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SYSK Selects: How Lobbying Works · Stuff You Should Know

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