Highlighting by Don

Top lobbyists for the banking industry were gathered in a war council. The Obama administration had proposed big changes in financial industry oversight, including a consumer protection commission and regulation of some executives’ paychecks. The lobbyists listened to presentations from big Washington public affairs firms ready to deploy arsenals including television commercials and direct-mail campaigns.

But at the end of the meeting, the lobbyists publicly opted to emphasize, if with caveats, their industry’s backing of President Obama’s broader call for reform.

Steve Bartlett, president of the Financial Services Roundtable and a participant in the discussion, said in an interview, “This administration has reminded us of the lesson our mother taught us: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

And so it goes the length of K Street. Industry groups and lobbyists typically hostile to intrusive government programs have been professing solidarity with Mr. Obama and his agenda on matters like health care, energy and financial regulation. Industry has calculated that it stands a better chance of achieving its ends by negotiating with the White House than by fighting it — at least publicly, and at least until the various proposals get down to the final details.

For partisans who are more ideological, the parade of industry lobbyists trooping to the White House is unnerving. Conservatives fret that to avoid a messy fight, their business allies are selling out too cheaply, while liberals voice the same worry about the White House and its Congressional supporters. Some lobbyists argue that all the “kumbaya,” as several called it, may be reaching its final chorus, for instance with banks’ efforts to redirect the regulatory overhaul.

“We have sort of a dual goal,” Mr. Bartlett said. “One is to support comprehensive reform, and the other is to kill the consumer financial protection commission.”

In any case, the administration’s emphasis on inviting in business lobbyists has arguably changed the way Washington does business as much as any of the White House’s new rules intended to shut them out.

“The Obama people have very skillfully said, ‘Hey, we are working on this, and if you want a seat at the table you can’t be out there throwing rocks at us,’ ” said Doug Goodyear, chief executive of DCI Group, a corporate public affairs firm. “And that has restrained large corporations or trade associations from waging full-scale campaigns.”

In the last two weeks, the American Medical Association has endorsed the House’s version of the health care overhaul, and lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies and for-profit hospitals have stood with the White House to pledge billions in cost cuts so long as the proposed public health insurance program does not threaten to undercut them. The drug companies are even underwriting television commercials supporting an overhaul.

Lobbyists for coal-powered electric utilities say they are backing House emissions-cap legislation as it moves to the Senate, so long as they can perhaps loosen the caps a bit and retain subsidies that the House provided to win their support.

Lockheed Martin publicly washed its hands of any lobbying to save its F-22 fighter jet contract from Pentagon cuts, then watched as its unions, subcontractors and Congressional allies persuaded House committees to restore the plane. (The White House is threatening a veto.)

And Wall Street firms insist that they welcome more oversight, so long as it does not cramp their profits or involve checks on compensation.

Conservatives complain that the support for “reform” deprives them of firepower. “Disgusting,” said Amy Menefee of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity.

Ms. Menefee’s organization recently announced a $1.2 million advertising campaign against the health care overhaul, but she said none of that campaign’s cost was being paid by the industry.

Similarly, Patrick Creighton, a spokesman for the oil-industry-backed American Energy Alliance, said that group had been unable to finance a full assault on the greenhouse-gas emissions limits. The alliance wound up spending only about $200,000, for radio commercials in 10 districts, before the bill passed the House, Mr. Creighton said.

“Why didn’t the floodgates open?” he said. Because “a lot of industry was at the table looking for their cutouts and carve-outs” — that is, special treatment.

Liberals, meanwhile, say they fear that the White House and Democratic Congressional leaders are conceding too much. The House emissions bill, for example, gave away as sweeteners about 85 percent of the emissions permits that Mr. Obama had proposed to sell at auction.

Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona and co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the emissions bill a cautionary lesson for the health care fight.

“Collaboration can turn into concessions,” said Mr. Grijalva, who recently sent the president a letter saying the caucus feared accepting conditions in exchange for the support of hospitals or drug makers.

The conciliatory tone on K Street has combined with the recession to tamp down lobbying firms’ revenue. Total reported lobbying spending was about $789 million in the first quarter, roughly flat from the corresponding period last year.

Health industry spending rose about 10 percent, to some $126 million, but financial industry spending fell about 7 percent, to $110 million. And even in the face of a major overhaul of the Pentagon’s budget, spending by the defense industry dropped a bit, to roughly $30 million.

“The issues are more complicated,” said Charles M. Campion, a founder of the public affairs firm Dewey Square Group, “but the budgets are smaller.”

Certain lobbyists with strong Democratic connections have bucked the revenue tide, though. The Podesta Group, whose chairman, Tony Podesta, is a top Democratic fund-raiser and the brother of the Obama administration’s transition chief, John D. Podesta, reported that first-quarter lobbying fees were up 60 percent, to $5.4 million, from $3.4 million a year ago.

At the firm of Steve Elmendorf, a longtime aide to Richard A. Gephardt, a former House Democratic leader, fees jumped nearly 24 percent, to about $1.6 million.

Mr. Elmendorf said he encouraged clients to work with the administration. “Look at the landscape,” he tells them, “and realize the Democrats will control the White House, House and Senate for at least four years.”

Republican lobbyists say they are growing tired with the talk about shared goals.

“How do you oppose such a popular president, especially when he has a style that seems so inviting and sensible?” said Ed Rogers, a Reagan administration official whose lobbying firm, BGR Group, reported a 13 percent decline in first-quarter fees, to about $4.1 million.

“A lot of the typical industry players that would, on paper, be against these initiatives,” Mr. Rogers said, “have been in part co-opted and in part intimidated by the administration.”