Non-profits call on Obama to strengthen ethics rules

Over a dozen non-profit groups on Monday requested that President Barack Obama strengthen ethics rules passed in an executive order early last year.

The 13 groups wrote a letter to Obama in response to the Supreme Court's ruling last Thursday that knocked down limits for corporate spending on politics.

“It is clear that the order as currently structured has yielded some unintended consequences that undermine your goals of open government and broad civic participation in the public interest,” the advocates wrote to the President on the anniversary of his issuance of the order.

Opponents of the Court's 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission are currently debating ways to blunt the impact of the decision that could allow corporations and labor unions to spend freely on political campaigns.

While Democrats in Congress have floated pieces of legislation, the groups are appealing directly to the Oval Office. Obama used his weekly address to slam the decision.

The president also vowed to join congressional efforts to blunt the impact of the decision.

“We have begun that work, and it will be a priority for us until we repair the damage that has been done," Obama said.

The president last year signed a series of executive orders mandating that lobbyists who join the Obama administration cannot work on issues or agencies they lobbied on for two years. Officials who leave the White House are also barred from lobbying the administration.

The groups want to ease restrictions on charitable lobbyists in lieu of the Court's deicison to lift corporate spending limits.

Organizations that signed the letter are:

Alliance for Children and Families, Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest, Center for National Security Studies, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Consumers Union, Government Accountability Project, Human Rights Watch, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Consumers League, OMB Watch, the Open Society Policy Center and United Neighborhood Centers of America.

Read the letter here

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