AFL-CIO Spent More Than $2M Lobbying US Government in 2007

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5613204.html

March 12, 2008, 11:28AM

© 2008 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The nation's largest labor federation spent more than $2 million to lobby the federal government in 2007.

The AFL-CIO lobbied on legislation dealing with agricultural jobs, lending and corporate bankruptcy, employment discrimination and civil rights, patent reform, food imports, student loans, campaign expenditures, homeowner protection, Medicare, trade, unemployment insurance and more, according to a disclosure form posted online Feb. 14 by the Senate's public records office.

The AFL-CIO spent $1.1 million in the second half of 2007 to lobby on those issues, as well as on various appropriations bills, energy policy, manufacturing issues and postal rates.

Besides Congress, the group lobbied the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Trade Representative's office.

AFL-CIO leaders last week said the group and its 56 unions would continue to remain neutral in the Democratic presidential nomination race between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, but would begin using its political resources to oppose Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

The labor federation expects to spend an estimated $200 million on the 2008 presidential and congressional elections. It eventually will endorse a Democrat for president, but neither Clinton nor Obama has garnered the necessary support from two-thirds of the union's 10 million members.

Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995.