NEW LAW TRIGGERS GUN FREEDOMS: A federal law takes effect today that allows gun owners to tote their weapons within national parks, so long as they obey local laws. It's a major victory for gun rights advocates, which argues gun owners should have had such rights decades ago. And it comes as pro-gun forces spent more on federal lobbying efforts in 2009 than in any year since 2002 -- all told, nearly $5 million. They targeted at least some of that money at both the House and Senate versions of the "Preservation of the Second Amendment in National Parks and National Wildlife Refuges Act," a Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates. Gun control advocates, meanwhile, spent a relative pittance in 2009 on federal lobbying efforts -- $180,000. Most of that came from a single organization: Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The decline in gun control advocates' lobbying power is striking: In 2001, the special interest area spent more than $2.1 million on federal lobbying efforts.
CRP, IN THE NEWS: CBS News' Bob Schieffer, in a commentary Sunday on Face the Nation, noted our figures of how much 2008 federal elections cost ... Thomas J. Stewart, a food services magnate who died last week in a helicopter crash, was also a prolific Republican campaign bankroller, reports the Arizona Republic in using our data ... Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) knows how to cash in when her campaign needs support the most, writes the Houston Chronicle, which quotes us and notes our data ... The Tennessean's Bill Theobald credits our research in reporting that his home state's companies engaged in tens of millions of dollars worth of federal lobbying.
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