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When Lobbying was Illegal

277 points by samsolomon 11y ago

yuhong 11y ago
I am thinking that in the future campaign contributions might eventually matter less than it does today. For example, it is a good thing all 40 states in the US does not do the presidential primary on the same day.
- matthewbauer 11y ago
  How so? I think the biggest problem with campaign contributions is that ads are so incredibly effective at getting congresspeople reelected. Maybe if everyone agreed to ignore these ads campaign contributions would be worthless. But there's a significant enough number of people who are swayed by it to matter.
  - yuhong 11y ago
    I am talking about in the future when less people watch TV for example.
    - raquo 11y ago
      People are always gonna be getting video content from somewhere, and they're not gonna be paying for it enough to make it ad-free, so they're gonna see ads regardless of the medium.
  - thawkins 11y ago
    Maybe if the advertising worked on the princple, that negative advertising about, or even mention of another candidate or party was banned, so that candidates would be forced to campaign on there own positions and party lines, instead of the incessant muck raking and smearing that the circus has descended to today. In many countries competitive advertising that mentions other brands etc, is banned.
jahnu 11y ago
> Wouldn’t it be nice if lobbying were illegal? Honestly, no. It's essential that law makers can be informed by all interested parties. The problem is a lack of transparency. Complex to control but not impossible. Every single meeting between an elected officials and anyone lobbying them should be in some way recorded and made public. As if it were a public debate. The other issue is fund raising. Too broad and complex to really go into here but if a politician didn't or couldn't raise funds it would make lobbying more honest, imho.
- matthewbauer 11y ago
  That's a good point. The biggest problem with it though is how effective it can be at influencing policy against the public interest. I suppose if I wrote a letter to my congressperson it would be considered lobbying but that's rarely what people mean.
  - sosborn 11y ago
    > The biggest problem with it though is how effective it can be at influencing policy against the public interest. The thing is that "public interest" is hard to define and dependent on each individual. Someone lobbying for a nuclear power plant in "City A" will be lauded by some and derided by others. In this case, is lobbying good, or is it bad? Who decides that?
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Transparency means nothing. If anything, many of the transparency programs are fodder, advertisements for lobbyists -- they prospect clients by showing them all of the big shots the competition are meeting with. If lobbying and fundraising were more restrictive, ultimately access to policy makers and legislators would improve. Today, all that matters is the check.
- mapt 11y ago
  "The problem is a lack of transparency" might have been true in some historical era when there was less money involved; We could target a singular corrupt politician taking bribes if we knew about the bribes. Sure. But that's not the problem we have. Our problem is fund-raising. Politicians are not meeting once every few years with a lobbyist at 2AM beneath the Lincoln Memorial, they're spending 60% of their time on the phone begging moneyed interests for reelection campaign funds or party goals, the day after they get elected. They're spending 25% of their time negotiating with lobbyists about what laws the lobbyists get to write ("The legislative subsidy model" of RL Hall, wherein they replace Congressional staff increases), and another 10% trying to raise their professional profile through non-legislative activities in the press or with political powerbrokers. Maybe 5% of their time is spent in committee meetings or on the floor. On top of that, it starts out as a part-time job, with meaningful meetings limited to a few days of the week in order to satisfy the need to fly home to meet with contributors. The Senate has become nearly impossible to get bills through for a similar reason - a filibuster is a time-wasting annoyance legislatively, but its requirement that 51 Senators stay on the floor to break it prevents them from spending days fundraising, an existential threat to their careers, while the filibustering party only has to commit a couple Senators to keep it active. Of the bills voted on in their legislative career, the proportion actually read by the legislator will be under 1%. The number read in full by their staff, under 10%. Politicans are not hiding this; They are complaining about it. We have created a system wherein legislating ranks as the lowest priority, and not even the wealthiest in Congress can be free of implicit corruption.
aaron-lebo 11y ago
This is very selective reading of history. Politics were probably more corrupt and lobbying was even more dominant (just in different forms) in the 1800s. Obviously, the train has gone off the rails at this point, but we aren't at a fundamentally different place politically than we were in, say 1896, when many of the same issues were at play.
- matthewbauer 11y ago
  Definitely. At that time the biggest issue was supporters of candidates being given jobs in the government just because they were supporters. It was a huge problem and definitely makes me think lobbying must not have been a concern.
- BurningFrog 11y ago
  One aspect is that in the 1800s the federal government had maybe 5% of the power it has today. So congress had far less product to sell.
  - jeffdavis 11y ago
    Centralizing power makes corruption much more efficient.
    - int_19h 11y ago
      It also makes it more expensive. A freight train is more efficient in terms of cost per unit of mass moved, but few can afford one, and you'd need to have a lot of things in need of moving to even bother. Decentralized power is cheaper, not on the per-"unit of power" basis, but in terms of absolute numbers for real (albeit small and local) problems that it can solve for a price. Such corruption, because it deals with those small and local problems, is mostly contained. But if you happen to be within its scope, it can be just as much, if not more, of a problem, than corruption on higher levels (because it immediately affects the things that happen around you in day-to-day life).
      - 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
SturgeonsLaw 11y ago
> Although it seems like established cannon today that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own a gun That's one of the more amusing typos I've seen lately :)
entee 11y ago
Perhaps the least understood view of lobbying that really informs how perverse the system has become is that as a general rule people believe the lobbyists are calling the congresspeople to offer them money. In reality, it's the congresspeople, desperate for campaign cash, that are calling the lobbyists for money. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-friday-podcast-a-former-lobbyist-tells-all http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-f... The cost of congressional elections has increased so much that it has become essentially required for someone aspiring to political office to raise enormous amounts of money. As a result they're asking lobbyists to contribute. As a result they're more likely to take positions that are friendly to those interests. Effectively the polarity of the commonly stated narrative is backwards. It's not lobbyists giving money for special favors, it's congresspeople needing money who give special favors in the hopes of maybe getting money. This is even more perverse, and harder to fix than the former. Essentially, I wish my congressperson was more traditionally corrupt, that's an issue we know how to solve.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  This is true for direct contributions to a candidate's campaign, for contributions to an member of Congress's "personal PAC", and for contributions to political parties. It's not true for contributions to "super PACs" and other independent expenditures, aka outside money--the stuff the Citizens United decision liberalized. The reason for that is that the law (even post-CU) prohibits coordination between a candidate and any group making independent expenditures. Ted Cruz cannot ask anyone to give money to his super PAC. And it's important to understand that there are still limits on the contributions in my first paragraph. A given person can only contribute a set amount of money per election cycle to each candidate, each PAC, and each party committee. That said, the aggregate numbers are still huge. CU did not outlaw limits on those types of contributions. I wish we could lower then farther and (especially) take away the privileged position that political parties have within elections and campaign finance laws.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    That arms length separation elevates the power of lobbyists and other political operators even more.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
It's good that people are cognizant of the problems here but lobbying and money in politics are much more symptoms of deeper issues. You can treat the symptoms all you like but without solving the underlying problems you'll likely get something just as bad happening in a way you can't control. Right now the system is so corrupt and broken in every way that the only people who would ever want to be a part of it are either corrupt themselves, power seekers, or incredibly dedicated (which leads to an odd mix for sure). Things are changing, slightly for the better in some ways though it's overall a complete mess. It helps that it's no longer necessary to spend tens of millions of dollars just to communicate with the electorate, though we're still not quite there yet. We can't just make a few tweaks to the legal code and magic our way out of these problems. It's going to take a generation or more of concerted effort and, as always, constant vigilance afterward, and a bunch of legal changes along the way as well.
ipsin 11y ago
This is a case where footnotes would be tremendously useful. I could not tell when the author was writing something from Zephyr Teachout and when the author was citing another source.
stretchwithme 11y ago
A winner-take-all electoral system concentrates power and enables winners to sell influence. If I could hire whichever representative I want to exercise my vote in the legislature and fire him whenever I want, chances are I will have a representative that follows my wishes. How would a collective decision making system work if you were designing it from scratch? Would it look anything like the American system? No, I think it would be more like a parliamentary system using proportional representation. But even that falls far short of what we could accomplish with modern technology. Its also worth pointing out that the Founders did not set up elections for both houses of Congress. The Senate was appointed by the governors of the states. After that was changed, it became easier to buy influence. And easier to centralize everything farther away from the people. But that can be turned around.
jeffdavis 11y ago
Why don't we just pay lawmakers $1M a year, or maybe more? The fact that a lawmaker is impressed by a nice dinner or a basketball game is embarrassing.
- learc83 11y ago
  They're not. Lobbyists are breaking federal law if they take a congressman out to a nice dinner. Paying them more wouldn't solve this problem because running an election campaign is so expensive that they spend the majority of their time trying to raise money. They end up taking positions that are friendly to potential donors in the hope that the donors will keep sending them money. The major problem isn't that they trade favors to lobbyists to enrich themselves directly (although some undoubtedly are), the problem is that they trade favors to lobbyists in order to keep getting re-elected.
  - ljf 11y ago
    So should we pay them less maybe, so that only those that care about politics run? Or does that leave them more open to bribery? A complex problem to solve!
    - raquo 11y ago
      The problem seems to be that a slightly indirect variation of bribery (aka lobbying) has been legalized in the first place, not that such bribery is hard to detect. If there was any political will to solve this problem, it would have been solved long ago.
  - FireBeyond 11y ago
    Right, so what happens instead is the lobbyist donates some money to the campaign, and the campaign takes them out to dinner, where they can talk about future campaign funding. And that's totally legal.
    - learc83 11y ago
      Yeah that happens, but they're trading favors for continued campaign contributions not free dinners, so paying them more money isn't going to fix anything. Forcing all interactions with lobbyists to be recorded and released might help. Publicly funded campaigns would also probably solve this problem (but could also cause its own problems).
mirimir 11y ago
Teachout: “If any of the great corporations of the country were to hire adventurers who make market of themselves in this way, to procure the passage of a general law with a view to the promotion of their private interests, the moral sense of every right-minded man would instinctively denounce the employer and employed as steeped in corruption.” Alex Mayyasi notes that the First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the Government. However, Teachout was discussing a case in 1866, many years before corporations were granted First-Amendment rights. Indeed, I believe that only public-interest corporations were legal in 1866. It was a very different time. So it goes.
kbaker 11y ago
This article kinda just glosses over any causes of lobbying, and then complains about the symptoms. There is one incredibly interesting video I have seen which lays out a major root cause of corruption in the US, and the rise of lobbying and corruption since the 1970s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY (Cardboard Box Reform) It is long, but well-reasoned and supported by a lot of evidence. Definitely worth a watch...
- kbaker 11y ago
  TL;DW (sorry, this is still long, the video is an hour!): Something happened in the 1970s which caused a major shift in a number of indicators in the US, leading to a general decline and increase in corruption in Congress. Lots of media kinds of sees this trend happening, but none of them have found a cause. The author was in Africa, thinking about how E-voting could help to reduce the costs of voting. Which sounds great, but then, why is the formal voting process today, with voting booths, neutral polling places, private voting, etc. so sacred to democracy? Two major problems come up when votes are not secret: intimidation, and vote buying. Leading to harassment and electoral fraud. We have already fixed this problem now here in the public, using the secret ballot. We are taught it in school and use it wherever we need a fair democratic process. Except in one place - Congress. All votes are recorded and public, just see govtrack.us to see how your Congressman voted. But hasn't it always been this way? Even from the first Congress, with Yea or Nay votes recorded? No, it hasn't... There is a little-known bill called the 'Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970', which introduced the electronic vote buttons into Congress, and records the vote for each bill by each Congressman. Before these buttons, they would mostly not record each vote individually. This bill overwhelmingly passed at the time, with no discussion about the problems this total transparency in Congress would introduce. There has been no discussion since either! No pieces anywhere discussing this bill as a root cause since the bill passed in 1970. Kennedy was the only one that mentioned anything about the danger of transparency - as it would turn Congressmen into 'seismographs of public opinion.' But what actually happened was worse. Since it takes a lot of money to run for elections, it is easy to turn to lobbyists to raise money. With transparency, lobbyists can directly see if the bills they want propped up are being voted for. Endless congressman admissions of the problems: “There aren't any poor PACs, Food Stamp PACs, or Medicare PACs.” A more complex tax code has ushered in a huge increase in complexity in the financial system since the 1970s, and led to even more lobbyists from Wall Street. “But once lobbyists knew your every vote, they could use it against you.” Almost all giant lobbying organizations (ALEC, Heritage Foundation) were founded only a year or two after this bill. Congressmen cannot vote their conscience anymore, they are pressured to vote for whatever the lobbying firm or corporation wants. Bills are basically introduced by special interests now. The nice thing, is that there is an easy solution - reintroduce the secret ballot in Congress. AKA, a $5 Cardboard Box to have Congressmen vote in private. It's a tough pill to swallow as it goes against the nice idea of having transparency, especially at the highest levels of government. But we must reintroduce it if we ever want to have a Congress that is not controlled by lobbyists and corporations, one that is truly democratic. -- Really interesting video, definitely merits some discussion somewhere about the problems that total transparency in Congress can create.
sandGorgon 11y ago
A lot of people seem to think that banning lobbying will make things better. But looking at campaign finance in India - where lobbying is illegal - the big problem is that all of this gets pushed underground. And what gets formed is this dirty nexus between criminals, politicians and businessmen. It gets worse because extortion is used as a measure by criminals to fund political campaigns (P.S. is this the reason for the tacit acceptance of the Yakuza in Japan..another place with no lobbies?). Campaign finance needs to be more transparent... But the lobbying process in the US is already aspirational for me.
alkonaut 11y ago
First get rid of the "dark" money. If a candidate has $1M then the electorate should know where this money came from to the last dollar. No laundering through PACs or other organizations. That "citizens united" is even an issue is completely unfathomable for an outside observer (as is this whole vocabulary that's been invented for describing a defunct political system: "gerrymandering", "filibuster", "fiscal cliff" etc. I mean come on...). In most other western democracies a constitution is something no one thinks about. No one praises it or accuses any one for being "unconstitutional". Yet the US political system and the constitution it relies on (I presume) seems to be held in very high regard, despite being outdated and clumsy in many areas. Admittedly - the US isn't a country it's a bunch of largely independent states and the federal government is more like the EU than it is like France. And the european politics is arguably working a lot worse than the US.
- Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
  IMO part of the reason for the sacredness of the Constitution is that it is nearly impossible to change. 3/4 of states must approve a change, a very high bar. Maybe in the 1790s when there were comparatively few states and fears of tyranny were more reality based this was more reasonable, but with 50 states it's very unrealistic. The other reason it's sacred is that we Americans revere our founders to an absurd degree. They were great men but not gods. They were deeply flawed, just like leaders of today.
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    Holding the founding fathers in high regard isn't a bad thing - but holding an outdated constitution in high regard may be damaging. It should be hard to change a constitution. It's amazing how a lot of the US electorate finds the constitution so flawless, yet thinks "Washington" and the political establishment to be flawed - as if the political establishment is a product of itself and not of the legislation. I think winner-takes-all two party systems have the intrinsic problem that changes (such as to gerrymandering) will always benefit one side more than the other and thus it's hard to pass.
    - 11y ago
onetimePete 11y ago
I never got why it cant be legal AND combined with a tax. 25 % of all Voices go to the Economics, but they have to "vote" for this- in secrecy, meaning, they pay taxes, and the amount of taxes determinate the share they hold on there part of the power. Any lobbying outside of this, is illegal and leads to a company being auctioned off to the public. When a force distorts your laws and warps society, one has to sap this force via constructs and channel it where it can be useful. And this has to be done, without this force being able to destroy the machinery that channels it. It has been done with the military. It has been done with nobility. It can be done with what shall come.
goda90 11y ago
One problem with lobbying right now is not that it's legal, it's that its legal definition is so narrow that much of it doesn't actually fall under regulation.
Overtonwindow 11y ago
I haven't seen comments from a lobbyist yet. I was a lobbyist in Washington for many years, both for small companies and nonprofits. My job was to work with my clients elected official, to educate other members of Congress, raise the profile of the issue, and do all of the heavy lifting and work that the elected official can't or won't do. There are 535 members of Congress. Unless it's the President, the chances of one elected official pushing through the needs of their constituents is extremely difficult. Lobbyists fill the gap by educating congressional staff, piercing the bubble that congress lives in, and providing expertise on issues that the staff may not have. I have never given a campaign donation, I have never paid for anything for an elected official or their staff. It makes things difficult sometimes, because most members of Congress won't return your calls unless you've given at some point. But I believe that's the ethical way to work. tl;dr: Lobbyists are paid educators and mouthpieces, for people, corporations, and organizations that can't afford to be in Washington all the time, to make sure that their issue is heard and considered by the widest audience possible.
madiga 11y ago
Lobbying is bribery whether it's the lobbyists giving the money or congressional candidates asking for it. The fact that this practice is so apparent in our system is a shame and contradictory to the system itself.
johnm1019 11y ago
> As one judge wrote, a lobbyist is “induced to use his influence for the money he is to obtain; when, as a patriot and a citizen, he should only act for the good of his country.” I wish that was still true.
jokoon 11y ago
I wonder if we could agree that technology really allowed money to be transformed into speech, which is something the founding fathers could not have really envisioned. So maybe restricting political message in the media would be a solution? Although I don't really know as I am not an american. Anyway, as long as unfettered free speech is put on a pedestal, it's never guaranteed to always benefit the public.
studentrob 11y ago
In This American Life's episode on "Take the Money and Run for Office" [1], Barney Frank said, > If the voters have a position, the votes will kick money's rear end any time. I've never met a politician-- I've been in the legislative bodies for 40 years now-- who, choosing between a significant opinion in his or her district and a number of campaign contributors, doesn't go with the district. [2] A lobbyist is just a person seeking to influence decisions made by government. Another way to say this is a person who educates Congress. Education is just a nicer sounding word for society's desire to influence its upcoming generation. Congress is made up of lawyers. They don't know everything about the industries they need to regulate. Drug companies are trying to get away with using unknown substances which they proclaim are safe. Some are life saving, some aren't. Banks are constantly coming up with new financial products. Some help the economy, some don't. We need people to debate these new drugs and market dealings. The people who debate them should be experts. They should publish findings which can be replicated by independent parties. These experts and independent parties often come in the form of lobbyists. One of the EFF's jobs is to lobby. Lobbyists aren't inherently evil, and while I think we should further restrict money in politics, you're never going to completely remove it. Fortunately, as Barney pointed out, we have the ability to fire our elected officials. The problem lately is not just with lobbyists. It's also that we're not turning out to vote during primaries and general elections. If we want to get better representation we have to study up on the issues and candidates, debate the issues with each other, and vote. [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/take-the-money-and-run-for-office http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t... [2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t...
datashovel 11y ago
Lobbying: Where rich people have free speech while in an office (or on a golf course) with their Congressman. And poor people have free speech in the comfort of their home.
banku_brougham 11y ago
My solution: publicly funded elections, and pay congress people a lot more so they can't be bought off with a new porch and hot tub, like that Ted Stevens. It would be money well spent. Make them millionaires, maybe some intelligent people would be enticed into public service.

277 points by samsolomon 11y ago

I am thinking that in the future campaign contributions might eventually matter less than it does today. For example, it is a good thing all 40 states in the US does not do the presidential primary on the same day.

matthewbauer 11y ago
How so? I think the biggest problem with campaign contributions is that ads are so incredibly effective at getting congresspeople reelected. Maybe if everyone agreed to ignore these ads campaign contributions would be worthless. But there's a significant enough number of people who are swayed by it to matter.
- yuhong 11y ago
  I am talking about in the future when less people watch TV for example.
  - raquo 11y ago
    People are always gonna be getting video content from somewhere, and they're not gonna be paying for it enough to make it ad-free, so they're gonna see ads regardless of the medium.
- thawkins 11y ago
  Maybe if the advertising worked on the princple, that negative advertising about, or even mention of another candidate or party was banned, so that candidates would be forced to campaign on there own positions and party lines, instead of the incessant muck raking and smearing that the circus has descended to today. In many countries competitive advertising that mentions other brands etc, is banned.

jahnu 11y ago

> Wouldn’t it be nice if lobbying were illegal? Honestly, no. It's essential that law makers can be informed by all interested parties. The problem is a lack of transparency. Complex to control but not impossible. Every single meeting between an elected officials and anyone lobbying them should be in some way recorded and made public. As if it were a public debate. The other issue is fund raising. Too broad and complex to really go into here but if a politician didn't or couldn't raise funds it would make lobbying more honest, imho.

matthewbauer 11y ago
That's a good point. The biggest problem with it though is how effective it can be at influencing policy against the public interest. I suppose if I wrote a letter to my congressperson it would be considered lobbying but that's rarely what people mean.
- sosborn 11y ago
  > The biggest problem with it though is how effective it can be at influencing policy against the public interest. The thing is that "public interest" is hard to define and dependent on each individual. Someone lobbying for a nuclear power plant in "City A" will be lauded by some and derided by others. In this case, is lobbying good, or is it bad? Who decides that?
Spooky23 11y ago
Transparency means nothing. If anything, many of the transparency programs are fodder, advertisements for lobbyists -- they prospect clients by showing them all of the big shots the competition are meeting with. If lobbying and fundraising were more restrictive, ultimately access to policy makers and legislators would improve. Today, all that matters is the check.
mapt 11y ago
"The problem is a lack of transparency" might have been true in some historical era when there was less money involved; We could target a singular corrupt politician taking bribes if we knew about the bribes. Sure. But that's not the problem we have. Our problem is fund-raising. Politicians are not meeting once every few years with a lobbyist at 2AM beneath the Lincoln Memorial, they're spending 60% of their time on the phone begging moneyed interests for reelection campaign funds or party goals, the day after they get elected. They're spending 25% of their time negotiating with lobbyists about what laws the lobbyists get to write ("The legislative subsidy model" of RL Hall, wherein they replace Congressional staff increases), and another 10% trying to raise their professional profile through non-legislative activities in the press or with political powerbrokers. Maybe 5% of their time is spent in committee meetings or on the floor. On top of that, it starts out as a part-time job, with meaningful meetings limited to a few days of the week in order to satisfy the need to fly home to meet with contributors. The Senate has become nearly impossible to get bills through for a similar reason - a filibuster is a time-wasting annoyance legislatively, but its requirement that 51 Senators stay on the floor to break it prevents them from spending days fundraising, an existential threat to their careers, while the filibustering party only has to commit a couple Senators to keep it active. Of the bills voted on in their legislative career, the proportion actually read by the legislator will be under 1%. The number read in full by their staff, under 10%. Politicans are not hiding this; They are complaining about it. We have created a system wherein legislating ranks as the lowest priority, and not even the wealthiest in Congress can be free of implicit corruption.

aaron-lebo 11y ago

This is very selective reading of history. Politics were probably more corrupt and lobbying was even more dominant (just in different forms) in the 1800s. Obviously, the train has gone off the rails at this point, but we aren't at a fundamentally different place politically than we were in, say 1896, when many of the same issues were at play.

matthewbauer 11y ago
Definitely. At that time the biggest issue was supporters of candidates being given jobs in the government just because they were supporters. It was a huge problem and definitely makes me think lobbying must not have been a concern.
BurningFrog 11y ago
One aspect is that in the 1800s the federal government had maybe 5% of the power it has today. So congress had far less product to sell.
- jeffdavis 11y ago
  Centralizing power makes corruption much more efficient.
  - int_19h 11y ago
    It also makes it more expensive. A freight train is more efficient in terms of cost per unit of mass moved, but few can afford one, and you'd need to have a lot of things in need of moving to even bother. Decentralized power is cheaper, not on the per-"unit of power" basis, but in terms of absolute numbers for real (albeit small and local) problems that it can solve for a price. Such corruption, because it deals with those small and local problems, is mostly contained. But if you happen to be within its scope, it can be just as much, if not more, of a problem, than corruption on higher levels (because it immediately affects the things that happen around you in day-to-day life).
    - 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

SturgeonsLaw 11y ago

> Although it seems like established cannon today that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own a gun That's one of the more amusing typos I've seen lately :)

entee 11y ago

Perhaps the least understood view of lobbying that really informs how perverse the system has become is that as a general rule people believe the lobbyists are calling the congresspeople to offer them money. In reality, it's the congresspeople, desperate for campaign cash, that are calling the lobbyists for money. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-friday-podcast-a-former-lobbyist-tells-all http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-f... The cost of congressional elections has increased so much that it has become essentially required for someone aspiring to political office to raise enormous amounts of money. As a result they're asking lobbyists to contribute. As a result they're more likely to take positions that are friendly to those interests. Effectively the polarity of the commonly stated narrative is backwards. It's not lobbyists giving money for special favors, it's congresspeople needing money who give special favors in the hopes of maybe getting money. This is even more perverse, and harder to fix than the former. Essentially, I wish my congressperson was more traditionally corrupt, that's an issue we know how to solve.

snowwrestler 11y ago
This is true for direct contributions to a candidate's campaign, for contributions to an member of Congress's "personal PAC", and for contributions to political parties. It's not true for contributions to "super PACs" and other independent expenditures, aka outside money--the stuff the Citizens United decision liberalized. The reason for that is that the law (even post-CU) prohibits coordination between a candidate and any group making independent expenditures. Ted Cruz cannot ask anyone to give money to his super PAC. And it's important to understand that there are still limits on the contributions in my first paragraph. A given person can only contribute a set amount of money per election cycle to each candidate, each PAC, and each party committee. That said, the aggregate numbers are still huge. CU did not outlaw limits on those types of contributions. I wish we could lower then farther and (especially) take away the privileged position that political parties have within elections and campaign finance laws.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  That arms length separation elevates the power of lobbyists and other political operators even more.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

It's good that people are cognizant of the problems here but lobbying and money in politics are much more symptoms of deeper issues. You can treat the symptoms all you like but without solving the underlying problems you'll likely get something just as bad happening in a way you can't control. Right now the system is so corrupt and broken in every way that the only people who would ever want to be a part of it are either corrupt themselves, power seekers, or incredibly dedicated (which leads to an odd mix for sure). Things are changing, slightly for the better in some ways though it's overall a complete mess. It helps that it's no longer necessary to spend tens of millions of dollars just to communicate with the electorate, though we're still not quite there yet. We can't just make a few tweaks to the legal code and magic our way out of these problems. It's going to take a generation or more of concerted effort and, as always, constant vigilance afterward, and a bunch of legal changes along the way as well.

ipsin 11y ago

This is a case where footnotes would be tremendously useful. I could not tell when the author was writing something from Zephyr Teachout and when the author was citing another source.

stretchwithme 11y ago

A winner-take-all electoral system concentrates power and enables winners to sell influence. If I could hire whichever representative I want to exercise my vote in the legislature and fire him whenever I want, chances are I will have a representative that follows my wishes. How would a collective decision making system work if you were designing it from scratch? Would it look anything like the American system? No, I think it would be more like a parliamentary system using proportional representation. But even that falls far short of what we could accomplish with modern technology. Its also worth pointing out that the Founders did not set up elections for both houses of Congress. The Senate was appointed by the governors of the states. After that was changed, it became easier to buy influence. And easier to centralize everything farther away from the people. But that can be turned around.

jeffdavis 11y ago

Why don't we just pay lawmakers $1M a year, or maybe more? The fact that a lawmaker is impressed by a nice dinner or a basketball game is embarrassing.

learc83 11y ago
They're not. Lobbyists are breaking federal law if they take a congressman out to a nice dinner. Paying them more wouldn't solve this problem because running an election campaign is so expensive that they spend the majority of their time trying to raise money. They end up taking positions that are friendly to potential donors in the hope that the donors will keep sending them money. The major problem isn't that they trade favors to lobbyists to enrich themselves directly (although some undoubtedly are), the problem is that they trade favors to lobbyists in order to keep getting re-elected.
- ljf 11y ago
  So should we pay them less maybe, so that only those that care about politics run? Or does that leave them more open to bribery? A complex problem to solve!
  - raquo 11y ago
    The problem seems to be that a slightly indirect variation of bribery (aka lobbying) has been legalized in the first place, not that such bribery is hard to detect. If there was any political will to solve this problem, it would have been solved long ago.
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  Right, so what happens instead is the lobbyist donates some money to the campaign, and the campaign takes them out to dinner, where they can talk about future campaign funding. And that's totally legal.
  - learc83 11y ago
    Yeah that happens, but they're trading favors for continued campaign contributions not free dinners, so paying them more money isn't going to fix anything. Forcing all interactions with lobbyists to be recorded and released might help. Publicly funded campaigns would also probably solve this problem (but could also cause its own problems).

mirimir 11y ago

Teachout: “If any of the great corporations of the country were to hire adventurers who make market of themselves in this way, to procure the passage of a general law with a view to the promotion of their private interests, the moral sense of every right-minded man would instinctively denounce the employer and employed as steeped in corruption.” Alex Mayyasi notes that the First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the Government. However, Teachout was discussing a case in 1866, many years before corporations were granted First-Amendment rights. Indeed, I believe that only public-interest corporations were legal in 1866. It was a very different time. So it goes.

kbaker 11y ago

This article kinda just glosses over any causes of lobbying, and then complains about the symptoms. There is one incredibly interesting video I have seen which lays out a major root cause of corruption in the US, and the rise of lobbying and corruption since the 1970s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY (Cardboard Box Reform) It is long, but well-reasoned and supported by a lot of evidence. Definitely worth a watch...

kbaker 11y ago
TL;DW (sorry, this is still long, the video is an hour!): Something happened in the 1970s which caused a major shift in a number of indicators in the US, leading to a general decline and increase in corruption in Congress. Lots of media kinds of sees this trend happening, but none of them have found a cause. The author was in Africa, thinking about how E-voting could help to reduce the costs of voting. Which sounds great, but then, why is the formal voting process today, with voting booths, neutral polling places, private voting, etc. so sacred to democracy? Two major problems come up when votes are not secret: intimidation, and vote buying. Leading to harassment and electoral fraud. We have already fixed this problem now here in the public, using the secret ballot. We are taught it in school and use it wherever we need a fair democratic process. Except in one place - Congress. All votes are recorded and public, just see govtrack.us to see how your Congressman voted. But hasn't it always been this way? Even from the first Congress, with Yea or Nay votes recorded? No, it hasn't... There is a little-known bill called the 'Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970', which introduced the electronic vote buttons into Congress, and records the vote for each bill by each Congressman. Before these buttons, they would mostly not record each vote individually. This bill overwhelmingly passed at the time, with no discussion about the problems this total transparency in Congress would introduce. There has been no discussion since either! No pieces anywhere discussing this bill as a root cause since the bill passed in 1970. Kennedy was the only one that mentioned anything about the danger of transparency - as it would turn Congressmen into 'seismographs of public opinion.' But what actually happened was worse. Since it takes a lot of money to run for elections, it is easy to turn to lobbyists to raise money. With transparency, lobbyists can directly see if the bills they want propped up are being voted for. Endless congressman admissions of the problems: “There aren't any poor PACs, Food Stamp PACs, or Medicare PACs.” A more complex tax code has ushered in a huge increase in complexity in the financial system since the 1970s, and led to even more lobbyists from Wall Street. “But once lobbyists knew your every vote, they could use it against you.” Almost all giant lobbying organizations (ALEC, Heritage Foundation) were founded only a year or two after this bill. Congressmen cannot vote their conscience anymore, they are pressured to vote for whatever the lobbying firm or corporation wants. Bills are basically introduced by special interests now. The nice thing, is that there is an easy solution - reintroduce the secret ballot in Congress. AKA, a $5 Cardboard Box to have Congressmen vote in private. It's a tough pill to swallow as it goes against the nice idea of having transparency, especially at the highest levels of government. But we must reintroduce it if we ever want to have a Congress that is not controlled by lobbyists and corporations, one that is truly democratic. -- Really interesting video, definitely merits some discussion somewhere about the problems that total transparency in Congress can create.

sandGorgon 11y ago

A lot of people seem to think that banning lobbying will make things better. But looking at campaign finance in India - where lobbying is illegal - the big problem is that all of this gets pushed underground. And what gets formed is this dirty nexus between criminals, politicians and businessmen. It gets worse because extortion is used as a measure by criminals to fund political campaigns (P.S. is this the reason for the tacit acceptance of the Yakuza in Japan..another place with no lobbies?). Campaign finance needs to be more transparent... But the lobbying process in the US is already aspirational for me.

alkonaut 11y ago

First get rid of the "dark" money. If a candidate has $1M then the electorate should know where this money came from to the last dollar. No laundering through PACs or other organizations. That "citizens united" is even an issue is completely unfathomable for an outside observer (as is this whole vocabulary that's been invented for describing a defunct political system: "gerrymandering", "filibuster", "fiscal cliff" etc. I mean come on...). In most other western democracies a constitution is something no one thinks about. No one praises it or accuses any one for being "unconstitutional". Yet the US political system and the constitution it relies on (I presume) seems to be held in very high regard, despite being outdated and clumsy in many areas. Admittedly - the US isn't a country it's a bunch of largely independent states and the federal government is more like the EU than it is like France. And the european politics is arguably working a lot worse than the US.

Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
IMO part of the reason for the sacredness of the Constitution is that it is nearly impossible to change. 3/4 of states must approve a change, a very high bar. Maybe in the 1790s when there were comparatively few states and fears of tyranny were more reality based this was more reasonable, but with 50 states it's very unrealistic. The other reason it's sacred is that we Americans revere our founders to an absurd degree. They were great men but not gods. They were deeply flawed, just like leaders of today.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  Holding the founding fathers in high regard isn't a bad thing - but holding an outdated constitution in high regard may be damaging. It should be hard to change a constitution. It's amazing how a lot of the US electorate finds the constitution so flawless, yet thinks "Washington" and the political establishment to be flawed - as if the political establishment is a product of itself and not of the legislation. I think winner-takes-all two party systems have the intrinsic problem that changes (such as to gerrymandering) will always benefit one side more than the other and thus it's hard to pass.
  - 11y ago

onetimePete 11y ago

I never got why it cant be legal AND combined with a tax. 25 % of all Voices go to the Economics, but they have to "vote" for this- in secrecy, meaning, they pay taxes, and the amount of taxes determinate the share they hold on there part of the power. Any lobbying outside of this, is illegal and leads to a company being auctioned off to the public. When a force distorts your laws and warps society, one has to sap this force via constructs and channel it where it can be useful. And this has to be done, without this force being able to destroy the machinery that channels it. It has been done with the military. It has been done with nobility. It can be done with what shall come.

goda90 11y ago

One problem with lobbying right now is not that it's legal, it's that its legal definition is so narrow that much of it doesn't actually fall under regulation.

Overtonwindow 11y ago

I haven't seen comments from a lobbyist yet. I was a lobbyist in Washington for many years, both for small companies and nonprofits. My job was to work with my clients elected official, to educate other members of Congress, raise the profile of the issue, and do all of the heavy lifting and work that the elected official can't or won't do. There are 535 members of Congress. Unless it's the President, the chances of one elected official pushing through the needs of their constituents is extremely difficult. Lobbyists fill the gap by educating congressional staff, piercing the bubble that congress lives in, and providing expertise on issues that the staff may not have. I have never given a campaign donation, I have never paid for anything for an elected official or their staff. It makes things difficult sometimes, because most members of Congress won't return your calls unless you've given at some point. But I believe that's the ethical way to work. tl;dr: Lobbyists are paid educators and mouthpieces, for people, corporations, and organizations that can't afford to be in Washington all the time, to make sure that their issue is heard and considered by the widest audience possible.

madiga 11y ago

Lobbying is bribery whether it's the lobbyists giving the money or congressional candidates asking for it. The fact that this practice is so apparent in our system is a shame and contradictory to the system itself.

johnm1019 11y ago

> As one judge wrote, a lobbyist is “induced to use his influence for the money he is to obtain; when, as a patriot and a citizen, he should only act for the good of his country.” I wish that was still true.

jokoon 11y ago

I wonder if we could agree that technology really allowed money to be transformed into speech, which is something the founding fathers could not have really envisioned. So maybe restricting political message in the media would be a solution? Although I don't really know as I am not an american. Anyway, as long as unfettered free speech is put on a pedestal, it's never guaranteed to always benefit the public.

studentrob 11y ago

In This American Life's episode on "Take the Money and Run for Office" [1], Barney Frank said, > If the voters have a position, the votes will kick money's rear end any time. I've never met a politician-- I've been in the legislative bodies for 40 years now-- who, choosing between a significant opinion in his or her district and a number of campaign contributors, doesn't go with the district. [2] A lobbyist is just a person seeking to influence decisions made by government. Another way to say this is a person who educates Congress. Education is just a nicer sounding word for society's desire to influence its upcoming generation. Congress is made up of lawyers. They don't know everything about the industries they need to regulate. Drug companies are trying to get away with using unknown substances which they proclaim are safe. Some are life saving, some aren't. Banks are constantly coming up with new financial products. Some help the economy, some don't. We need people to debate these new drugs and market dealings. The people who debate them should be experts. They should publish findings which can be replicated by independent parties. These experts and independent parties often come in the form of lobbyists. One of the EFF's jobs is to lobby. Lobbyists aren't inherently evil, and while I think we should further restrict money in politics, you're never going to completely remove it. Fortunately, as Barney pointed out, we have the ability to fire our elected officials. The problem lately is not just with lobbyists. It's also that we're not turning out to vote during primaries and general elections. If we want to get better representation we have to study up on the issues and candidates, debate the issues with each other, and vote. [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/take-the-money-and-run-for-office http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t... [2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t...

datashovel 11y ago

Lobbying: Where rich people have free speech while in an office (or on a golf course) with their Congressman. And poor people have free speech in the comfort of their home.

banku_brougham 11y ago

My solution: publicly funded elections, and pay congress people a lot more so they can't be bought off with a new porch and hot tub, like that Ted Stevens. It would be money well spent. Make them millionaires, maybe some intelligent people would be enticed into public service.