SYSK Selects: How Lobbying Works

Lobbying is an entrenched part of American politics and one that many people think is breaking government. But petitioning the government is protected in the Constitution. How can this system be fixed? join Josh and Chuck as they explore the topic in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, folks, Chuck here with your Saturday Select. Because it's
election season, I thought we'd dig back into the archives
from October and find out how lobbying works. You may
think lobbying is awful, and it certainly can be, but
also serves a purpose. Uh you know, I'll let you
make your own mind up about it. But here we
go with how lobbying works. Right now, welcome to Stuff

(00:25):
you should know, a production of My Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and crickets. So weird. Yeah,
we're doing this um ghost style. Yeah, So what happened

(00:47):
was and I didn't you explain to me? But I
don't know. Maybe my mind was elsewhere and I didn't
fully understand. But what happened is guest producer Noel got
the record, he could put the mouse in the hamster wheel,
got the computer running and left. And now you're a
little freaked out, aren't Well it's this is out of

(01:09):
close to eight hundred shows, this is literally the first
time it's ever just been you and me in a room. Yeah,
isn't that crazy? Yeah? It really is, isn't it. It's
I feel like I don't know. I feel like there
no one in here, even though no one ever guides
us that we should just I don't know that we're
gonna cut up and curse. And it's like when the
teacher has left the room, it feels like there's a

(01:30):
vast field, a portal to another dimension to my right,
where Jarry usually said, So, I had no idea what
that extra silent human three ft from this meant. I
think now this means that we've been put out to pasture. Wow,
this is disconcerting. Alright. I feel like you're gonna like
knife me or something. I could right now, I know

(01:52):
and whatever. Now until we published the episode, Nope, no
one would ever know. Wow, And that's gruesome. All right,
this is just weird. Let's let's do it. You ready, Yeah,
good choice. By the way, Yeah, I don't remember what
episode we picked this in. We were talking about something
and lobbying came up, where like we should just do
one on lobbying. Well, here it is. Yeah, it's it's
I'm glad we're doing this because we'll clear up some misconceptions. Uh,

(02:15):
it's not always evil, just the time maybe more. Yeah,
um yeah, I remember when we said we were going
to do a lobbying when we got a lot of
emails from lobbyists who were like, please, please, please, don't
just trash our profession like we ever would. Um they're
they were like, lobbying is actually it can be a
really good thing, and sure that's why. So we got

(02:36):
a lot of feedback before this thing even came out,
which hopefully will help us. Well, they're understandably a very
defensive group. Yes, everyone thinks it's just rotten and corrupt
across all channels, and a rotten to the core. Um.
And the reason I and just about everyone else walking

(02:58):
the planet thinks that lobbyists are rotten it is because
of some very high profile cases like remember Jack Abramoff,
who can forget what a and I usually don't publicly
trash people, but that guy was a pile of garbage.
You know, there's really no I was trying to find
some other way around it. It was like, no, he
was awful, Yeah, and just ripped people off, unabashedly ripped

(03:22):
off Indian bribed officials, bribe people, pocketed money, and he
was a highly highly successful, obvious people. He was working
for he was he's not a good fellow. No, but again,
he was a successful lobbyist. He was at the top
of it of his field for many years. Actually. Um,
and it wasn't until two thousand and six when he

(03:43):
was convicted of I believe, like bribery and corruption and
all sorts of stuff, tax evasion, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Um,
and I ended up serving three three years. I think
he did three three years in the pokey Yeah, and
supposedly had to pay a lot of restitution and tax fines. Yeah.
But who knows how that stuff works out. No one
ever follows up to see, you know. We just say, oh,

(04:04):
he got a he's supposed to pay all these people back.
Sure it happened, Yeah, who knows. He probably found a
loophole to work on. He's probably working on a lawsuit
against us right this moment. Chuck, Oh, can you not
publicly call someone garbage? I think you can. Okay, can
we find out Can we read this opening statement from
eighteen sixty nine, Yeah, because I think it makes a

(04:26):
pretty good point that Jack Abramoff wasn't the first despised lobbyist. No.
This is written by Emily Edson Briggs, who was a
Washington D c. Newspaper correspondent UM at a time where
there weren't a lot of women doing that, which is
kind of cool. And I think she was the first
allowed into the Congressional press room. Yeah, they said let her,

(04:47):
and she'll never say anything bad because we gave her
this job. And she's like, he fell from my big
cookies plan. So she wrote a column talk called the
Dragons of the Lobby. So you probably know where this
is headed. And the pending line of the column said,
winding in and out through the long, devious basement passage,
crawling through the corridors, trailing at slimy length from gallery

(05:09):
to committee room. At last it lies stretched at full
length on the floor of the Congress, this dazzling reptile,
this huge, scaly serpent of the lobby. That could have
been our Halloween episode. It really could have. Maybe we
should gus see that. I think we should with horror
a little bit of sound effect. Yeah, that was in
eighteen sixty nine. Yeah, not very flattering, um And it

(05:30):
was actually I think it did come at a time
when lobbying and lobbyists were really getting a choke hold
on um on Congress on legislation on sweetheart deals from
the federal government. Um, but lobbying goes further back than that,
and lobbyists have been despised even further back than that

(05:53):
as a matter of fact. Yeah, and it's uh again,
it's something this article makes. I thought, this is a
really well written article. Actually, yeah, this was the day
Ruse article, and he did a good job. He points
out that the knee jerk reaction for your average person
might be to say, just make it all illegal, get
rid of the lobby because it's awful, But he makes

(06:13):
a good point that it is. It is necessary. The
First Amendment in our own constitution says the right of
the people to petition the government for a redress of
grievances is necessary and constitutional and mandatory. Yeah, and that's
what lobbyists do, is uh. It's not always a huge corporation.
A lot of times they'll speak for the Girl Scouts

(06:35):
or the Boy Scouts or you know, all kinds of
special interest groups, and we all have them, so you me,
everyone listening in America has a constitutional right to go
and petition Congress to say, hey, guys, you guys aren't
paying enough attention to government waste or NASA deserves way
more funding than you're giving it. Whatever, you can go

(06:57):
do that. That's lobbying technically, but unfortunately, almost from the beginning, uh,
corporate and big business special interest groups figured out a
way to basically exploit that to their to their own benefit. Yeah,
and it's uh. Rus also points out, and we'll get
to this later, U, which is one of the big problems.
It's necessary because Congress in their staff don't have time

(07:21):
to uh that's well again, we'll get to that later. Okay,
you don't want to spoil it, all right, but they
don't have time to go through the myriad request and
and uh information deluge of information that's necessary to make
an educated decision, and so much so that Senator John F.
Kennedy in said, uh, that we are in many cases

(07:45):
expert technicians capable of not we are, I'm sorry, lobbyists
are in many cases, I'm sorry, are in many cases
expert technicians capable of examining complex and difficult subjects and
clear understandable fashion. So that's the reason we need them
in many cases is to literally explain stuff too. Congress

(08:09):
people and staff strapped for time and resources. It should
be said, though, that Um. When Kennedy wrote that in
the mid fifties, lobbying was not much of a thing.
It had like it was established, had been established for
a couple hundred years. People hated lobbyists. There were huge
um lobbyists scandals in the Gilded Age from the Civil

(08:30):
War to the nineteenth century. But in the mid fifties
lobbying was not a huge thing. It wasn't so um.
What he said, though, is accurate, and it's still is
accurate today. If you are an incoming congress person, Um,
you make your name both to your constituency and in
your party by getting bills passed, by coming up with

(08:52):
bills and passing them. Right, look at all the work
I accomplished. And then if you get enough, you may
end up on a nice maybe even a committee chair,
and then eventually a party leader. And all that is
because you introduced legislation that was favored and got past.
The thing is, you don't have the time or the
staff to research and write legislation, so you have to

(09:16):
you have to turn to lobbyists lobbying groups and say, hey,
you guys are literally experts on this topic. I need
your help. Uh, educate me, help me write this, and
then um will will be friends. The problem is is
there's not a there's not a special interest group like

(09:36):
you said, whether it's the Girl Scouts or whether it's
uh the Chamber of Commerce that doesn't have a slamp
that isn't going to try to slam the legislation in
their favor. So that means that the laws that are
written in this country today are the legislative equivalents of avertorials,
you know, kind of thin on actual content and really

(09:58):
heavy on stuff that benefits the corporations running this show.
You know who would make good lobbyists? Who they're in
this room right now? Oh you think so. I was
just thinking, like generally unbiased research presented so someone can
make a decision. Yeah, that's kind of what we do,
except we're not paid like lobbyists make a lot of dough. Uh.

(10:22):
In fact, in two thousand fourteen, lobbyists and these are
people that are officially registered as lobbyists, which will get
to there are a lot more people doing lobby esque
work that aren't officially registered, but official registered lobbyists. Uh,
we're paid out to three point two four billion dollars
in two thousand fourteen, and that is only divided among

(10:45):
how many people? Was it about ten thousand six people?
What are you kidding? That's how many registered lobbyists there were,
right and this year and that's but again just the
registered one from a high of about fourteen and change.
And when what's that two thousand six or seven? Yeah,

(11:06):
and the two two thousand seven changes came along, and
it's not because there are fewer lobbyists there there that
just gave rise to people, or gave people the ability
to be like, oh, I'm not a lobbyist anymore. Because
here's the thing. If you are a registered lobbyist, you
are subject to some very strict ethical guidelines, legal guidelines,

(11:26):
scrutiny of your business practices, and there's a lot of
stuff you can't do. You just you're just completely outlawed
from doing certain things. If if you can just skirt
the definition of a lobbyists, it's like open season, man,
it's the wild West on Capitol Hill for you, and
you can make as much money as you possibly can

(11:47):
while doing the same things just not having to register
as a lobbyist. All right, But that's a lot of teasing.
This is the like but this is the current state
of the American legislative process. Are legislators for a lot
on special interest groups almost entirely to tell them what
they need to know from their slant, and then actually

(12:08):
writing the legislation for them to go take the Congress
and be like what I got. I'm gonna make my
name with this. All right. There's one other thing too
that we should say, and this is a this is
one reason why lobbying is so pernicious. Um. Lobbyists also
serve as major fundraisers for the very politicians that they're lobbying. Yeah, like,

(12:30):
I didn't give them money. I just called a fundraiser
that raised four and a half million dollars at you know,
three thousand dollars a plate. But hey, they they gave
him the money. Right, they don't know me anything. I'm
just doing this because I'm a patriotic citizen of the
United States. And I'll see you Monday, Senator. And I
like to overcharge for salmon. Yeah, isn't that crazy. So

(12:52):
that's the current state, everybody. Let's go back to the beginning,
because lobbyists have been around basically as long as America
has Yeah, let's take a little break and we'll we'll
get to the tease stuff and start off with a
little bit of history, all right. Uh, there's some misconceptions

(13:29):
about the history of the word itself. Laure says that
it was invented uh in the Willard Hotel in Washington,
d C. In that lobby when U Ulysses S. Grant
would kick back and have a drink like he so
like to do, uh, and would get disgusted by what
he called those damn lobbyists that we're hanging out there, yeah,

(13:52):
asking him for stuff. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Yeah. And while
that may have, um, that may have given rise to
the term popular already wise here, but you can trace
it back to England, uh in the sixteen forties, when
they talked about the lobby in the House of Commons
where you could go right up to your representatives and
in your cute little wig and say, here's what I

(14:13):
think you should do, right, and here's some here's some
good old fashioned English pounds in your pocket. And I
mean that's always just gone with it, part and parcel. Yeah,
you know, if not outright bribery, at least favors or
quid pro quo or tip for tad or football tickets,
the jackal and hide Beyonce tickets, all sorts of stuff. Yeah,

(14:35):
first class or not first class? No one flies first class.
Talking about the lear jet, the true first class. Yea,
the private jet. Didn't they do with first class? Analysis
called business class because of class resentment in the United States. Yeah,
and now they've well, it depends on the airline. There's
all sorts of new rules and special things you can
pay for, all right. So, uh, in the United States,

(14:58):
from the very first session of Congress, there were lobbying
efforts and people treating congress. Uh. I'm gonna say congressmen
for this one, because this was in We're gonna say
congress person for later on. The women were at home
brewing beer in their households, but they were applying congressmen

(15:19):
with treats and dinners. And that was a direct quote
from Pennsylvania Senator William maclay from the very first session
of Congress. He was saying, Yeah, they're lobbyists here. They're
basically trying to bribe people. They're trying to install the
Terrifact of seventeen eighty nine, which established um Congress's ability
to basically extract duties and taxes on goods in the

(15:43):
United States in order to support the government. Let's go
out to dinner instead, And the New York merchants were like,
you don't do that. Let me get you hammered three
ways from Sunday. What are you doing later? Yeah, I'll
tell you what you're doing. You're gonna finish. It can't
go wrong in one sitting. Uh uh. Then apparently the
Bank of the United States was one of the first

(16:05):
big corrupt organizations as far as literally having politicians in
their pocket paying the money. Yeah. Like, um, the United
States used to have things like like an actual centralized bank.
And Andrew Jackson came along. It's like, this thing is
just way too corrupt. We need to get rid of
it and put me on your money. Yeah, but the

(16:25):
the scandals associated with it where things like, um, the
National Bank had on its board as board members who
are being paid by the bank, sitting congressman who were
writing legislation in favor of the bank. Yeah, this quote
is the best. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster sent a letter

(16:48):
to the Bank of the United States that said this,
among other things, since I arrived here, I have had
an application to be concerned professionally against the bank, which
I've declined. Of course, though I believe my retainer has
not been renewed or refreshed as usual. Uh, if it
be wished that my relation to the bank should be continued,

(17:09):
it may be well to send me the usual retainer.
In other words, I've noticed that you're not paying me. Now.
People are telling me to write legislation against you. I'm
turning them down for now. You may want to send
that money again if you would like this, Love Daniel,
you know, like he flat out said, the bribes have
sort of dried up. I've noticed, So why don't you

(17:30):
start sending those again? Unbelievable history. So you talked about
the Gilded Age, post Civil Wars, all the close of
the nineteenth century. We like to think that America's railroads
were built on grit and determination, but in fact it
was rife with insider deals and uh scandal, right, what

(17:52):
was it called the credit mobile? Your scandal? Yeah? I
looked into this a little bit. It's mind boggling, basically,
um union's mind. How overt it was. Yeah, but but
even just like it was not just crooked in one way,
it was crooked in a number of ways that formed
one big, huge crooked thing that Congress was involved in.

(18:12):
The Union Pacific Railroad started a company that served as
the soul agent of building and managing the Union Pacific Railroad.
Okay um. And then they issued stock in this stuff,
and they used Credit Mobile, Mobilier and um Union Pacific

(18:34):
itself to basically over charge and overpay one another so
that the value of the stock went through the roof. Okay.
So it's a stock massaging scheme to begin with. It
like an insider deal with yourself, right to raise the
value artificially of your stock. Right. And then they took

(18:54):
these these shares in this company and started handing them
out to Congress at a disc count in price. That's
all congressated to do was go sell them on the
market for their face value, which was again artificially inflated.
And they made a bunch of cash. And they were
taking these as bribes for giving like um land grants
or breaking treaties with Native Americans so that the Union

(19:15):
Pacific Railroad could build their railroad across the Western States. Yeah,
and this was they did this because, believe it or not,
at the time, there wasn't a lot of private investors
ponying up money for this railroad because it was sort
of a new thing and it was Yeah, they didn't know.
Although it was a great idea, they didn't know. Like
all investors, what they care about is getting their money

(19:36):
back in quick fashion, and they just didn't know if
that was going to be possible. And I mean, there's
definitely something to be said for the federal government to
step in and be like, look, we think that this
is really going to help things out. We really want
to fund it. But does it have to be totally
fraught with corruption while that happens? You know, no is
the answer. Not yet. Uh. And then there was the

(19:58):
famous guilded age lobby is Sam Ward, who um he
basically invented the social lobby. So while he wouldn't we'll
get into direct lobby versus social lobby, but social lobby
is basically in sam Ward's case, he was a great chef,
and he was like, I'm gonna throw these great parties.
I'm gonna have great food and fine wine. I'm gonna

(20:18):
invite uh, special interest groups and corporation heads and politicians
and get him in the same room. But we're not
going to talk about that stuff directly. We're just all
gonna get hammered together and have a great time, become friends.
That was that was his job. Friends do things for
one another. Right. Yeah, well, I don't think we ever
even said what K Street was. By the way, K
Street is literally K the letter K Street. We're all

(20:41):
just about every lobby in the country has an office. Yeah,
so that explains that if people are other going, yeah,
you're right, but it's like seeing um Madison Avenue when
you refer to advertising or Wall Street. Yeah. Um. So
lobbying just kind of after the guilded Aga, America was
sick to death of lobbying and lobbyists and didn't want
to have anything to do with it. Um. So lobbying went.

(21:04):
Didn't go away, but it fell to the wayside a
little bit. It was still a thing um throughout the
twentieth century, it just kind of waxed and waned. In
the mid forties, I believe Congress was like, we actually
kind of need these guys, so let's set up some
rules for dealing with them. Um Because at this time,
already what John Kennedy was writing about was true. You

(21:25):
had a brain drain going on from Capitol Hill to
k Street, where people would go and um, become an
aid to a senator or a congress person and make contacts,
get a little bit of experience, and then after a
couple of years they would move on over to Kay
Street to a lobbying firm, make anywhere between five to

(21:48):
ten times what they were as the congressional aid. And um,
Kay Street was sucking the talent away from Congress. And
so these congress people in the forties said, hey, um,
we need to work with these people because we need them,
so let's make up some rules. Even still, lobbying was
nothing like you would recognize it today. It wasn't until

(22:10):
the seventies and eighties when business did an about face
of dealing with the government. Up to that point, it
was like, government, stay to stay out of our business.
That's the lobbying we want to do, is to keep
you off of our backs, keep you from regulating our stuff,
to stay out of our business. And then at some point,
and I'm not exactly sure who figured this out, but

(22:31):
some lobbyists convinced corporations like, hey, guys, you're doing this
all wrong. You guys could get mind boggling amounts of
money from the government in the form of subsidies, are
great contracts or sweetheart deals just by using our services
and lobbying exploded, and we'll just take comparatively a tiny

(22:52):
bit of that. Even though it's a ton of money
for individual lobbyists, it's nothing to these corporations, right exactly.
And I yeah, like the day Ruse gave a really
great example of um Northrop Gumman Grumman in uh in
two thousand and twelve or something like that, I believe
thunder Mifflin. Yeah, they spent a hundred and seventy six
million dollars from from in fourteen years from twelve, which

(23:16):
that's nothing to them because in that time, in two
thousand twelve itself, Northrop Grumman got a hundred and seventy
six million dollar or oh no, a hundred and eighty
nine million dollar contract for a cyber security system for
the d O D so that that one contract paid
for fourteen years of lobbying expenses, right yeah, and then
they got a one point seven billion dollar contract to

(23:39):
build five drones. And that's just Northrop Grumman. Like, you
can't really pick on them. The reason why we called
them out is because during twelve they were the ninth
biggest spender on lobbying, not just corporations but industry as well. UM.
General Electric was the the single entity that spent the most.

(24:01):
Yeah this um as far as the corporation goes. Uh.
There's a great website if you want just good information
and stats called open secrets dot org. And this past year,
two thousand fourteen, the top ten spenders were the US
Chamber of Commerce, which is always number one by a
long shot because they represent a lot of businesses. The

(24:23):
National Association of Realtors was number two, Blue Cross Blue
Shield was number three, American Hospital Association for American Medical
Association five. Seeing a trend here, I wonder why National
Association of Broadcasters, National Cable and telecom Comcast. Again, it's
you can literally look at the years where there's the

(24:45):
most spending and what's going on in those industries. Uh.
And then Google and Boeing round out the top ten
at just a sixteen million each. And so and I mean,
like the amount of money spent has um I believe
tripled in the last few years, right, Yeah, I think so.
So so this is fairly new, but it's not new.

(25:08):
It's basically a return to the lobbying of the Gilded Age.
The amount of money, attention, time, questionable stuff that's been
going on is just a replay of what happened a
hundred something years ago, right, um. And one of the
reasons that we've we've it's become so rampant, it's been
ratcheted up so much. You can actually lay it at

(25:29):
the feet of New Gingrich. So New Gingridge. Chuckers was
Speaker of the House in the nineties when Clinton was president,
if you'll remember, and he decided that Congress was doing
too much, right oh yeah, yeah, I know. So he
cut staffs, which means that lawmakers, um that that were
able to they did have enough of his staff or

(25:52):
enough resources to write their own legislation could definitely could
not any longer. He also cut staff at some resources
that are dead catered to providing research for Congress, like
the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Research Service, all of
these things, um, that have been built up in response
to dealing with lobbyists from like the forties on. Uh,

(26:14):
we're cut by Gingrich and all of a sudden, our
our lawmakers are relying strictly on lobbyists for money. Yeah,
and that's there's a direct correlation. I know people, you know,
you hear about government spending. Let's cut government spending, which
in theory sounds great. Sure, let's cut government spending. But
what that means is now you don't have staff to

(26:34):
do unbiased research and get the facts, like you said,
You've got lobbyists to do that, right, exactly. And the
idea behind that tactic by Gingrich, if if it was
just based on I'm cutting government spending by cutting jobs
or I think government is doing too much, there's actually
a misstep. Because another UM senator from Oklahoma, his name

(26:57):
escapes me right now, he had the Congression Budget Office
do an annual report starting in two thousand eleven, and
they found that the Congressional Budget Office found that for
every dollar spent on the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional
Budget Office managed to come up with ninety dollars of
recommended cuts to government waste. So for every dollar you

(27:20):
spent you made you saved eighty nine dollars just from
the Congressional Budget Office. So cutting their staff is the
opposite of what you want to do here against like bloated,
wasteful government. It's pretty interesting. It's specifically as interesting as
far as New Gingrich goes to because him cutting Congress's
ability to not rely on lobbyists really left a sour

(27:43):
taste in a lot of people's mouths during the two
thousand twelve primaries because he was like, he refused to
admit that he was a lobbyist. Well, yeah, and he's
he's not registered as a lobbyist. What he has is
a well, one of the things he does, he has
a healthcare consulting firm where you can pay two hundred
thousand dollars to become a member, quote unquote, which you're

(28:04):
not a client, you're a member. It's a membership group.
So it's and he's not the only one, I mean,
I think they have in here. They call it the
revolving door. Basically, when you leave your position as a
congress person or a senator, you go directly to the lobby. Uh.
The New York Times says they're more than four hundred
former legislators who worked as lobbyists in the past decade.

(28:26):
It's just like, let me go and make some real
money now. Not just legislators either, like them there was
very famously a guy who was running the the Pentagon,
I believe ed Aldridge, and he was a longtime critic
of Boeing, and then Bowing hired him and on his
way out he approved a three billion dollar contract to Boeing.

(28:46):
That's the revolving door at work. There's a Massachusetts representative
named William Dela Hunt and um, he took a job
lobbying for a wind project that he had just earmarked
a bunch of money for right before he left. Yeah,
so I mean this revolving door. People say like, well,
let's just shut the revolving door, and it is a
it's a proposal. But at the same time, if you

(29:08):
do that, then then your anti job and you can't
you can't even appear anti jobs. So there's other solutions
that I think are better for dealing with the lobby
and crisis. I guess you could call it. Yeah, and
uh well we'll get to that later. That great article
you sent, Um, you know what show actually does a
really great job realistically with this is a veep. I

(29:29):
haven't seen a second of that. It's fantastic, man, I
mean it really shows you. For Best Actress, Yeah, she
won and Veep one, and I think the writing team
one good. I think it's the best written show on
TV right now, but or the best written comedy. Oh
have you seen Narcos yet? No, you canna check that out, Okay,
But Veep is really even though it's a comedy, really

(29:50):
like shows that everything in d C is just about
deals being made, like will you do this for me?
And I'll give you support on this bill and they're
pulling that bill and what did that lobby say because
they were my friend and it's all it's all just
it's such an insider's game. It's staggering. And and that's
a comedy written by uh English people, which is yeah,

(30:13):
the producers got there and they're all like from from
England and that's I don't know, for some reason, that's
so interesting. And they even in their Emmy speech said,
you know, it's kind of funny to be able to
make fun of the American political system being English folks.
But thank you for this award for that. Uh all right,
So let's talk a little bit about we keep saying

(30:33):
registered lobbyists. Since eighteen seventy six, Congress is required that
all professional lobbyist register with the Office of the Clerk
of the House and UH since nineteen with the Lobbying
Disclosure Act in two thousand seven Honest Leadership and Open
Government Act of two thousand seven UH, they narrowly defined

(30:56):
a lobbyist as someone who has won paid by client
to services include more than one lobbying contact and three
whose lobbying activities constitute or more of their time on
behalf of that client during any three month period. So
that's actually it seems broad. That's actually you're a really
narrow definition of a lobbyist. Yeah, and it's so narrow,

(31:18):
as it turns out that it's really easy to skirt
those rules and not register because there are many ways
you can say you can really budget your time and
say no, I worked twenty point nine in this three
month period for this firm, or I have so many
people I work for, I only spend about ten fift
of my time, right. Or if you're on any one

(31:41):
group right, Or if you're like new g Rich, you're
you're not working for a client, says client. I got members,
so I'm doing all this, but it's for members, not clients.
Or if it's educational, it's not called libbing. So hey,
let me just hire this former senator, pay him a
lot of money to go around and give speeches on
education that are really trying to generate interest in legislation

(32:04):
or to educate the government on why um, the thirty
seven and a half billion dollars in fossil fuel subsidies
that shelled out in two thousand fourteen is a good
thing to redo and then double. But that's just education,
that's not lobby So those are just some of the
ways you can skirt officially registering as a lobbyists. And actually, Chuck,
so you said that that was from the two thousand

(32:25):
seven act. Total it was and two thousand seven, right,
two different acts. And in two thousand seven when they
added I guess they added that third one about the
twenty percent the time measure, like three thousand lobbyists de
registered loophole. Oh really, all I have to do is
account for my time in this way and all the

(32:47):
rules don't apply to me. It's pretty amazing. And so
as a matter of fact, Um, the American Bar Association said,
if you just just get rid of that third one
the time thing, that would help a lot. Yeah, And actually,
when Congress first started to deal with UM, lobbying. Uh. Well,
I shouldn't say first because it was the nineteenth century.
But in nine five or six, when they passed an

(33:10):
act about lobbying rules, Um, they said that a lobbyist
someone who had to register it as a lobbyist, was
anyone who aids in the passage or defeat of legislation.
That's it. So, I mean, I'm sure there's loopholes in
there and ways around that too, but it was much
much more vague, which in the fact would sound it's counterintuitive,

(33:31):
but that's actually better, right to be more vague in
the description because you can't skirt it's easy. So let's
let's take a break and then we'll talk about, um,
all of the stuff that lobbyists do, including some good
stuff too. All right, Uh, lobbyists who are lobbyists? What

(34:07):
do they do? They are full time Uh, as they
puts it, full time advocates for their clients. It's a
good way to put it. There's no job description you're
gonna get, but you better be a people person. You
better have great you better have a stuffed rolodex, you
better you better be good at networking, be super good
at networking. Uh, smooth talker Yeah, you should throw a

(34:29):
good party, be good at fundraising. Yeah. Um, and like
we said, you got to know a lot of good people.
You've gotta be a great communicator and persuasive. One might
say slick, slick. I think it is probably right. But um,
that and that I imagine that those are good qualities
that haven't just about any But I also have the
impression that there are lobbyists who are just like just

(34:52):
strictly grinding out research and stuff like that. Yeah. I
think there's different types of lobbyists. Some are probably like
there's the glad handers, yeah, like the person maybe, and
then there's like walks, people who are literally like technical
policy experts on a certain topic. They know the ins
and outs, they know both sides of it, they know
what senators care about it, Um, they know what congress

(35:14):
people could be persuaded. Maybe like they know everything about
this particular issue. Yeah, and like up to the minute. Uh,
they have to be really up on the very very
latest policies and laws. I mean they have to be experts,
like you said, right, like inside and out because they
get paid a ton of money to do that. And

(35:35):
there's typically three kinds of lobbying that people undertake. Again,
whether it's the Girl Scouts or Green Peace or UM,
the Chamber of Commerce or whoever. Um, there's direct lobbying,
indirect lobbying, and the grassroots lobbying. And they probably any
lobbying group takes part in all a combination of all these. Yeah.
Direct lobbying is when you're when you can get a

(35:57):
meeting with the congress person or senator or their aids. Yeah,
and you sit down with their staff for them and say, uh,
I'm experienced clearly because I'm in the room with you,
and here's here's what we think is a good piece
of legislation. Right, it's good for the country. Wink wink. Yeah.
So that's direct lobbying. Uh. Indirect is if you, um, well,

(36:19):
what's the difference between indirect and social aren't they kind
of the same. Yeah, it's the same, all right. So
that's like we said the Sam Ward we would throw
parties the King of lobby. Yeah, he invented the lobby
social lobbying and that's still true today. You through a
big swanky d C. Cocktail hour and get people in
the same room, just connecting folks. That's indirect lobby. Goosen

(36:42):
them up with a little uh scotch maybe, and all
of a sudden you're like, you just sit back and
you're like, yeah, this is working. Look at them talking
to each other. I love myself. And then there's grassroots lobbying,
which is kind of misleading actually because it can be
employed by uh, deep deeply trenched, deep pocketed interests. But

(37:04):
you know, it still appears grassroots and folksy things like
UM paying somebody who's an expert in a field or
UM a recognized figure maybe a former UM congress person
or whatever to write an op ed. Yeah, And I
mean name recognition counts for just about anything, so even
op eds. And if if somebody's saying, if a former

(37:28):
Treasury secretary is like, this is a really bad idea,
we shouldn't pass this legislation, that's going to inform voters minds. Yeah,
I think it also is a huge message to the
legislators who are also reading it that like Washington Post
published this, so a lot of people just read you
may want to listen to what I just said. Yeah,

(37:49):
or grassroots in the purest sense of the word. In
the more traditional sense is UH could be a small
little ngo that's all they can afford his grassroots campaigns,
and sadly it's it's uh the dog that barks the
loudest is the one that's going to get the most attention.
And you're barking the loudest if you have the resources too,

(38:10):
I guess, get a bunch of dogs barking at once.
Which is a really good point, Chuck, because and this
this article goes to great pains to make it clear
that you know, not all lobbying is bad, that lobbying
in and of itself isn't necessarily bad, um, And that
there are plenty of public interest groups that are dedicated

(38:33):
to serving the common good that engage in lobbying. So
it shouldn't be outlawed, it shouldn't be cut off. We
should figure out how to fix it. Um. The thing
is is they found that for every dollar that a
union and public interest group combined spends, corporations or big
business spent thirty four dollars. Of the top one spenders

(38:56):
were all corporate or corporate interests. Um. So it's the
field is very much skewed towards whoever has the most
money or whoever is willing to spend the most. Uh.
So to be two registers a lobbyists, which was required,
like I said, since eighteen seventy six, and then a
few years after that they required that members of the
press register because with the House and Senate because they

(39:20):
were had lobbyists posing as journalists, so they had to
take care of that pretty early on. But if you
are registered, uh, there are some things that you have
to do according to the law. Um. Well, first of all,
you can't give gifts. Blatantly give gifts. Yeah, that's one
of the things that got Abram often trouble. All sorts
of ways around this, of course, but you can't blatantly

(39:41):
give gifts. You have to register. You have to file
quarterly reports that detail the contacts you've made with elected officials.
You have to disclose how much money you were paid. Uh.
You have to file semi annual reports at list contributions
UH made to political campaigns. See that. I have a
question about that because from what I understand, if on

(40:03):
the federal level, if you're a registered lobbyists, you cannot
contribute to a political campaign. Yeah. Maybe it's has to
do with like these three thousand dollar plate dinners or something.
I don't know. Yeah, I wasn't sure about that either. Actually,
but you mentioned the American Bar Association. They a lot
of attorneys are lobbyists, um off and on during their career.

(40:26):
My uncle was actually a lobbyist, Is that right? Yeah, Congressman,
my congressman uncle. Really he went through the revolving door. Huh. Yeah,
I don't know much about it, but um, oh man,
you gotta ask him, Yeah, I should. And I will
say this, even though we were not on the same
side of the political spectrum, which I won't even say
who's who. He's a Democrat, but he's a good dude

(40:50):
and an honest person. So even though we don't agree
on things, I always felt like he, you know, he's
not taking kickbacks. He's not one of those guys. And
I really believe that he's a man pure of heart
and so so, in no way disparaging your uncle for
going through the revolving door. One of the problems with
that revolving door is not just that it causes this

(41:12):
brain drain from um Capitol Hill to the lobbying companies
or the law law firms, but um, it also makes
Congress not really interested in passing any kind of lobbying reform.
Or revolving door reform because pretty soon their term is
going to be up and they can go get that job. Exactly. Yeah,
because you don't as a public servant, I mean, you

(41:33):
don't make a lot of money. No, you don't. And
especially well we'll get to this in a second, but
finishing on the A B A UM, the American Bar
Association has a real interest in trying to keep lobbying
as above board as possible because a lot of them
want to be lobbyist and they don't want to be tarnished,
and so, like you said earlier, they think the biggest

(41:54):
thing you can do is to separate and have really
strict line straw between fundraising and lobbying. They think that's
where it's the most corrupt. So get rid of the time,
the time requirement of your time to be a registered lobbyist,
and just separate fundraising from from UM lobbying. Yeah. I

(42:18):
get the idea that that's where most of the hinky
stuff is going on. So the thing is like that
makes sense, but it's also kind of like trying to
remove a hornet's nest by picking the hornets out one
by one. Not the best idea, UM, And to smash
it and set it on fire pretty much and p
on the ashes. Actually, I believe you should leave a
hornet's nest. You should never destroy hornet's nest. So, uh,

(42:41):
I know, apex predators and all um So the the
the other idea to just shut the revolving door or
to just outlaw lobbying all together. Again, not only is
that a bad idea, especially if you just did it
wholesale out of the gate. You can't do that, but
it's also unconstitutional. Right. So we read this really great

(43:03):
article um Man that was good in Washington Monthly. So
who wrote this thing, Lee Droftman or Drutman, probably Druttman
and Steven tell Us. They wrote it in the Washington Monthly.
Is called a New Agenda for Political Reform. It was
a great article, Lenky, but it just and it's made
really good sense to me. Yeah, and it's not too wonky.
But I mean, these guys clearly know what they're talking

(43:25):
about people, the long and short of it, and what
they think is the problem is what we touched on earlier,
which is staffing of congressional offices has been cut and
slash so much and there's so much more information now
to ingest than there used to be. They just can't
do it. There are not the resources to do it.

(43:46):
So we have no choice but to turn to lobbyists
to act as the experts and to write legislation. So
they propose and we have some stats in here actually
that I thought were pretty striking. In the eighties, around
nineteen is when they started cutting everything the Government Accountability
Office in the Congressional Research Services. What they do is

(44:08):
they provide nonpartisan policy and program analysis to lawmakers. Right.
There are fewer now than in nineteen seventy nine, and
those are the very experts that were dedicated to serving
Congress in a nonpartisan way so that they had all
the information they needed to create legislation to actually make
the government operate. Fewer than the nineteen seventies. Yeah, so

(44:33):
gone gone. Starting in the eighties and then again uh
in the mid nineties, Gingrich cut congressional staff. Yeah. And
while this is going on, it's a two way street.
Lobbying is increasing by It's staggering how much lobbying has
increased in money and just human power. And then one
of the things about lobbying is that lobbying begets lobbying.

(44:55):
The more a lobbyist can get legislation pushed through. The
larger the federal register grows, the less ability any given
congress person has to read and ingest and understand federal law.
So the more they need lobbyists who do understand it. Yeah,
and so what you get is what we talked about

(45:15):
the revolving door. Well, actually that's politicians themselves going to
lobby Well, but there's a brain drink because their aids
are being sucked away by the K Street as well.
There's another cycle where there's no incentive to be a
congressional staffer for very long because you're not going to
make much money. I think they said the top ninety
percentile of a congressional staff makes hundred thousand dollars a year.

(45:39):
That's the top nine percentile. It sounds like six figures.
That's good. DC is not cheap, no, and take out
taxes and everything. That the median income was fifty grand,
so you're making what like thirty five after taxes. You
can't live on thirty five dollars in d C. And
they found that the median income for a lobbyist in Washington,
d C median is three hundred thousand and that's pretty attractive,

(46:01):
especially if you're in your twenties and all of a
sudden can go double or triple your income, like right
out of the gate. It's the career path, like it's
laid out there for everyone. Here's what you do. Go
working on the staff for a little while, make contacts,
which is invaluable. That's why you do it for not
a whole lot of money, right, and then boom you
can get rich, make a lot of money as a lobbyist.
So Drugman and tell us Um suggests first and foremost

(46:24):
that the solution to the lobbying conundrum that we have
now is basically equipped Congress with the UM information, research
and policy experts that they need and that they can
get the stuff that they're currently getting from lobbyists. And
the way you do that start is just increased salaries.
And they make a really good point that you don't

(46:46):
have to necessarily increase the salaries to to be completely
on par with what UM case streets offering, because k
Street would probably just try to start to outspend the
just raise salaries UM. But if you can do it's
so that a person could make a pretty decent living
um they would possibly choose congressional work over K Street,

(47:07):
because with congressional work, they're in there, they're like part
of this machine that's really making decisions and policies and
laws that are affecting the country, rather than working for
a law firm that's trying to get some some legislation
pass that will benefit this one corporate client. So so
if you just factor in idealism along with a really

(47:29):
good salary, these guys say you could attract the right
talent that you need. So their recommendation simply I mean
it's multi fold, but they say double committee staff, triple
the money that they make, and you might be stepping
in the right direction. Yeah. And again if you're like, well,
well whoa, that's a lot of taxpayer money, Well again,
if you if you look at what the CBO alone,

(47:51):
spending a dollar on, the CBO comes up with ninety
dollars worth of places to cut government waste. These are
these are these are things to spend money on, and
you may have a cleaner, more legitimate government as a
result too, And that's priceless. Yeah. I mean, they made
some some excellent case that in the seventies, when the
government had a lot of staff that was smart, that

(48:14):
had a lot of institutional memory and knowledge that they
got things done, like the Church Committee, um and the
Pike Committee, both of which revealed massive horrible stuff that
the CIA was doing, like dosing unsuspecting Americans with LSC
that came out of congressional investigations that you do not
see any longer. Um. If you had committee staff that

(48:36):
were well paid, um, they would hang around and you
would have a lot more laws being passed, a lot
more deliberations being passed. Right now, it's all fundraising going on.
That's what your legislators do. They get elected, they come
to Washington, have their picture taken there, and then they
go back out and start raising money for reelection. Right
and they're raising money from the very people who are

(48:58):
working as lobbyists. So oh yeah, all you have to
do is create good jobs instead of aggressional researchers, and
you've got your lobbying problem largely licked. Yeah. I agree, man,
I don't see any problem with this idea. It's it's
sad whenever we dig into stuff like this. How like
I talked about the Insiders Club. How, I don't know,

(49:20):
it just seems like it's such a broken, messed up system.
It is. There was another thing I read um about
something called rent seeking, which is where um through lobbyists,
the corporation will go and just try to get a
piece of the pie, not for doing anything, not even
necessarily a contract, but to say, like a subsidy. And
like the fossil fuel subsidies are amounted to thirty seven

(49:43):
and a half billion dollars in two thousand and fourteen.
That was just stuff that the government gave, just money.
The government gave Um Oil and other fossil fuel companies
just for existing, right, And that's called rent seeking. It
doesn't do anything. They don't they're not producing anything to
generate that income. They're spending a bunch of income to
go suck it out of the federal budget. Right. And

(50:04):
I mean, if you want to talk about wealth redistribution,
that's like the the the clearest version of it you
can possibly imagine. And that's through lobbying. Yeah, and this
is just lobbying, Like, don't get me started on things
like campaign finance and all the other ways. That's another
one we should do. Yeah, I actually wrote that article,
um Man, how was it? But it was depressing. It

(50:26):
was depressing and tough, and it's probably way out of date,
so we will update it. Yeah, it would need a
lot of like our dating, let's do it. Campaign finance reform,
big big thing. Remember our presidential um debates one that
was eye opening. Remember there's like a whole commission that
has a stranglehold on presidential debates. And yeah, I have

(50:48):
got to go back on list two. It is a
good one. Most of them. I'm like, oh, yeah, I
remember that. All right. Uh, well, if you want to
know more about lobbying, you can type that word in
the search part how stuff works and it will bring
up this fine article. Uh. And since I said search parts,
time for a listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call

(51:09):
this binge listening Colin Newest the oldest, uh, Dudes and Jerry,
By the way, I labored over that subject line like
a publicist, and it's still awful. It's bad, is what
Colin said. Dudes and Jerry. I've been slowly making my
way through the catalog of episodes, and for any new listeners,
I'd like to advocate for listening through them from newest

(51:29):
to oldest, in other words, reverse order, rather than oldest
to newest. Which is how I assume most would listen.
While the references to old episodes might be a little confusing,
they also build a sense of anticipation once you get there.
I could see that. For example, I finally listened to
the infamous episode on the Sun. You made so many

(51:49):
references over the years to how bad that episode was
that by the time I got to it, I was
literally laughing from beginning to end, So it becomes like
a comedy episode at that. Yeah, it's kind of cool.
You could almost hear Chuck's brain sizzling and melting as
the episode went on. True minded too. If I didn't
have that sense of anticipation, your agony wouldn't have been

(52:09):
as sweet. I like this idea. I think he makes
a lot of sense. I dread the day that I
run out of episodes and experience of withdrawals, the shakes,
the jimmy legs that will inevitably come when I'm jones
and for new stuff. And that is Colin and or Land.
Oh alright, Colin, great email, terrible subject, Lind, but totally

(52:30):
forgivable because of the body. I didn't think it was
a bad pop binge. Listening to us to old us
it's a sink. I guess it's a it's just like this.
The uh it's fine, right, do better, Colin? But great
email calling. Oh but if he's listening, has he he
hasn't made it all the way back? Well, if he's

(52:51):
listening to us, to old us, so does he just
make time each week to listen to the newest one
and then go back to wherever he loves? I don't know. Well,
here we need to hear a follow up. God knows
when he'll hear this, Chuck, we need to contact him directly.
From feeling a great since of regret, I feel bad
for him because he's just heading straight for disappointment land

(53:12):
as he goes further and further back in The cattle Man.
There's some episodes I'd just like to just redo, which
we have done some of them, like when they were
like five minutes. Then they were cool topics. You know,
we should just remove those from the internet. Let's do um.
I would like to redo the trolley problem one you
and I didn't do. I did with Chris Pallette and
it deserves like its own big current modern incarnation and stuff.

(53:36):
You should have episode. We should probably do all the
ones I wasn't on how that. We'll call it the
Summer of Chuck. Yeah. If you want to be like
calling and get in touch with us and let us
scrutinize your words, you can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
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(53:57):
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