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How Lobbying Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from house stuff Works
0:05
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Crickets. So weird. Yeah,
0:19
Speaker 1: we're doing this um ghost style. Yeah, So what happened
0:23
Speaker 1: was and I didn't you explain to me? But I
0:26
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe my mind was elsewhere and I didn't
0:28
Speaker 1: fully understand. But what happened is guest producer Noel got
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Speaker 1: the record, He put them mouse on the hamster wheel,
0:37
Speaker 1: got the computer running and left And now you're a
0:42
Speaker 1: little freaked out. Well, it's this is out of close
0:46
Speaker 1: to eight shows, this is literally the first time it's
0:48
Speaker 1: ever just been you and me in a room. Yeah,
0:50
Speaker 1: isn't that crazy? Yeah? It really is, isn't it. It's
0:54
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't know, I feel like there
0:56
Speaker 1: with no one in here, even though no one ever
0:59
Speaker 1: guides us that we should just I don't know that
1:01
Speaker 1: we're gonna cut up and curse. And it's like when
1:04
Speaker 1: the teacher has left the room, it feels like there's
1:06
Speaker 1: a vast field, a portal to another dimension to my
1:10
Speaker 1: right where Jerry usually said. So I had no idea
1:14
Speaker 1: what that extra silent human three ft from this meant
1:18
Speaker 1: I think now, this means that we've been put out
1:21
Speaker 1: to pastor Wow, this is disconcerting. Alright, I feel like
1:25
Speaker 1: you're gonna like knife me or something. I could right
1:28
Speaker 1: now and no one whatever now until we published the episode. Nope,
1:31
Speaker 1: no one would ever know. Wow. Man, that's gruesome. All right,
1:35
Speaker 1: this is just weird. Let's let's do it. Are you ready? Yeah?
1:38
Speaker 1: Good choice. By the way, Yeah, I don't remember what
1:40
Speaker 1: episode we picked this in. We were talking about something
1:43
Speaker 1: and lobbying came up, where like, we should just do
1:45
Speaker 1: one on lobbying. Well, here it is. Yeah, it's it's
1:48
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're doing this because we'll clear up some misconceptions. Uh,
1:52
Speaker 1: it's not always evil, just the time maybe more. Yeah,
1:57
Speaker 1: um yeah, I remember when we said we were going
1:59
Speaker 1: to do a lobbying one. We got a lot of
2:00
Speaker 1: emails from lobbyists who were like, please, please, please, don't
2:04
Speaker 1: just trash our profession like we ever would. Um, they're
2:09
Speaker 1: they were like, lobbyings, actually, it can be a really
2:11
Speaker 1: good thing, and sure, that's why. So we got a
2:12
Speaker 1: lot of feedback before this thing even came out, which
2:15
Speaker 1: hopefully will help us. Well, they're understandably a very defensive group. Yes,
2:20
Speaker 1: everyone thinks it's just rotten and corrupt across all channels,
2:28
Speaker 1: rotten to the core. Um. And the reason I and
2:33
Speaker 1: just about everyone else walking the planet thinks that lobbyists
2:37
Speaker 1: are rotten, it's because of some very high profile cases
2:41
Speaker 1: like remember Jack Abramoff, who can forget what a and
2:44
Speaker 1: I usually don't publicly trash people, but that guy was
2:48
Speaker 1: a pile of garbage. You know, there's really no I
2:51
Speaker 1: was trying to find some other way around it. It
2:53
Speaker 1: was like, no, he was awful and just ripped people off, unabashedly,
2:58
Speaker 1: ripped off Indian tribe, bribed officials, bribe people, pocketed money.
3:02
Speaker 1: And he was a highly highly successful, obvious people he
3:05
Speaker 1: was working for, he was He's not a good fellow, no,
3:09
Speaker 1: but again, he was a successful lobbyist. He was at
3:12
Speaker 1: the top of his field for many years actually, um.
3:17
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until two thousand and six when he
3:19
Speaker 1: was convicted of I believe, like bribery and corruption and
3:23
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, um,
3:27
Speaker 1: And I ended up serving three three years. I think
3:29
Speaker 1: he did three three years in the Pokey yeah, and
3:32
Speaker 1: supposedly had to pay a lot of restitution and tax fines. Yeah,
3:36
Speaker 1: but who knows how that stuff works out. No one
3:38
Speaker 1: ever follows up to see, you know, we just say, oh,
3:41
Speaker 1: he got a he's supposed to pay all these people back.
3:43
Speaker 1: Sure it happened. Yeah, who knows. He probably found a
3:46
Speaker 1: loophole to work on. He's probably working on a lawsuit
3:49
Speaker 1: against us right this moment. Chuck, Oh, can you not
3:52
Speaker 1: publicly call someone garbage? I think you can. Okay, can
3:57
Speaker 1: we find out? Can we read this opening statement from
4:00
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, Yeah, because I think it makes a
4:03
Speaker 1: pretty good point that Jack Abramoff wasn't the first despised lobbyist. No,
4:08
Speaker 1: this is written by Emily Edson Briggs, who was a
4:12
Speaker 1: Washington D c. Newspaper correspondent um at a time where
4:16
Speaker 1: there weren't a lot of women doing that, which is
4:18
Speaker 1: kind of cool. And I think she was the first
4:19
Speaker 1: allowed into the congressional press room. Yeah, they said let her,
4:23
Speaker 1: and she'll never say anything bad because we gave her
4:26
Speaker 1: this job, and she's like, he fell from my big
4:29
Speaker 1: cookies plan. So she wrote a column talk called the
4:33
Speaker 1: Dragons of the Lobby. So you probably know where this
4:35
Speaker 1: is headed. And the opening line of the column said,
4:38
Speaker 1: winding in and out through the long, devious basement passage,
4:41
Speaker 1: crawling through the corridors, trailing at slimy length from gallery
4:45
Speaker 1: to committee room. At last it lies stretched at full
4:49
Speaker 1: length on the floor of the Congress, this dazzling reptile,
4:52
Speaker 1: this huge scaly serpent of the lobby. That could have
4:56
Speaker 1: been our Halloween episode. You really could have. Maybe we
4:59
Speaker 1: should gus see that up increas with a little bit
5:01
Speaker 1: of sound effects. Yeah, that was in eighteen sixty nine. Yeah,
5:04
Speaker 1: not very flattering. Um. And it was actually I think
5:07
Speaker 1: it did come um at a time when lobbying and
5:10
Speaker 1: lobbyists were really getting a chokehold on um on Congress,
5:17
Speaker 1: on legislation, on sweetheart deals from the federal government. Um.
5:23
Speaker 1: But lobbying goes further back than that, and lobbyists have
5:26
Speaker 1: been despised even further back than that as a matter
5:30
Speaker 1: of fact. Yeah, and it's uh again, it's something this
5:33
Speaker 1: article makes. I thought, this is a really well written article. Actually, yeah,
5:36
Speaker 1: this was the day US article and he did a
5:39
Speaker 1: good job. Um. He points out that the knee drug
5:42
Speaker 1: reaction for your average person might be to say just
5:45
Speaker 1: make it all illegal, get rid of the lobby because
5:48
Speaker 1: it's awful. But he makes a good point that it
5:51
Speaker 1: is it is necessary. The First Amendment in our own
5:54
Speaker 1: Constitution says the right of the people to petition the
5:57
Speaker 1: government for a redress of grievances. Is that necessary and
6:01
Speaker 1: constitutional and mandatory. Yeah, and that's what lobbyists do, is Uh.
6:08
Speaker 1: It's not always a huge corporation. A lot of times
6:10
Speaker 1: they'll speak for the Girl Scouts or the Boy Scouts
6:13
Speaker 1: or you know, all kinds of special interest groups, and
6:16
Speaker 1: we all have them, so you me, everyone listening in
6:19
Speaker 1: America has a constitutional right to go and petition Congress
6:23
Speaker 1: to say, hey, guys, you guys aren't paying enough attention
6:26
Speaker 1: to government waste, or NASA deserves way more funding than
6:31
Speaker 1: you're giving it. Whatever, you can go do that. That's
6:34
Speaker 1: lobbying technically, but unfortunately, almost from the beginning, UH, corporate
6:40
Speaker 1: and big business special interest groups figured out a way
6:43
Speaker 1: to basically exploit that to their to their own benefit. Yeah,
6:47
Speaker 1: and it's uh. Ruz also points out, and we'll get
6:50
Speaker 1: to this later, uh, which is one of the big problems.
6:53
Speaker 1: It's necessary because Congress and their staff don't have time
6:57
Speaker 1: to Uh, that's well again, we'll get to that later.
7:01
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil it, but they don't have
7:03
Speaker 1: time to go through the myriad request and and uh information,
7:08
Speaker 1: deluge of information that's necessary to make an educated decision,
7:13
Speaker 1: and so much so that Senator John F. Kennedy in said,
7:18
Speaker 1: uh that we are in many cases expert technicians capable
7:23
Speaker 1: of exact not we are, I'm sorry. Lobbyists are in
7:28
Speaker 1: many cases, I'm sorry, are in many cases expert technicians
7:33
Speaker 1: capable of examining complex and difficult subjects and a clear,
7:36
Speaker 1: understandable fashion. So that's the reason we need them in
7:40
Speaker 1: many cases is to literally explain stuff too congress people
7:45
Speaker 1: and staff strapped for time and resources. It should be said, though,
7:49
Speaker 1: that um when Kennedy wrote that in the mid fifties,
7:53
Speaker 1: lobbying was not much of a thing. It had like
7:57
Speaker 1: it was established, had been established for a couple hundred years.
8:00
Speaker 1: People hated lobbyists. There were huge um lobbyists scandals in
8:04
Speaker 1: the Gilded Age from the Civil War to the nineteenth century.
8:07
Speaker 1: But in the mid fifties, lobbying was not a huge thing.
8:11
Speaker 1: It wasn't so um. What he said, though, is accurate
8:15
Speaker 1: and it's still is accurate today. If you are an
8:18
Speaker 1: incoming congress person, Um, you make your name both to
8:23
Speaker 1: your constituency and in your party by getting bills passed,
8:27
Speaker 1: by coming up with bills and passing them. Right, look
8:30
Speaker 1: at all the work I accomplished. And then if you
8:33
Speaker 1: um get enough, you may end up on a nice committee,
8:36
Speaker 1: maybe even a committee chair, and then eventually a party leader.
8:39
Speaker 1: And all that is because you introduced legislation that was
8:43
Speaker 1: favored and got passed. The thing is, you don't have
8:47
Speaker 1: the time or the staff to research and write legislation,
8:52
Speaker 1: so you have to you have to turn to lobbyists
8:55
Speaker 1: lobbying groups and say, hey, you guys are literally experts
9:00
Speaker 1: on this topic. I need your help, uh educate me,
9:04
Speaker 1: help me write this, and then um, we'll we'll be friends.
9:09
Speaker 1: The problem is is there's not a there's not a
9:11
Speaker 1: special interest group like you said, whether it's the Girl
9:13
Speaker 1: Scouts or whether it's uh the Chamber of Commerce that
9:19
Speaker 1: doesn't have a slamt that isn't going to try to
9:21
Speaker 1: slamp that legislation in their favor. So that means that
9:25
Speaker 1: the laws that are written in this country today are
9:28
Speaker 1: the legislative equivalents of avertorials, you know, kind of thin
9:33
Speaker 1: on actual content and really heavy on stuff that benefits
9:37
Speaker 1: the corporations running the show. You know, who would make
9:40
Speaker 1: good lobbyists? Who they're in this room right now? Oh
9:43
Speaker 1: you think so? I was just thinking, like generally unbiased
9:48
Speaker 1: research presented so someone can make a decision. Yeah, that's
9:52
Speaker 1: kind of what we do, except we're not paid like
9:54
Speaker 1: lobbyists just make a lot of dough. Uh. In fact,
9:59
Speaker 1: and to thousand fourteen lobbyists and these are people that
10:03
Speaker 1: are officially registered as lobbyists, which we'll get to. There
10:06
Speaker 1: are a lot more people doing lobby esque work that
10:10
Speaker 1: aren't officially registered, but official registered lobbyists. Uh, we're paid
10:14
Speaker 1: out to three point two four billion dollars in two
10:18
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, and that is only divided among how many people?
10:22
Speaker 1: Was it about ten thousand, six hundred people? What are
10:29
Speaker 1: you kidding? That's how many registered lobbyists there were and
10:33
Speaker 1: this year and that's but again just the registered one
10:37
Speaker 1: from a high of about fourteen and change. And when
10:40
Speaker 1: was that two thousand six or seven? And two two
10:44
Speaker 1: thousand seven changes came along, and it's not because there
10:46
Speaker 1: are fewer lobbyists there there that just gave rise to people,
10:49
Speaker 1: or gave people the ability to be like, oh, I'm
10:52
Speaker 1: not a lobbyists anymore. Because here's the thing. If you
10:54
Speaker 1: are a registered lobbyist, you are subject to some very
10:59
Speaker 1: strict i think old guidelines, legal guidelines, scrutiny of your
11:04
Speaker 1: business practices, and there's a lot of stuff you can't do.
11:07
Speaker 1: You just you're just completely outlawed from doing certain things.
11:12
Speaker 1: If if you can just skirt the definition of a lobbyist,
11:17
Speaker 1: it's like open season. Man, it's the wild West on
11:20
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill for you, and you can make as much
11:22
Speaker 1: money as you possibly can while doing the same things
11:25
Speaker 1: just not having to register as a lobbyist. All right,
11:28
Speaker 1: But that's a lot of teasing. This is the like.
11:30
Speaker 1: But this is the current state of the American legislative process.
11:34
Speaker 1: Our legislators rely on special interest groups almost entirely to
11:39
Speaker 1: tell them what they need to know from their slant
11:44
Speaker 1: and then actually writing the legislation for them to go
11:47
Speaker 1: take the Congress and be like, God, I got I'm
11:49
Speaker 1: gonna make my name with this. All right. There's one
11:52
Speaker 1: other thing too that we should say, and this is
11:54
Speaker 1: a this is one reason why lobbying is so pernicious. Um,
11:58
Speaker 1: lobbyists also as major fundraisers for the very politicians that
12:05
Speaker 1: they're lobbying. Yeah, Like, I didn't give them money. I
12:08
Speaker 1: just called a fundraiser that raised four and a half
12:11
Speaker 1: million dollars at you know, three thousand dollars a plate.
12:15
Speaker 1: But hey, they they gave him the money. Right, they
12:17
Speaker 1: don't know me anything. I'm just doing this because I'm
12:20
Speaker 1: a patriotic citizen of the United States and I'll see
12:23
Speaker 1: you Monday, and I like to overcharge for salmon. Yeah,
12:27
Speaker 1: isn't that crazy? So that's the current state, everybody. Let's
12:30
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning, because lobbyists have been around
12:33
Speaker 1: basically as long as America has. Yeah, let's take a
12:35
Speaker 1: little break and then we'll we'll get to the tease
12:38
Speaker 1: stuff and start off with a little bit of history. Yeah,
13:03
Speaker 1: all right. Uh, there's some misconceptions about the history of
13:06
Speaker 1: the word itself. Laure says that it was invented uh
13:10
Speaker 1: in the Willard Hotel in Washington, d C. In that
13:13
Speaker 1: lobby when uh Ulystas Grant would kick back and have
13:18
Speaker 1: a drink like he so like to do, uh and
13:22
Speaker 1: would get disgusted by what he called those damn lobbyists
13:26
Speaker 1: that we're hanging out there, Yeah, asking him for stuff. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Yeah.
13:31
Speaker 1: And while that may have, um, that may have given
13:34
Speaker 1: rise to the term popularity wise here, but you can
13:38
Speaker 1: trace it back to England, uh in the sixteen forties,
13:41
Speaker 1: when they talked about the lobby in the House of Commons,
13:44
Speaker 1: where you could go right up to your representatives and
13:46
Speaker 1: in your cute little wig and say, here's what I
13:49
Speaker 1: think you should do, right, and here's some here's some
13:53
Speaker 1: good old fashioned English pounds in your pocket. And I
13:56
Speaker 1: mean that's always just gone with it, part and parcel. Yeah,
14:00
Speaker 1: you know, if not outright bribery, at least favors or
14:03
Speaker 1: quid pro quo or tip for tad or it's the
14:07
Speaker 1: jackal and hide Beyonce tickets, all sorts of stuff. Yeah,
14:11
Speaker 1: first class or not first class. No one flies first class.
14:14
Speaker 1: Talking about the lear jet, the true first class, the
14:17
Speaker 1: private jet. Didn't they do away with first class? Announcesis
14:20
Speaker 1: called business class because of class resentment in the United States. Yeah,
14:24
Speaker 1: and now they've well depends on the airline. There's all
14:28
Speaker 1: sorts of new rules and special things. You can pay
14:31
Speaker 1: for alright. So uh, in the United States, from the
14:35
Speaker 1: very first session of Congress, there were lobbying efforts and
14:40
Speaker 1: people treating congress. Uh. I'm gonna say congressmen for this one,
14:45
Speaker 1: because this was in We're gonna say congress person for
14:49
Speaker 1: later on. The women were at home brewing beer in
14:52
Speaker 1: their households, but they were applying congressmen with treats and dinners.
14:57
Speaker 1: And that was a direct quote from Pennsylvania Senator William
15:01
Speaker 1: maclay from the very first session of Congress. He was saying, Yeah,
15:05
Speaker 1: they're lobbyists here. They're basically trying to bribe people. They're
15:09
Speaker 1: trying to install the terrifact of nine, which established um
15:13
Speaker 1: Congress's ability to basically extract duties and taxes on goods
15:19
Speaker 1: in the United States in order to support the government.
15:23
Speaker 1: Let's go out to dinner instead. And the New York
15:25
Speaker 1: merchants were like, you don't want to do that. Let
15:28
Speaker 1: me get you hammered three ways from Sunday. What are
15:31
Speaker 1: you doing later? Yeah, I'll tell you what you're doing.
15:33
Speaker 1: You're gonna finish. It. Can't get wrong in one sitting. Uh.
15:37
Speaker 1: Then apparently the Bank of the United States was one
15:40
Speaker 1: of the first big corrupt organizations as far as literally
15:45
Speaker 1: having politicians in their pocket paying the money. Yeah, like, um,
15:50
Speaker 1: the United States used to have things like like an
15:52
Speaker 1: actual centralized bank. And Andrew Jackson came along. It's like,
15:56
Speaker 1: this thing is just way too corrupt. We need to
15:59
Speaker 1: get it of it and put me on your money. Yeah,
16:01
Speaker 1: but the the scandals associated with it where things like, um,
16:06
Speaker 1: the National Bank had on its board as board members
16:10
Speaker 1: who are being paid by the bank, sitting congressman who
16:14
Speaker 1: were writing legislation in favor of the bank. Yeah, this
16:19
Speaker 1: quote is the best. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster sent a
16:24
Speaker 1: letter to the Bank of the United States that said this,
16:27
Speaker 1: among other things. Since I arrived here, I have had
16:31
Speaker 1: an application to be concerned professionally against the bank, which
16:35
Speaker 1: I've declined. Of course, although I believe my retainer has
16:38
Speaker 1: not been renewed or refreshed as usual. Uh, if it
16:41
Speaker 1: be wished that my relation to the bank should be continued,
16:45
Speaker 1: it may be well to send me the usual retainer.
16:48
Speaker 1: In other words, I've noticed that you're not paying me.
16:51
Speaker 1: Now people are telling me to write legislation against you.
16:54
Speaker 1: I'm turning them down for now. You may want to
16:57
Speaker 1: send that money again if you would like this, love Daniel. Yeah,
17:00
Speaker 1: like he flat out said, the bribes have sort of
17:04
Speaker 1: dried up. I've noticed, so why don't you start sending
17:07
Speaker 1: this again? Unbelievable history. So you talked about the Gilded
17:13
Speaker 1: Age post Civil War, it's all the close of the
17:16
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. We like to think that America's railroads were
17:20
Speaker 1: built on grit and determination, but in fact it was
17:24
Speaker 1: rife with insider deals and uh scandal, what was it
17:28
Speaker 1: called the credit mobil your scandal? Yeah, I looked into
17:31
Speaker 1: this a little bit. It's mind boggling. Basically, Um, Union
17:36
Speaker 1: Pacific bogging. How overt it was, Yeah, you know. But
17:40
Speaker 1: but even just like, it was not just crooked in
17:42
Speaker 1: one way. It was crooked in a number of ways
17:45
Speaker 1: that formed one big, huge, crooked thing that Congress was
17:48
Speaker 1: involved in. The Union Pacific Railroad started a company that
17:53
Speaker 1: served as the soul agent of building and managing the
17:58
Speaker 1: Union Pacific Railroad. Okay, um, And then they issued stock
18:03
Speaker 1: in this stuff, and they used the Credit Mobile Mobilier
18:08
Speaker 1: and um, Union Pacific itself to basically over charge and
18:14
Speaker 1: overpay one another so that the value of the stock
18:19
Speaker 1: went through the roof Okay, so it's a stock massaging
18:22
Speaker 1: scheme to begin with, like an insider deal with yourself
18:26
Speaker 1: to raise the value artificially of your stock. Right. And
18:30
Speaker 1: then they took these these shares in this company and
18:34
Speaker 1: started handing them out to Congress at a discounted price.
18:37
Speaker 1: It's all Congress did it was go sell them on
18:39
Speaker 1: the market for their face value, which was again artificially inflated,
18:43
Speaker 1: and they made a bunch of cash. And they were
18:45
Speaker 1: taking these as bribes for giving like um land grants
18:49
Speaker 1: or breaking treaties with Native Americans so that the Union
18:52
Speaker 1: Pacific Railroad could build their railroad across the Western States. Yeah,
18:56
Speaker 1: and this was they did this because, believe it or not,
18:59
Speaker 1: at the time, there wasn't a lot of private investors
19:02
Speaker 1: ponying up money for this railroad because it was sort
19:05
Speaker 1: of a new thing. And yeah, they didn't know although
19:08
Speaker 1: it was a great idea, they didn't know. Like all investors,
19:11
Speaker 1: what they care about is getting their money back in
19:13
Speaker 1: quick fashion, and they just didn't know if that was
19:16
Speaker 1: going to be possible. And I mean, there's definitely something
19:19
Speaker 1: to be said for the federal government to step in
19:21
Speaker 1: and be like, look, we think that this is really
19:23
Speaker 1: going to help things out. We really want to fund it,
19:26
Speaker 1: But does it have to be totally fought with corruption
19:29
Speaker 1: while that happens, you know, no is the answer. Not yet. Uh.
19:34
Speaker 1: And then there was the famous Gilded Age lobby is
19:36
Speaker 1: Sam Ward, who um, he basically invented the social lobby.
19:41
Speaker 1: So while he wouldn't we'll get into direct lobby versus
19:44
Speaker 1: social lobby, but social lobby is basically in Sam Ward's case,
19:48
Speaker 1: he was a great chef, and he was like, I'm
19:50
Speaker 1: gonna throw these great parties. I'm gonna have great food
19:53
Speaker 1: and fine wine. I'm gonna invite uh, special interest groups
19:57
Speaker 1: and corporation heads and politicians and get him in the
20:00
Speaker 1: same room. But we're not going to talk about that
20:02
Speaker 1: stuff directly. We're just all gonna get hammered together and
20:05
Speaker 1: have a great time, become friends. That was that was
20:07
Speaker 1: his job, friends do things for one another. Right. Yeah, Well,
20:11
Speaker 1: I don't think we ever even said what K Street was.
20:13
Speaker 1: By the way, K Street is literally K the letter
20:16
Speaker 1: K Street where all just about every lobby in the
20:19
Speaker 1: country has an office. So that explains that if people
20:23
Speaker 1: are other ones, Yeah, you're right, but it's like saying, um,
20:26
Speaker 1: Madison Avenue when you refer to advertising or Wall Street. Yeah. Um,
20:31
Speaker 1: so lobbying just kind of after the guilded, Asia America
20:34
Speaker 1: was sick to death of lobbying and lobbyists and didn't
20:37
Speaker 1: want to have anything to do with it. Um. So
20:39
Speaker 1: lobbying went. Didn't go away, but it fell to the
20:42
Speaker 1: wayside a little bit. It was still a thing, um
20:45
Speaker 1: throughout the twentieth century, it just kind of waxed. And
20:48
Speaker 1: Wayne in the mid forties, I believe Congress was like,
20:52
Speaker 1: we actually kind of need these guys, so let's set
20:54
Speaker 1: up some rules for dealing with them. Um. Because at
20:57
Speaker 1: this time already what John Kennedy was writing about was true.
21:01
Speaker 1: You had a brain drain going on from Capitol Hill
21:04
Speaker 1: to K Street where people would go and um, become
21:09
Speaker 1: an aid to a senator or a congress person and
21:13
Speaker 1: make contacts, get a little bit of experience, and then
21:17
Speaker 1: after a couple of years they would move on over
21:20
Speaker 1: to K Street to a lobbying firm, make anywhere between
21:24
Speaker 1: five to ten times what they were as the congressional aid.
21:28
Speaker 1: And um, K Street was sucking the talent away from Congress.
21:33
Speaker 1: And so these congress people in the forties said, hey, um,
21:37
Speaker 1: we need to work with these people because we need them,
21:40
Speaker 1: so let's make up some rules. Even still, lobbying was
21:43
Speaker 1: nothing like you would recognize it today. It wasn't until
21:46
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties when business did an about face
21:50
Speaker 1: of dealing with the government. Up to that point, it
21:52
Speaker 1: was like, government, stay, just stay out of our business.
21:56
Speaker 1: That's the lobbying we want to do, is to keep
21:58
Speaker 1: you off of our backs, keep you from regulating our stuff,
22:01
Speaker 1: to stay out of our business. And then at some point,
22:04
Speaker 1: and I'm not exactly sure who figured this out, but
22:07
Speaker 1: some lobbyists convinced corporations like, hey, guys, you're doing this
22:11
Speaker 1: all wrong. You guys could get mind boggling amounts of
22:15
Speaker 1: money from the government in the form of subsidies or
22:18
Speaker 1: great contracts or sweetheart deals just by using our services
22:23
Speaker 1: and lobbying exploded and would just take comparatively a tiny
22:28
Speaker 1: bit of that. Right, even though it's a ton of
22:30
Speaker 1: money for individual lobbyists, it's nothing to these corporations, right exactly.
22:34
Speaker 1: And I yeah, like the the Dave Ruse gave a
22:36
Speaker 1: really great example of um Northrop Gumman Grumman in uh
22:41
Speaker 1: in two thousand and twelve or something like that, I
22:43
Speaker 1: believe under Mifflin. Yeah, they spent a hundred and seventies
22:47
Speaker 1: six million dollars from from in fourteen years from twelve,
22:53
Speaker 1: which that's nothing to them because in that time, in
22:56
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve itself, Northrop Grumman got a hundreds
23:00
Speaker 1: have any six million dollar or or no, a hundred
23:02
Speaker 1: and eighty nine million dollar contract for a cybersecurity system
23:06
Speaker 1: for the d O D. So that that one contract
23:08
Speaker 1: paid for fourteen years of lobbying expenses, right, Yeah, and
23:11
Speaker 1: then they got a one point seven billion dollar contract
23:15
Speaker 1: to build five drones and that's just Northrop Growman. Like,
23:20
Speaker 1: you can't really pick on them. The reason why we
23:22
Speaker 1: we called them out is because during twelve they were
23:26
Speaker 1: the ninth biggest spender on lobbying, not just corporations but
23:30
Speaker 1: industry as well. UM. General Electric was the the single
23:36
Speaker 1: entity that spent the most. Yeah this um as far
23:38
Speaker 1: as the corporation goes. Uh, there's a great website if
23:41
Speaker 1: you want just good information and stats called open secrets
23:45
Speaker 1: dot org. And this past year two thou fourteen, the
23:50
Speaker 1: top ten spenders were the US Chamber of Commerce, which
23:53
Speaker 1: is always number one by a long shot because they
23:56
Speaker 1: represent a lot of businesses. The nash On Association of
24:00
Speaker 1: Realtors was number two, Blue Cross Blue Shield was number three.
24:05
Speaker 1: American Hospital Association for American Medical Association five. Seeing a
24:10
Speaker 1: trend here, I wonder why National Association of Broadcasters, National
24:15
Speaker 1: Cable and telecom Comcast Again, it's you can literally look
24:19
Speaker 1: at the years where there's the most spending and what's
24:22
Speaker 1: going on in those industries. Uh, and then Google and
24:25
Speaker 1: Boeing round out the top ten at just a sixteen
24:29
Speaker 1: million each. And so and I mean, like the amount
24:33
Speaker 1: of money spent has um I believe tripled in the
24:37
Speaker 1: last few years, right, yeah, I think so so so
24:42
Speaker 1: this is fairly new, but but it's not new. It's
24:45
Speaker 1: basically a return to the lobbying of the Gilded Age.
24:48
Speaker 1: The amount of money, attention time, questionable stuff that's been
24:52
Speaker 1: going on is just a replay of what happened a
24:55
Speaker 1: hundred something years ago, right, um. And one of the
24:59
Speaker 1: reasons that we've we've it's become so rampant, it's been
25:03
Speaker 1: ratcheted up so much you can actually lay it at
25:06
Speaker 1: the feet of New Gingrich. So New Gingridge. Chuckers was
25:10
Speaker 1: speaker of the House in the nineties when Clinton was president,
25:13
Speaker 1: if you'll remember, and he decided that Congress was doing
25:17
Speaker 1: too much. Oh yeah, so he cut staffs, which means
25:22
Speaker 1: that lawmakers um that that were able to they did
25:27
Speaker 1: have enough of his staff or enough resources to write
25:29
Speaker 1: their own legislation could definitely could not any longer. He
25:33
Speaker 1: also cut staff at some resources that are dedicated to
25:37
Speaker 1: providing research for Congress, like the Congressional Budget Office, the
25:41
Speaker 1: Congressional Research Service. All of these things um that have
25:44
Speaker 1: been built up in response to dealing with lobbyists from
25:48
Speaker 1: like the forties on were cut by Gingrich, and all
25:52
Speaker 1: of a sudden, our our lawmakers are relying strictly on
25:57
Speaker 1: lobbyists for money. Yeah, and that's there's a correlation. I know, people,
26:01
Speaker 1: you know, you hear about government spending. Let's cut government spending,
26:04
Speaker 1: which in theory sounds great. Sure, let's cut government spending.
26:08
Speaker 1: But what that means is now you don't have staff
26:11
Speaker 1: to do unbiased research and get the facts, like you said,
26:15
Speaker 1: You've got lobbyists to do that, right exactly. And the
26:18
Speaker 1: idea behind that tactic by Gingrich, if if it was
26:22
Speaker 1: just based on I'm cutting government spending by cutting jobs
26:26
Speaker 1: or I think government is doing too much. There's actually
26:28
Speaker 1: a misstep because another UM senator from Oklahoma, his name
26:33
Speaker 1: escapes me right now, he had the Congressional Budget Office
26:38
Speaker 1: do an annual report starting in two thousand eleven, and
26:41
Speaker 1: they found that the Congressional Budget Office found that for
26:45
Speaker 1: every dollar spent on the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional
26:49
Speaker 1: Budget Office managed to come up with ninety dollars of
26:52
Speaker 1: recommended cuts to government waste. So for every dollar you spent,
26:57
Speaker 1: you made you saved eighty nine dollars just from the
26:59
Speaker 1: congres Sational Budget Office. So cutting their staff is the
27:02
Speaker 1: opposite of what you want to do here against like bloated,
27:05
Speaker 1: wasteful government. It's pretty interesting on its specifically as interesting
27:10
Speaker 1: as far as new Gingridge goes to because him cutting
27:14
Speaker 1: Congress's ability to not rely on lobbyists really left a
27:19
Speaker 1: sour taste in a lot of people's mouths during the
27:21
Speaker 1: two twelve primaries because he was like, he refused to
27:25
Speaker 1: admit that he was a lobbyist. Well yeah, and he's
27:28
Speaker 1: he's not registered as a lobbyist. What he has is, ah, well,
27:32
Speaker 1: one of the things he does, he has a health
27:33
Speaker 1: care consulting firm where you can pay two hundred thousand
27:37
Speaker 1: dollars to become a member quote unquote, which you're not
27:40
Speaker 1: a client, you're a member. It's a membership group. So
27:44
Speaker 1: it's and he's not the only one. I mean, I
27:46
Speaker 1: think they have in here that they call it the
27:48
Speaker 1: revolving door. Basically, when you leave your position as a
27:52
Speaker 1: congress person or a senator, you go directly to the lobby. Uh.
27:56
Speaker 1: The New York Times says they're more than four hundred
27:58
Speaker 1: former legislators who worked as lobbyists in the past decade.
28:02
Speaker 1: It's just like, let me go make some real money now.
28:06
Speaker 1: And that's just legislators either like them. There was very
28:08
Speaker 1: famously a guy who was running the the Pentagon, I
28:13
Speaker 1: believe ed Aldridge, and he was a longtime critic of Boeing,
28:17
Speaker 1: and then Bowing hired him, and on his way out
28:19
Speaker 1: he approved a three billion dollar contract to Boeing. That's
28:22
Speaker 1: the revolving door at work. There was a Massachusetts representative
28:26
Speaker 1: named William Dela Hunt and um, he took a job
28:30
Speaker 1: lobbying for a wind project that he had just earmarked
28:34
Speaker 1: a bunch of money for right before he left. Yeah,
28:36
Speaker 1: so I mean this revolving door. People say like, well,
28:39
Speaker 1: let's just shut the revolving door, and it is a
28:41
Speaker 1: it's a proposal. But at the same time, if you
28:45
Speaker 1: do that, then then your anti job and you can't
28:48
Speaker 1: you can't even appear anti job. So there's other solutions
28:51
Speaker 1: that I think are better for dealing with the lobby
28:54
Speaker 1: and crisis. I guess you could call it. Yeah, and
28:57
Speaker 1: uh well we'll get to that later. That great article
29:00
Speaker 1: sent um. You know what show actually does a really
29:02
Speaker 1: great job realistically with this is Veep. I haven't seen
29:06
Speaker 1: a second of that. It's fantastic, man, I mean it
29:09
Speaker 1: really shows you, like for Best Actress, yeah she won,
29:12
Speaker 1: and Veep one. And I think the writing team one.
29:15
Speaker 1: I think it's the best written show on TV right now.
29:17
Speaker 1: But or the best written comedy. Oh have you seen
29:20
Speaker 1: Narcos yet? No? You canna check that out. Okay, but
29:25
Speaker 1: VP is really even though it's a comedy, really like
29:27
Speaker 1: shows that everything in d C is just about deals
29:31
Speaker 1: being made, like, well, you do this for me and
29:34
Speaker 1: I'll give you support on this bill and they're pulling
29:36
Speaker 1: that bill And what did that lobby say? Because they
29:38
Speaker 1: were my friend and it's all it's all just it's
29:41
Speaker 1: such an insider's game. It's staggering. And and that's a
29:45
Speaker 1: comedy written by uh, English people, which is, yeah, the
29:50
Speaker 1: producers got there and they're all like from from England,
29:54
Speaker 1: and that's I don't know, for some reason, that's so interesting.
29:58
Speaker 1: And they even in their Emmy speech said, you know,
30:00
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny to be able to make fun
30:02
Speaker 1: of the American political system being English folks. But thank
30:05
Speaker 1: you for this sword for that. Uh. All right, so
30:08
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about we keep saying registered lobbyists.
30:12
Speaker 1: Since eighteen seventy six, Congress is required that all professional
30:16
Speaker 1: lobbyist register with the Office of the Clerk of the House,
30:20
Speaker 1: and uh since nineteen with the Lobbying Disclosure Act. In
30:25
Speaker 1: two thousand seven Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of
30:28
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, UH, they narrowly defined a lobbyist as
30:33
Speaker 1: someone who has one paid by client to services include
30:38
Speaker 1: more than one lobbying contact, and three whose lobbying activities
30:42
Speaker 1: constitute or more of their time on behalf of that
30:45
Speaker 1: client during any three month period. So that's actually it
30:49
Speaker 1: seems broad. That's actually you're really narrow definition of a lobbyist. Yeah,
30:53
Speaker 1: and it's so narrow as it turns out that it's
30:56
Speaker 1: really easy to skirt those rules and not register because
31:00
Speaker 1: there are many ways you can say you can really
31:03
Speaker 1: budget your time and say no, I worked twenty point
31:06
Speaker 1: nine percent in this three month period for this firm,
31:10
Speaker 1: or I have so many people I work for, I
31:13
Speaker 1: only spent about ten fifteent of my time, right. Or
31:15
Speaker 1: if you're like on any one group right, Or if
31:18
Speaker 1: you're like new g Rich, you're you're not working for
31:20
Speaker 1: a client, says client. I got members, so I'm doing
31:23
Speaker 1: all this, but it's for members, not clients. Or if
31:26
Speaker 1: it's educational, it's not called lobbying. So hey, let me
31:30
Speaker 1: just hire this former senator, pay him a lot of
31:33
Speaker 1: money to go around and give speeches on education that
31:37
Speaker 1: are really trying to generate interest in legislation, or to
31:41
Speaker 1: educate the government on why um the thirty seven and
31:45
Speaker 1: a half billion dollars in fossil fuel subsidies that shelled
31:48
Speaker 1: out in two thousand fourteen is a good thing to
31:50
Speaker 1: redo and then double. But that's just education, that's not lobbying.
31:54
Speaker 1: So those are just some of the ways you can
31:56
Speaker 1: skirt officially registering as a lobbyist. And actually, chuck, so
32:00
Speaker 1: you said that that was from the two thousand seven Act. Total,
32:03
Speaker 1: it was two thousand seven rights. And in two thousand
32:07
Speaker 1: seven when they added I guess they added that third
32:10
Speaker 1: one about the tent the time measure, like three thousand
32:15
Speaker 1: lobbyists de registered loophole. Oh, really, all I have to
32:21
Speaker 1: do is account for my time in this way, and
32:23
Speaker 1: now all the rules don't apply to me. And so
32:26
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, um, the American Bar Association said,
32:30
Speaker 1: if you just just get rid of that third one,
32:33
Speaker 1: the time thing, that would help a lot. And actually,
32:36
Speaker 1: when Congress first started to deal with um, lobbying, uh, well,
32:40
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say first, because it was the nineteenth century,
32:42
Speaker 1: but in ninety five or six, when they passed an
32:46
Speaker 1: act about lobbying rules, Um, they said that a lobbyist
32:52
Speaker 1: someone who had to register it as a lobbyist was
32:55
Speaker 1: anyone who aids in the passage or defeat of legislation.
32:58
Speaker 1: That's it. So, I mean, I'm sure there's loopholes in
33:01
Speaker 1: there and ways around that too, but it was much
33:04
Speaker 1: much more vague, which in the fact would sound it's counterintuitive,
33:07
Speaker 1: but that's actually better to be more vague in the
33:10
Speaker 1: description because you can't skirt it is easy. So let's
33:13
Speaker 1: let's take a break and then we'll talk about all
33:15
Speaker 1: of the stuff that lobbyists do, including some good stuff too.
33:40
Speaker 1: All right, Uh, lobbyists who are lobbyists? What do they do?
33:44
Speaker 1: They are full time Uh, as they puts it, full
33:48
Speaker 1: time advocates for their clients. Yeah, that's a good way
33:51
Speaker 1: to put it. There's no job description you're gonna get.
33:54
Speaker 1: But you better be a people person. You better have
33:56
Speaker 1: great you better have a stuffed rollodex. You better. You
34:00
Speaker 1: better be good at networking, be super good at networking. Uh,
34:03
Speaker 1: smooth talker, Yeah, you should throw a good party, be
34:06
Speaker 1: good at fundraising. Yeah. Um, and like we said, you
34:10
Speaker 1: got to know a lot of good people. You've gotta
34:12
Speaker 1: be a great communicator and persuasive. One might say slick, slick.
34:18
Speaker 1: I think it is probably right. But um, that and
34:21
Speaker 1: that I imagine that those are good qualities that haven't
34:23
Speaker 1: just about any But I also have the impression that
34:25
Speaker 1: there are lobbyists who are just like just strictly grinding
34:30
Speaker 1: out research and stuff like that. Yeah. I think there's
34:32
Speaker 1: different types of lobbyists. Some are probably like there's the
34:35
Speaker 1: glad handers, yeah, like the front person maybe, and then
34:37
Speaker 1: there's like walks people who are literally like technical policy
34:41
Speaker 1: experts on a certain topic. They know the ins and outs,
34:44
Speaker 1: they know both sides of it, they know what senators
34:47
Speaker 1: care about it, um, they know what congress people could
34:50
Speaker 1: be persuaded maybe, like they know everything about this particular issue. Yeah,
34:55
Speaker 1: and like up to the minute. Uh, they have to
34:58
Speaker 1: be really up on the very very latest policies and laws.
35:03
Speaker 1: I mean they have to be experts, like you said,
35:06
Speaker 1: like inside and out because they get paid a ton
35:09
Speaker 1: of money to do that. And there's typically three kinds
35:13
Speaker 1: of lobbying that people undertake. Again, whether it's the Girls
35:16
Speaker 1: Scouts or Green Peace or um, the Chamber of Commerce
35:20
Speaker 1: or whoever. Um, there's direct lobbying, indirect lobbying, and the
35:25
Speaker 1: grassroots lobbying. And they probably any lobbying group takes part
35:29
Speaker 1: in all a combination of all these. Yeah. Direct lobbying
35:32
Speaker 1: is when you're when you can get a meeting with
35:34
Speaker 1: the congress person or senator or their aids. Yeah, and
35:36
Speaker 1: you sit down with their staff for them and say, uh,
35:41
Speaker 1: I'm experienced clearly because I'm in the room with you.
35:43
Speaker 1: And here's here's what we think is a good piece
35:47
Speaker 1: of legislation. Right, it's good for the country. Wink wink. Yeah.
35:51
Speaker 1: So that's direct lobbying. Uh, indirect is if you, um, well,
35:55
Speaker 1: what's the difference between indirect and social? Aren't they kind
35:57
Speaker 1: of the same. Yeah, it's the same. Right. So that's
36:00
Speaker 1: like we said, the Sam Ward which would throw parties
36:04
Speaker 1: the king of lobby. Yeah, he invented the social lobbying
36:08
Speaker 1: and that's still true today. You though a big swanky
36:12
Speaker 1: d C cocktail hour and get people in the same
36:15
Speaker 1: room and just connecting folks, that's indirect lobby and goosen
36:18
Speaker 1: them up with a little uh scotch maybe, and all
36:22
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're like you just sit back and
36:24
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, this is working. Look at them talking
36:27
Speaker 1: to each other. I love myself. And then there's grassroots lobbying,
36:30
Speaker 1: which is kind of misleading actually because it can be
36:33
Speaker 1: employed by uh deep deeply entrenched, deep pocketed interests. But
36:40
Speaker 1: you know, it still appears grassroots and folksy things like
36:44
Speaker 1: UM paying somebody who's an expert in a field or
36:48
Speaker 1: UM a recognized figure, maybe a former UM congress person
36:53
Speaker 1: or whatever to write an op ed. Yeah, And I
36:56
Speaker 1: mean name recognition counts for just about anything, so even
37:00
Speaker 1: op eds. And if if somebody's saying, if a former
37:04
Speaker 1: Treasury secretary is like, this is a really bad idea,
37:07
Speaker 1: we shouldn't pass this legislation, that's going to inform voters minds. Yeah,
37:13
Speaker 1: I think it also is a huge message to the
37:17
Speaker 1: legislators who are also reading it that like Washington Post
37:20
Speaker 1: published this, so a lot of people just read you
37:23
Speaker 1: may want to listen to what I just said. Yeah.
37:25
Speaker 1: Or grassroots in the purest sense of the word, in
37:28
Speaker 1: the more traditional sense is uh could be a small
37:31
Speaker 1: little ngo that's all they can afford his grassroots campaigns
37:35
Speaker 1: and uh, sadly it's it's uh. The dog that barks
37:40
Speaker 1: the loudest is the one that's going to get the
37:41
Speaker 1: most attention. And you're barking the loudest if you have
37:44
Speaker 1: the resources, too, I guess, get a bunch of dogs
37:48
Speaker 1: barking at once. Which is a really good point, Chuck,
37:50
Speaker 1: because and this this article goes to great pains to
37:54
Speaker 1: make it clear that you know, not all lobbying is bad,
37:59
Speaker 1: that lobbying in and of itself isn't necessarily bad um,
38:02
Speaker 1: and that there are plenty of public interest groups that
38:07
Speaker 1: are dedicated to serving the common good that engage in lobbying.
38:12
Speaker 1: So it shouldn't be outlawed, it shouldn't be cut off.
38:14
Speaker 1: We should figure out how to fix it. Um. The
38:17
Speaker 1: thing is is they found that for every dollar that
38:20
Speaker 1: a union and public interest group combined spents, corporations or
38:27
Speaker 1: big business spent thirty four dollars of the top one
38:32
Speaker 1: spenders were all corporate or corporate interests. Um. So it's
38:37
Speaker 1: the field is very much skewed towards whoever has the
38:39
Speaker 1: most money or whoever is willing to spend the most. Uh.
38:43
Speaker 1: So to be two registers a lobbyists, which was required,
38:47
Speaker 1: like I said, since eighteen seventy six, and then a
38:49
Speaker 1: few years after that they required that members of the
38:52
Speaker 1: press register because with the House and Senate because they
38:56
Speaker 1: were had lobbyists posing as journalists, so they had to
39:00
Speaker 1: take care of that pretty early on. But if you
39:02
Speaker 1: are registered, uh, there are some things that you have
39:05
Speaker 1: to do according to the law. Um. Well, first of all,
39:10
Speaker 1: you can't give gifts blatantly give gifts. Yeah, that's one
39:13
Speaker 1: of the things that Abram often trouble all sorts of
39:15
Speaker 1: ways around this, of course, but you can't blatantly give gifts.
39:18
Speaker 1: You have to register. You have to file quarterly reports
39:22
Speaker 1: that detail the contacts you've made with elected officials. You
39:26
Speaker 1: have to disclose how much money you were paid. Uh.
39:29
Speaker 1: You have to file semi annual reports at list contributions
39:33
Speaker 1: UH made to political campaigns. See that. I have a
39:37
Speaker 1: question about that, because from what I understand, if in
39:39
Speaker 1: on the federal level, if you're a registered lobbyists, you
39:42
Speaker 1: cannot contribute to a political campaign. Yeah. Maybe it's has
39:46
Speaker 1: to do with like these three thousand dollar plate dinners
39:49
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. Yeah, I wasn't sure about
39:52
Speaker 1: that either. Actually, but you mentioned the American Bar Association.
39:55
Speaker 1: They a lot of attorneys are lobbyists, um off and
40:02
Speaker 1: on during their career. My uncle was actually a lobbyist,
40:04
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, Congressman, my congressman uncle. Really he
40:09
Speaker 1: went through the revolving door. Huh. Yeah. I don't know
40:12
Speaker 1: much about it, but um oh man, you gotta ask him.
40:15
Speaker 1: Yeah I should, And I will say this, even though
40:18
Speaker 1: we were not on the same side of the political spectrum,
40:20
Speaker 1: which I won't even say, who's who. He's a Democrat. Huh.
40:24
Speaker 1: But he's a good dude and an honest person. So
40:29
Speaker 1: even though we don't agree on things, I always felt
40:32
Speaker 1: like he, you know, he's not taking kickbacks. He's not
40:35
Speaker 1: one of those guys. And I really believe that he's
40:38
Speaker 1: a man pure of heart and so so in no
40:41
Speaker 1: way disparaging your uncle for going through the revolving door.
40:44
Speaker 1: One of the problems with that revolving door is not
40:46
Speaker 1: just that it causes this brain drain from UM Capitol
40:50
Speaker 1: Hill to the lobbying companies or the law law firms,
40:54
Speaker 1: but um, it also makes Congress not really interested in
40:59
Speaker 1: passing any kind of lobbying reform or revolving door reform
41:03
Speaker 1: because pretty soon their term is going to be up
41:05
Speaker 1: and they can go get that job. Exactly. Yeah, because
41:07
Speaker 1: you don't as a public servant, I mean, you don't
41:10
Speaker 1: make a lot of money. No, you don't, and especially
41:13
Speaker 1: well we'll get to this in a second, but finishing
41:15
Speaker 1: on the A B A UM. The American Bar Association
41:19
Speaker 1: has a real interest in trying to keep lobbying as
41:23
Speaker 1: above board as possible because a lot of them want
41:25
Speaker 1: to be lobbyist and they don't want to be tarnished
41:27
Speaker 1: and so, like you said earlier, they think the biggest
41:31
Speaker 1: thing you can do is to separate and have really
41:35
Speaker 1: strict lines drawn between fundraising and lobbying. They think that's
41:39
Speaker 1: where it's the most corrupt. So get rid of the time,
41:43
Speaker 1: the time requirement of your time to be a registered
41:47
Speaker 1: lobbyist and just separate fundraising from from um lobbying. Yeah,
41:54
Speaker 1: I get the idea that that's where most of the
41:56
Speaker 1: hinky stuff is going on. So the thing is like
41:59
Speaker 1: that makes sense, but it's also kind of like trying
42:01
Speaker 1: to remove a hornet's nest by picking the hornets out
42:04
Speaker 1: one by one. Not the best idea, um, and need
42:08
Speaker 1: to smash it and set it on fire pretty much
42:11
Speaker 1: and then p on the ashes. Actually, I believe you
42:13
Speaker 1: should leave a hornet's nest. You should never destroy hornet's nest.
42:16
Speaker 1: So uh, I know, apex predators and all um. So
42:21
Speaker 1: the the the other idea to just shut the revolving
42:26
Speaker 1: door or to just outlaw a lobbying all together. Again,
42:30
Speaker 1: not only is that a bad idea, especially if you
42:32
Speaker 1: just did it wholesale out of the gate. You can't
42:35
Speaker 1: do that, but it's also unconstitutional, right, So we read
42:39
Speaker 1: this really great article um Man that was good in
42:41
Speaker 1: Washington Monthly. So who wrote this thing lead Drootman or Drutman,
42:46
Speaker 1: probably Drutman and Steven tell Us. They wrote it in
42:49
Speaker 1: Washington Monthly. Is called a New Agenda for Political Reform.
42:52
Speaker 1: It was a great article, lengthy, but it just and
42:56
Speaker 1: it's made a really good sense to me. Yeah, and
42:58
Speaker 1: it's not too wonky. But I mean, these guys clearly
43:01
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about people, the long and short
43:04
Speaker 1: of it, and what they think is the problem is
43:06
Speaker 1: what we touched on earlier, which is staffing of congressional
43:12
Speaker 1: offices has been cut and slash so much and there
43:15
Speaker 1: are so much more information now to ingest than there
43:19
Speaker 1: used to be. They just can't do it. There are
43:21
Speaker 1: not the resources to do it, so that we have
43:23
Speaker 1: no choice but to turn to lobbyists to act as
43:25
Speaker 1: the experts and to write legislation. So they propose and
43:30
Speaker 1: we have some stats in here actually that I thought
43:33
Speaker 1: were pretty striking. In the eighties, around nineteen eight is
43:37
Speaker 1: when they started cutting everything. The Government Accountability Office and
43:42
Speaker 1: the Congressional Research Services. What they do is they provide
43:45
Speaker 1: nonpartisan policy and program analysis to lawmakers. Right there are
43:51
Speaker 1: fewer now than in nineteen seventy nine. And those are
43:54
Speaker 1: the very experts that were dedicated to serving Congress in
43:58
Speaker 1: a nonpartisan way so that they had all the information
44:01
Speaker 1: they needed to create legislation to actually make the government
44:05
Speaker 1: operate fewer than the nineteen seventies. Yeah, so gone gone.
44:10
Speaker 1: Starting in the eighties and then again uh in the
44:13
Speaker 1: mid nineties, Gingrich cut congressional staff. Yeah. And while this
44:17
Speaker 1: is going on, it's a two way street. Lobbying is
44:19
Speaker 1: increasing by it's staggering how much lobbying has increased in
44:24
Speaker 1: money and just human power. And then one of the
44:28
Speaker 1: things about lobbying is that lobbying begets lobbying. The more
44:32
Speaker 1: a lobbyist can get legislation pushed through, the larger the
44:36
Speaker 1: federal register grows, the less ability any given congress person
44:41
Speaker 1: has to read and ingest and understand federal law. So
44:46
Speaker 1: the more they need lobbyists who do understand it. Yeah.
44:49
Speaker 1: And so what you get is what we talked about
44:51
Speaker 1: the revolving door. Well, actually that's politicians themselves going to lobby. Well,
44:57
Speaker 1: but there's a brain drink because their aids are being
44:59
Speaker 1: sucked away K Street as well. There's another cycle where
45:03
Speaker 1: there's no incentive to be a congressional staffer for very
45:06
Speaker 1: long because you're not gonna make much money. I think
45:09
Speaker 1: they said the top ninety percentile of a congressional staff
45:13
Speaker 1: makes hundred thousand dollars a year. That's the top ninety percentile,
45:17
Speaker 1: which sounds like six figures. That's good. DC is not cheap, no,
45:21
Speaker 1: and take out taxes and everything. That the median income
45:23
Speaker 1: was fifty grand, so you're making what like thirty five
45:26
Speaker 1: after taxes. You can't live on thirty dollars in d C.
45:30
Speaker 1: And they found that the median income for a lobbyist
45:33
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. Median is three hundred thousand, and
45:36
Speaker 1: that's pretty attractive, especially if you're in your twenties and
45:39
Speaker 1: all of a sudden can go double or triple your income,
45:42
Speaker 1: like right out of the gate. Well, it's the career path,
45:44
Speaker 1: like it's laid out there for everyone. Here's what you do.
45:47
Speaker 1: Go work on the staff for a little while, make contacts,
45:50
Speaker 1: which is invaluable, that's why you do it for not
45:52
Speaker 1: a whole lot of money, and then boom, you can
45:54
Speaker 1: get rich, make a lot of money as a lobbyist.
45:57
Speaker 1: So Drumpman and tell us UM suggest first and foremost
46:00
Speaker 1: that the solution to the lobbying conundrum that we have
46:04
Speaker 1: now is basically equipped Congress with the UM information, research
46:10
Speaker 1: and policy experts that they need and that they can
46:14
Speaker 1: get the stuff that they're currently getting from obbyoists. And
46:16
Speaker 1: the way you do that start is just increased salaries.
46:20
Speaker 1: And they make a really good point that you don't
46:23
Speaker 1: have to necessarily increase the salaries to to be completely
46:27
Speaker 1: on par with what UM K Streets offering, because K
46:31
Speaker 1: Street would probably just try to start to outspend the
46:33
Speaker 1: just raised salaries UM. But if you can do it
46:36
Speaker 1: so that a person could make a pretty decent living UM,
46:39
Speaker 1: they would possibly choose congressional work over K Street because
46:44
Speaker 1: with congressional work, they're in there, they're like part of
46:47
Speaker 1: this machine that's really making decisions and policies and laws
46:52
Speaker 1: that are affecting the country, rather than working for a
46:55
Speaker 1: law firm that's trying to get some some legislation pass
46:59
Speaker 1: that will benef fit this one corporate client. So so
47:02
Speaker 1: if you just factor in idealism along with a really
47:05
Speaker 1: good salary, these guys say, you could attract the right
47:08
Speaker 1: talent that you need. So their recommendation simply. I mean
47:12
Speaker 1: it's multi fold. But they say double committee staff, triple
47:16
Speaker 1: the money that they make, and you might be stepping
47:19
Speaker 1: in the right direction. Yeah. And again if you're like
47:20
Speaker 1: wholl whoa, that's a lot of taxpayer money. Well again,
47:25
Speaker 1: if you if you look at what the CBO alone,
47:28
Speaker 1: spending a dollar on the CBO comes up with ninety
47:30
Speaker 1: dollars worth of places to cut government waste. These are
47:35
Speaker 1: these are these are good things to spend money on. Yeah.
47:38
Speaker 1: And you may have a cleaner, more legitimate government as
47:40
Speaker 1: a result too, And that's priceless. Yeah. I mean, they
47:43
Speaker 1: made some some excellent case that in the seventies when
47:47
Speaker 1: the government had a lot of staff that was smart,
47:50
Speaker 1: that had a lot of institutional memory and knowledge that
47:54
Speaker 1: they got things done, like the Church Committee, um and
47:57
Speaker 1: the Pike Committee, both of which revealed a massive horrible
48:01
Speaker 1: stuff that the CIA was doing, like dosing unsuspecting Americans
48:04
Speaker 1: with LSC that came out at congressional investigations that you
48:07
Speaker 1: do not see any longer. Um. If you had committee
48:11
Speaker 1: staff that were well paid, um, they would hang around
48:16
Speaker 1: and you would have a lot more laws being passed,
48:18
Speaker 1: a lot more deliberations being passed. Right now. It's all
48:22
Speaker 1: fundraising going on. That's what your legislators do. They get elected,
48:25
Speaker 1: they come to Washington, have their picture taken there, and
48:28
Speaker 1: then they go back out and start raising money for reelection,
48:30
Speaker 1: right and they're raising money from the very people who
48:34
Speaker 1: are working as lobbyists. So yeah, all you have to
48:37
Speaker 1: do is create good jobs aggressional researchers, and you've got
48:43
Speaker 1: your lobbying problem largely licked. Yeah. I agree, man, I
48:47
Speaker 1: don't see any problem with this idea. It's it's sad
48:50
Speaker 1: whenever we dig into stuff like this. How Like I
48:53
Speaker 1: talked about the Insiders Club, how I don't know. It
48:57
Speaker 1: just seems like it's such a broken, messed up system.
49:00
Speaker 1: It is. There was another thing I read UM about
49:03
Speaker 1: something called rent seeking, which is where UM, through lobbyists,
49:07
Speaker 1: the corporation will go and just try to get a
49:10
Speaker 1: piece of the pie, not for doing anything, not even
49:13
Speaker 1: necessarily a contract, but just say, like a subsidy. And
49:16
Speaker 1: like the fossil fuel subsidies are amounted to thirty seven
49:19
Speaker 1: and a half billion dollars in two thousand and fourteen.
49:22
Speaker 1: That was just stuff that the government gave, just money.
49:25
Speaker 1: The government gave UM oil and other fossil fuel companies
49:29
Speaker 1: just for existing, right, And that's called rent seeking. It
49:31
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything. They don't they're not producing anything to
49:35
Speaker 1: generate that income. They're spending a bunch of income to
49:37
Speaker 1: go suck it out of the federal budget. Right. And
49:40
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to talk about wealth redistribution,
49:43
Speaker 1: that's like the the the clearest version of it you
49:45
Speaker 1: can possibly imagine. And that's through lobbying. And yeah, and
49:50
Speaker 1: this is just lobbying, Like, don't get me started on
49:52
Speaker 1: things like campaign finance and all the other ways. That's
49:56
Speaker 1: another one we should do. Yeah, I actually wrote that article.
49:59
Speaker 1: Um Man, how was it? But it was depressing. It
50:02
Speaker 1: was depressing and tough, and it's probably way out of date,
50:06
Speaker 1: so we will update it. Yeah, it would need a
50:08
Speaker 1: lot of like our dating, let's do it. Campaign financial reform,
50:12
Speaker 1: big big thing. Remember our presidential um debates one that
50:16
Speaker 1: was eye opening. Remember there's like a whole commission that
50:20
Speaker 1: has a stranglehold on presidential debates and I have got
50:25
Speaker 1: to go back to listen to it is a good one,
50:27
Speaker 1: most of them. I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that.
50:31
Speaker 1: All right, Uh, well, if you want to know more
50:33
Speaker 1: about lobbying. You can type that word in the search
50:36
Speaker 1: part how stuff works, and it will bring up this
50:37
Speaker 1: fine article. Uh. And since I said search parts, time
50:41
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Alright, I'm gonna call this binge listening
50:46
Speaker 1: Colin newest the oldest, Uh. Dudes and Jerry. By the way,
50:50
Speaker 1: I labored over that subject line like a publicist, and
50:53
Speaker 1: it's still awful. It's been bad, is what Colin said,
50:57
Speaker 1: Dudes and Jerry. I've been slowly making my way through
50:59
Speaker 1: the analog of episodes, and for any new listeners, I'd
51:02
Speaker 1: like to advocate for listening through them from newest to oldest,
51:06
Speaker 1: in other words, reverse order, rather than oldest to newest,
51:09
Speaker 1: which is how I assume most would listen. While the
51:13
Speaker 1: references to old episodes might be a little confusing, they
51:15
Speaker 1: also build a sense of anticipation once you get there.
51:19
Speaker 1: I could see that, for example, I finally listened to
51:21
Speaker 1: the infamous episode on the Sun. You made so many
51:26
Speaker 1: references over the years to how bad that episode was
51:28
Speaker 1: that by the time I got to it, I was
51:30
Speaker 1: literally laughing from beginning to end, so it becomes like
51:33
Speaker 1: a comedy episode. At that you could almost hear Chuck's
51:37
Speaker 1: brain sizzling and melting as the episode went on. True. Uh,
51:43
Speaker 1: if I didn't have that sense of anticipation, your agony
51:45
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been as sweet. I like this idea. I
51:49
Speaker 1: think he makes a lot of sense. I dread the
51:51
Speaker 1: day that I run out of episodes and experience of withdrawals,
51:54
Speaker 1: the shakes, the Jimmy legs that will inevitably come when
51:56
Speaker 1: I'm jones and for new stuff. And that is Colin
51:59
Speaker 1: and or Land. Oh alright, Colling, great email, terrible subject line,
52:05
Speaker 1: but totally forgivable because of the body. I didn't think
52:08
Speaker 1: it was so bad being listening to us to hold us.
52:11
Speaker 1: It's a sink. I guess it's a it's just like
52:16
Speaker 1: this the d That's fine, right, do better, Coling, But
52:22
Speaker 1: great email calling. Oh but if he's listening, has he
52:26
Speaker 1: he hasn't made it all the way back? Well, if
52:27
Speaker 1: he's listening to us to old us, so does he
52:30
Speaker 1: just make time each week to listen to the newest
52:32
Speaker 1: one and then go back to wherever he loves? I
52:35
Speaker 1: don't know. We need to hear a follow up. God
52:39
Speaker 1: knows when he'll hear this, Chuck. We need to contact
52:41
Speaker 1: him directly from feeling a great since of regret. I
52:44
Speaker 1: feel bad for him because he's just heading straight for
52:47
Speaker 1: disappointment Land as he goes further and further back in
52:50
Speaker 1: The cattle Man. There's some episodes I'd just like to
52:52
Speaker 1: just redo, which we have done some of them, like
52:55
Speaker 1: when they were like five minutes then they were cool topics.
52:59
Speaker 1: You know, should just remove those from the Internet. Let's
53:02
Speaker 1: do um. I would like to redo the trolley problem
53:05
Speaker 1: one you and I didn't do idea with Chris Palette,
53:08
Speaker 1: and it deserves like its own, big current modern incarnation
53:12
Speaker 1: of stuff. You should not like the stode. We should
53:14
Speaker 1: probably do all the ones I wasn't on. How about that,
53:17
Speaker 1: Let's do it. We'll call it the Summer of Chuck.
53:21
Speaker 1: If you want to be like calling and get in
53:22
Speaker 1: touch with us and let us scrutinize your words, you
53:25
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
53:28
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53:30
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
53:32
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53:36
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53:37
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53:45
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com