167 H. Reading: Lobbying: The Art of Influence
Learning Objectives
After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What is lobbying?
- How do lobbyists gain access to public officials?
- What is grassroots lobbying?
- How do lobbyists attempt to influence Congress, the president, the bureaucracy, and the courts?
- How is lobbying regulated?
Interest groups employ lobbyists to protect and advance their interests. Lobbyists do this through lobbying: informing, persuading, and pressuring policymakers to support the group’s objectives.
The more policies the government proposes, the more lobbyists become involved. In response to the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Obama administration proposed to overhaul the regulation and increase oversight of the financial system. This generated a bonanza of business for lobbyists. Lobbyists represented banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, and credit card companies as well as companies in manufacturing, retail, and service who could be affected by changes in the laws.
The Lobbyists
There are as many as eighty thousand lobbyists in Washington, DC.[1] Some of them go through a revolving door between government service and lobbying. Former presidential aides are prominent and powerful among them. More than two hundred lobbyists are former members of Congress. Others have worked for congressional committees or the agencies they now lobby. These former public servants have expertise, access, and contacts among policymakers.
This move from public service to private enrichment, cashing in on connections, is grist for the news media. The New York Times reported that Wall Street’s financial firms had more than 125 former members of Congress and congressional aides working to limit the policies proposed by the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress to overhaul and intensify regulation of the industry. They included Richard H. Baker, a former chairman of a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee. As president of the hedge funds’ Managed Funds Association, Baker led the fight to prevent government oversight of hedge funds. The association spent $3.7 million in 2009 lobbying federal officials.[2]
The Times later reported that the government agencies (such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Reserve) that were deciding on the at least 243 regulations to implement the new, 2,300-page banking law were being lobbied by 148 of their former employees, who had recently been hired away from the agencies. Asked by the Times’ reporter if he had an edge in lobbying, one of them replied, “The answer is yes, it does. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to justify getting out of bed in the morning and charging the outrageous fees that we charge our clients, which they willingly pay.”[3]
Lobbyists also take positions in the federal governmen