Obama Announces New Ethics Rules, Freezes Aides’ Salaries

Posted on Jan 21, 2009

Flickr / No. Nein

President Obama says “[t]ransparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones” of his administration. To that end, he will toughen lobbying restrictions and require all federal agencies to give high priority to Freedom of Information Act requests. The president also announced a pay freeze for about 100 of his highest-paid aides.

AP via Google:

And Obama also revealed what he called a “clean break” from existing rules spelling out when and under what circumstances administration officials could work on issues on which they lobbied governmental agencies before.

He said there would be a two-year, rather than a one-year, waiting period for government officials to be able to work on such issues and said they would “not be able to work on matters you lobbied on or White House agencies you lobbied during the last two years.”

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