Fix Congress - Lobbyists

Say the word "lobbyists" in just about any group and you get universal agreement that these folks are bad. It conjures an image of money passing from the fat cats to our Congressmen in a dark, smoke filled room. We see record gasoline prices and we all "know" that Exxon is lobbying for more government subsidies in addition to record profits. Our mortgage-backed financial markets are in meltdown and we do know that their lobbyists convinced Congress to reduce regulation of that industry in previous years.

There are lobbyists for any special interest that each of, us personally, support or need. Lobbyists also represent big businesses, foreign interests, and single-issue organizations. All are "special interests" and that phrase also conjures a nasty image, unless the named special interest is your own special interest.

There are many problems with the whole nature of lobbyists and lobbying, but the most unforgiving problem is the same as earmarking the federal budget - and that's secrecy. The most blatant example of such secrecy was early in the Bush Administration when Cheney met with energy executives to set America's energy and environment policies. What went on in that meeting remains secret these years later.

McCain Rids His Staff of Lobbyists

I doubt there is any candidate who has a record of trying to improve government ethics through campaign finance and lobbying reforms than John McCain. Yet, even McCain has lobbying problems. The New York Times, "McCain Finds a Thorny Path in Ethics Effort," has a good rundown on the fact that McCain has removed a number of his staff because they were lobbyists. I don't know the number but the Monday Houston Chronicle's "Texan's lobbying success becomes liability for McCain" notes Tom Loeffler was the fifth to leave.

The NYT article notes that the leaving staff members lobbied for customers including foreign governments, foreign companies, and rich foreigners; and large US corporations. The punch line comes early in the article but it is a good one. The responsibility for removing these lobbyists from McCain's staff falls on Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, and Davis is himself a prominent lobbyist.

Davis did take leave from his lobby firm two years ago. I don't think that taking leave is not the same as quitting. His company has started specializing in the interests of foreign politicians and businessmen.

Most of these lobbyists/campaign staff members are friends of McCain. The NYT gives an indication of why this is so. The entire lobbying industry cycles between campaign work in the even numbered years and lobbying in the odd years. To me, this is an indicator of just how entwined are the Congress and lobbyist.

I saw one article indicating that Obama also has lobbyist on his staff, but I doubted its veracity so I won't repeat it. However, I would guess that Obama did have lobbyists on his staff until he decided to make McCain's lobbyists an issue. I assume Clinton has lobbyists since she is probably more of the Beltway establishment than either McCain or Obama.

Lobbying is a Billion Dollar Industry

Lobbying is pervasive. We all know it exists, but that's about all we know. Ask any Congressman if his or her vote is ever affected by lobbyists and you'll get a strong no with a pained look that you could even suggest such a thing. If that were so, then lobbying must be a dumb industry that spends billions of dollars ($2.8 billion in 2008) but gets no results.

Lobbying is successful. This chart from the Center for Responsive Politics shows how this industry continues to grow.

Of course lobbying affects how our Congressmen vote. That relationship is incestuous and involves what's called the revolving door wherein people move back and forth between the work of Congress and the work of lobbying. Members of Congress who either lose or give up their seats often move over to lobbying to make use of all their personal contacts in Congress, and to get a piece of that billion dollar industry.

While it is easy to point to specific lobbyists and the Congressmen they lobbied, it is difficult to get your hands around the whole lobbying industry. The Center for Responsive Politics' web site, Open Secrets, gives about the best overall picture I could find. Go to their Industries tab. This list shows the top industries' contributions to each political party and to the current Presidential candidates (Ignore the different colors. I clipped the table as an image and the colors change are for links that I visited.).

I wouldn't put too much stock in the relative amounts given to each political party since lobbying is an opportunistic endeavor. Lobbyists have agendas and they will support whichever party, candidate, or elected official that will further their agendas. There has recently been a shift in lobby monies to Democrats which shows how they see coming power shifts.

One can guess at the agendas behind the above list. Lawyers (mostly trial lawyers) would like to stop any legislation that limits liability of big business; securities and investment firms would oppose any regulation of the mortgage industry; health professionals, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and hospital industries will want their say in any effort to fix Medicare or provide national health care; and electric utilities and oil and gas industries can effectively block environmental legislation and keep subsidies to oil companies flowing.

Where's the Smoking Gun?

But in all of the above, I find no smoking gun. That some industries spend lots of money lobbying our leaders is interesting but it is not even circumstantial evidence of any wrongdoing. I had to look elsewhere.

Traditionally, "legal" monies get to Congress and candidates by soft money, individual contributors, and PACs. In 2002, soft money was banned which leaves money from individuals and PACs. There is not much to say about individual donors; you get the same lack of hard data as in the above case.

We all hear about the more notorious PACS such as those single issue PACs that oppose gay rights and abortion and purportedly support family values. There are also PACs that follow an extreme right or left political agenda. But none of these appear in the list of top PAC monies .

As in the list of top lobbying industries, the Republicans are not well represented. That's another indication that the influence industry sees the Democrats as the current winners. In this case, however, we see that the list is also filled with PACs that have traditionally favored Democrats.

Half of the PACs in this top 20 list are labor unions or worker organizations. Only three are single corporations: AT&T, UPS, and AFLAC. This list doesn't strike me as one of nefarious special interests. Labor unions and workers associations certainly represent a special interest but even that is an interest of very large groups of mostly average John and Jane Does.

Given that lobbying really is a problem, where is the smoking gun? Part of the problem is defining the problem. All of the data at OpenSecrets depends on disclosure via Senate rules. The disclosure is not all-encompassing nor is it perfect. Some data is simply not reported.

Peddlers of Influence and Other Friends

More importantly, I believe, the influence industry may not depend so much on money as we might think. Note that in the current case of John McCain's removing lobbyist from his campaign staff, most of these lobbyists were personal friends of McCain. Such friendship is, I believe, the key to effective influence peddling. How does this begin?

First, Congressmen collect friends sometimes just like ordinary citizens do, but mostly they collect friends more like business leaders collect business friends and contacts for networking. The friends usually have similar ideas about running the country, And they can be helpful in a variety of ways. In return, the Congressman can often help the friends.

There is also the revolving door process noted above. A typical case is one wherein a young staffer performs well for a Congressman. The Congressman contacts a friend and gets the staffer a good job in private industry, usually in an industry of interest to the Congressman. A few years later, the staffer leaves his industry job for another staff position, possibly with the same Congressman, maybe another but certainly to a higher staff position. The staffer now has several valuable friends/contacts in both Congress and industry. Then, a few good performance later years, the staffer returns to industry, probably in a very high position. And so the cycle continues upward. Eventually the staffer ends up as a corporate officer, or maybe a Cabinet position, or similar. The Congressman now has many high-level contacts in industry and has a good job waiting for the time he leaves Congress.

The process is not inherently incestuous or evil, but it certainly provides plenty of opportunity for influencing the votes of our Congressmen. But we don't know and that is our problem that Congress must fix. Transparency is the term most often used as the opposite of secrecy. That's good. I'll use it.

Since this post has become quite long, I'll leave the possible solutions to another post.