McCain Calls on Obama Campaign to Disclose Lobbying Ties

From CBS News’ John Bentley:


With five lobbyists having been bounced from John McCain’s campaign over the past few weeks, he is now trying to move the spotlight to Barack Obama by asking him to institute the same kind of zero tolerance for lobbyists policy that his campaign recently put in place. “We wanted to make sure there was an effective policy towards lobbying,” McCain said. “It is the most transparent of any in history and I challenge Sen. Obama to adopt the same policy.”

The McCain campaign recently sent out a questionnaire to all of their staff members which require them to disclose any and all lobbying ties. The new policy prohibits any staffer from being a registered lobbyist or foreign agent, and even part-time volunteers have to disclose whether they are registered lobbyists or lobbying on behalf of foreign entities.

Obama’s campaign has yet to respond to McCain’s request, but the candidate did talk on Saturday about the turnover in McCain’s staff. "[McCain] practices the same kind of politics that we've grown accustomed to in Washington," Obama said. "When I decided to run this campaign the first thing we said was we're not going to take money from PACs, we're not going to take money from federally registered lobbyists, because we want to be accountable to the American people."