Sunlight Foundation

Financial Bailout: K Street hurting too?

By Bill Allison Sep 30 2008 6:11 p.m. 1 comment

The Hill reports that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are dissolving their formidable lobbying operations (when the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was investigating their shady accounting practices, Fannie Mae was spending $8 million a year on lobbyists, some of whom were working with Congress to derail the investigation).

The Hill reports,

When the two companies were taken over by the government, they said they would end lobbying practices that had made them a powerful force in Washington.

Still, the lost contracts could hit K Street hard.

Overall, 37 outside firms filed second-quarter reports for Fannie and Freddie, according to Senate records.

Needless to say, some lobbyists aren't thrilled.

We are in uncharted territory here. There is not a clear blueprint on how to do this, but it has to be done with dispatch, said Gross, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

You can't turn off a multibillion-dollar operation off like a spigot. You have to enter a transition phase to gradually wind down.

That would certainly be a popular use of taxpayer money: a golden

The Hill also says that "Freddie Mac announced in a Sept. 26 internal e-mail that it had eliminated the positions of two senior lobbyists, Tim McBride and Rob Zimmer." Freddie Mac's most recent lobbyist disclosure report lists, including McBride and Zimmer, eight in-house lobbyists. I've got a call out to them to find out what their status is.

  1. # Michael Berube

    Did you know if Tim McBride has left Freddie Mac or is he still there?

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