With public attention focused on the GOP primaries, the White House quietly promoted another self-dealing lobbyist to serve as President Obama’s top domestic-policy adviser. Promises? What broken promises?
Cecilia Munoz, now director of intergovernmental affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., will serve as head of the Domestic Policy Council. She’ll wield heightened influence at Obama’s morning briefings and expand her reach from immigration issues to education, health care and beyond.
Gushing headlines heralded the pick of Obama’s top Hispanic civil-rights “advocate” as a win for the “middle class.” But Munoz is a veteran lobbyist whose former group is reaping a taxpayer-funded windfall as she climbs the government ladder.
Before joining Team Obama, Munoz spent two decades as chief registered lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza (“The Race”). Whose “middle class” does La Raza represent? I’ve tracked the radical identity politics-driven group for years as it promoted drivers’ licenses and in-state college-tuition breaks for illegal aliens; opposed cooperative immigration-enforcement efforts between local, state and federal authorities; and opposed a secure fence along the southern border.
Under Munoz, La Raza advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal-alien amnesty here. Mexico’s Institute for Mexicans Residing Abroad rewarded her with its Ohtli Prize for her service.
La Raza protested post-9/11 homeland-security measures and joined a failed lawsuit to block immigration information-sharing between the feds and local police. The group also has called for TV and cable-news networks to keep immigration-enforcement proponents off the airwaves.
Most recently, La Raza and other open-borders groups pressured the White House to deliver the DREAM Act’s bailout of illegal-alien students by executive fiat — after it was defeated repeatedly by bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill. Obama started issuing the amnesty waivers last August. This week, the White House announced an even wider expansion of waiver status to illegal aliens claiming “hardship.”
Who has benefited from Munoz’s lobbying? La Raza’s coffers. Analysts at nonpartisan Judicial Watch report that La Raza raked in $4.1 million in federal subsidies in 2009 and more than $11 million in 2010. Much of that money came from the Obama stimulus, and much of it went to mortgage counseling.
Thanks to strategic partnerships” with Wachovia and Bank of America, La Raza has succeeded in lowering mortgage-application requirements and documentation standards. Illegals have secured many federal and private-home loans over the last decade thanks to the lending industry’s version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The group also collected a $1 million Democratic earmark that funded “community-development” projects.
The Obama administration vowed to end lobbyist conflicts-of-interest as we know them. The declaration was clear: “No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.”
But something got lost when the White House brought registered lobbyist Munoz aboard to work on the very open-borders agenda she pushed at La Raza. Team Obama invoked a shady “public-interest” exemption to waive the lobbyist ban because, it determined, “Munoz’s knowledge and expertise are vital to the functioning of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.”
Has Munoz recused herself on any of the myriad policy issues she has advised the president on over the past two years? Who knows? The most transparent administration ever refuses to disclose recusal orders involving the nearly 100 lobbyists and ex-lobbyists on its payroll. Obama’s “Razist” revolving door isn’t a victory for “civil rights” or the 99 percent. It’s a triumph of politically correct business as usual.