“Please don’t tell my mother I’m a lobbyist. She thinks I’m a
piano player in a whore house.” OK. OK. It is an old joke sometimes
applied to lawyers (my own profession), used car salesmen, and
other assorted occupations. But it was still a funny line when I
first heard it from a lobbyist friend in Lansing, the seat of
Michigan’s state government, over a decade ago.
Unfortunately, the bite of this joke, as applied to the
constitutionally protected profession of lobbying, seems to feel
sharper since I moved to Washington, D.C. The obscene explosion of
earmarks, i.e., pork barrel spending; the millions of dollars
expended by rent-seekers on luxurious vacations for members of
Congress; the Abramoff-DeLay-Ney-Cunningham-Jefferson scandals; and
the revolving door of congressional staffers into lobbying firms
and back out again — all are symptoms of a federal government in
its High Baroque phase.
Have you noticed how often pundits will refer to various pieces
of legislation these days as the “No Lobbyist Left Behind Act”?
Transportation, defense, energy, farm, and all manner of
authorization and appropriations bills routinely serve as vehicles
for organized plunder of the public treasury by means of earmarks,
subsidies, preferential tax breaks, tariffs, or trade preferences.
Even the original idea of “No Child Left Behind” has proven to be a
problematic phrase disguising an ineffective, yet expanding,
federal bureaucracy and the state monopoly in education that it
supports.
It is now pretty much accepted that anyone who hires the right
lobbyist, accesses the right legislator, and deploys the right
amount of campaign contributions is entitled to whatever bit of
largesse the legislative, appropriations, and regulatory processes
can cough up. Let’s be clear what is going on here. A select few of
our fellow citizens cut a deal with a member or members of Congress
to spend other people’s tax dollars usually without the benefit of
transparent or open debate. The spending is rarely part of any kind
of systematic federal policy focused on democratically determined
priorities. The expenditures or interventions are ad hoc and
parochial, driven by rank economic or political self-interest.
THE BROKERS OF THESE ARRANGEMENTS are, of course, the many
lobbyists who specialize, say, in earmarking the numerous
appropriations bills in ways too creative to imagine. Take an
example from a relatively small segment of the lobbying-for-dollars
business: water infrastructure projects. Last year two lobbyists,
Mark D. McIntyre and Steven Pattie, totally without shame or irony,
published an article entitled, “Federal Earmarks for Buried
Infrastructure: Is Your Municipality Receiving Its Fair Share of
Buried Federal Treasure?” The article appeared in a reputable trade
publication, Underground
Infrastructure Management-UIM (March/April 2005).
These two enterprising lobbyists noted that “Securing federal
support through the appropriations process is probably the single
best source for your municipality’s underground infrastructure
challenges…”
“Here is a big opportunity for your representative to bring the
treasure home,” say these lobbyists. Minimum monthly retainers of
at least $10,000 are common, they claim. But they cite many
instances where the payoff is in the millions of dollars. “Indeed,
a seasoned appropriations lobbyist can lead you to an exotic
location for funding.”
Really, I am not making this up.
Keep in mind that these earmarks are grants, not loans, on 55
percent of the infrastructure project and are not paid back. These
dollars are often diverted from an existing federal-state program
that provides water and wastewater loans at low interest rates
where the principal, at least, is repaid and recycled back into the
water market, effectively leveraging limited funds. It is a
systematic program with guidelines and criteria established largely
at the state level.
OF COURSE, LOBBYING OR EARMARKING is a lot easier than convincing
those skeptical ratepayers of the necessity of paying for the
upkeep of their own water systems. With the right political
connections, maybe a community can get the ratepayers of other
communities, maybe in another state even, to pay for their own
upgrades!
Congressmen can be pretty effective lobbyists, too. Maybe the
best. The June 19 Business section of the Washington Post,
in a story by Charles R. Babcock, reports of a small Alexandria, Virginia defense
contractor, Vibration & Sound Solutions, Ltd., which, for over
a decade, has received $37 million from annual earmarks,
compliments of Rep. James P. Moran, Jr. (D-VA) for a nifty “Project
M” technology that seeks to utilize magnetic levitation to make
submarines quieter, Navy SEALs safer in their boats, and possibly
protect Marines from roadside bombs. Sounds great, huh?
Unfortunately, the Pentagon did not want the technology!
Paul M. Lowell, a civilian Navy employee who oversaw this VSSL’s
work as chief of staff for the Office of Naval Research, said
Project M “seemed to me a solution looking for a problem the Navy
might have.” While it originally looked like it might have merit,
“…we found out quickly it didn’t really solve the problems,” said
Lowell. Basically, it was living entirely on grants from
Congress.
According to Robert D. Novak (Washington Post, June 19), the Sun Gazette newspaper in
Northern Virginia reported that Rep. Moran said at a party dinner
in his district on June 9, “When I become [a House Appropriations
subcommittee] chairman, I’m going to earmark the [expletive] out of
it.” This is one lesson one might hope the Democrats did not learn
from the Republicans.
Despite these rather sad stories, the truth of the matter is
that the federal government is a labyrinth through which no
individual or corporate citizen can navigate without the assistance
of a Washington-based organization, trade association, lobbying
firm, or a congressional office. The classic case of a business
that tried to avoid hiring lobbyists, but lived to regret that
decision, is Bill Gates’s Microsoft, which has now fully “lobbied
up” after going through anti-trust hell.
Many lobbyists do provide an essential service playing defense
in terms of regulatory overkill and legislative adventurism.
Without their watchful eyes and insiders’ knowledge, individuals,
businesses, and entire industries would be left to the mercy of
federal agency and congressional staffers who populate a rich and
diverse ecosystem of bureaus, offices, committees and subcommittees
within the Beltway.
I have had my share of disagreements with business lobbyists
over policy and regulatory matters, at both the state and federal
levels. Yet, I always recognized that they carried out an essential
function if one values the independence and vitality of the private
sector and the market economy. You cannot keep expanding the reach
of government at all levels and not expect red-blooded Americans to
do what they need to do in order to protect their interests and
shape government policy according to their best judgment as to
their private interests and that of the country as a whole.
SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE one in judging the role of lobbyists in
Washington, D.C., in 2006? “Conflicted” is the honest answer. When
lobbyists raid the public treasury for private benefit or torque
policy for special advantage, it is an abuse of the right to
petition the government for just ends. It deserves all the
criticisms, denunciations, and abuse that the citizenry can bring
down upon them.
But when lobbyists and, in many cases, lawyers, are on the
strategic defensive, it must be recognized that they are fulfilling
a vital function in the checks and balances of a limited,
constitutional government with a distinct bias in favor of the
private sector and ordered liberty. One can disagree with the
positions or viewpoints they might advocate in the political and
governmental bazaar, but it is an entirely legitimate, even
necessary function in a free society. You cannot take the politics
out of politics.
Lobbying abuses must be challenged whether they are perpetrated
by Republicans or Democrats. But the abuse must be differentiated
from the appropriate use of this necessary tool.
If conservatives, including not a few Republicans, want to
restrain the worst excesses of the lobbying business, they need to
address the root causes of government spending and unconstrained
expansionism. Something like Newt’s Contract With America might do the trick. It is time to
put a stake in the heart of Big Government Conservatism.
