What exactly do political lobbyists do? I know they’re supposed to educate/influence politicians about various issues. But most federal politicans already have a staff to do research for them, so why would a politican bother even meeting with a lobbyist? Surely there’s nothing the lobbyist can say that that the senator’s own staff couldn’t research just as well, right?
I’m assuming most lobbyists aren’t blatantly bribing politicians with money. But if they’re not offering money, then what incentive does a politican have to listen to a lobbyist? How exactly does a lobbyist influence anyone?
I am not a lobbyist, but in my work as a foreign aid worker, I’ve been involved in lobbying efforts. Essentially, I participated in an effort to get Congress to commit more foreign aid money for a specific country. We wrote think pieces on why this country was important and the types of aid work that had a postive outcome in the country. That was the extent of my contribution to the effort. A lobbying group not only provide this and talking points to members of the hill, but also tried to mobilize voters in congressional districts from the country to call their representative and let him/her know that the issue was important to them.
Strictly speaking, the kind of work that madmonk28 was talking about the bulk of lobbying. The controversial part is that many of the top lobbying firms, which are semi-ideological in nature and weighted toward the Right or Left, have reputations for knowing exactly what the law is and skirting it as closely as possible. It’s amazing what kind of donations they can manage to raise, what kind of gifts they can give, and so forth. 20 years ago, it was a minor issue. Today, it seems to be getting worse, although appearance can be deceptive.
When I was interning in Congress, the congressman I was interning for had four legislative assistants; one who handled foreign affairs and millitary stuff, one who handled trade and agriculture, one who handled “social issues” like abortion and things like that, and one who handled general economic stuff. Those four people, between them, had the responsibility of researching and knowing about every issue that might come up in Congress. Obviously, they loved lobbyists.
Let’s put it this way. Lets say you’re a staffer. You obviously know things about abortion. But you don’t know enough as much about abortion as the National Right to Life Committee or Planned Parenthood. Or some bill is coming up that tightens or looses requirements to manufacture industrial chemicals. You don’t know as much about the issue as the American Chemisty Council.
Congressional staff vs lobbyists are like the saying about the fox and the hedgehog. The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one, big, thing. And of course, lobbyists also get the people in congressional districts involved and donate money to reelection campaigns. But their primary talent is to be used as a source of information by Congress and its staff.
But by definition, lobbyists are not-impartial. They’re highly biased so they’re only going to tell one side of the story, and they probably greatly exagerate or even lie. The politican knows this. So what’s the value in meeting with the lobbyist? Does the politican set up meetings with lobbyists from both sides of the issue, and hope they cancel each other out to provide a balanced picture?
Cause voting on a bill about manufacturing industrial chemicals based solely on what the Industrial Chemicals Manufacturing Association tells you seems pretty silly, no?
In some cases the bias of the lobbying group falls in-line with the voting preferences of the congressman’s district. A congressman will know if the advice of the NRA, for example, is going to coincide with what his constituents want.
They work like salesmen. They are trying to sell their opinion or desires to an elected official. Yes their opinions are biased it doesn’t mean they don’t know what they are talking about. They come with information that might be otherwise time consuming or costly to gather and offer it for free.
No they don’t. They speak from one side, yes, but they’re valuable – assuming everyone is acting within the law – only as long as they are trustworthy. Most lobbyists don’t lie because it’s a way to lose their credibility. And as stated upthread, a lot of what they do is produce reports which aren’t going to be trusted if they don’t cite their sources. The problems with lobbyists are, first, that some of them are engaged in illicit behavior in conjunction with legislators (neither party has completely clean hands, although a quick perusal of news stories of the last couple years suggests that one party is substantially more corrupt than the other right now; perhaps that will change after we’re back in the majority for a decade). Second, the nature of the beast is that well-moneyed interests have more access to lobbying, although not exclusively so – just this afternoon, as it happens, a friend from college who is a lobbyist had us over for lunch, and she mentioned that her primary clients are shelters for domestic abuse victims.
As discussed above, with current staffing levels there is simply no way that legislators can sui generis develop as complete an understanding of complex issues as a lobbyist can. So if you really object to the lobbying system, the only real option is a substantially higher tax burden so Congress can hire all the staff necessary to replace them. I wager you don’t want that.
First: Using the word “most” suggests that you agree that some lobbyists do lie. Therefore, it seems to me that (unless one knows which lie and which don’t) one must be wary and cautious of all of them.
Second: How is your comment different than “Most bankers don’t lend to uncreditworthy customers because it is a way to go out of business.” I do not mean that as an off-topic troll, only as an illustration that many individuals will do things which are against the industry’s interests, if it is in the individual’s interests.
What Cliffy said. Lobbyists are certainly biased, but that’s different from untrustworthy. Even a biased person can present a reasonably objective analysis of an issue, and you just take their biases into account when you’re listening to them. And. remember, the congressmen and their staffs are biased too, so it’s not like the lobbyists are tricking the poor innocent congressmen.
And saying “Some lobbyists lie” is just a sad reflection of human nature. In every industry, some people act unethically. But if a lobbyist lies, that’s not just against the industry’s interests, it’s against his individual interest. Official Washington is a small town, and a lobbyist’s main asset is his reputation. If he acts unethically in one campaign. that might help him on that campaign, but then when he comes back on the next issue, he’ll have a reputation as a bullshitter, a liar, or a guy who makes up facts, and nobody’s going to listen to him. It’s like with lawyers. The legal community in an area learns which lawyers are trustworthy and which aren’t, which are honest and which are liars, and obviously that affects how they get treated.
I’ll agree with this if you agree that it’s the same with some doctors, some street-sweepers, some priests, and some posters on the Dope. That is, it’s not a lobbyist disease, it’s a human disease. And yes, it does mean legislators should be wary of lobbyists with whom they don’t have a track record, but as I noted above, that actually incentivises lobbyists to be honest, because if they’re trustworthy, people will take their calls.
What Captain Amazing said. Unlike bankers, lobbyists are trading in large part on their personal reputation. Fucking over a senator by garnering his trust and then feeding him a line may benefit the guy’s immediate client, but it’s the rare case where it’s worth it to that lobbyist to shitcan possibly years of past relationship building and years of future access for one deal.
I get involved in discussions on the technical aspects of environmental regulations, with perspectives from industry associations and environmental groups. It’s not quite lobbying, but it’s pretty clear that these interested groups all have their own axes to grind. In some cases, the arguments can’t cancel out - chemical Z is OK vs. chemical Z is deadly.
But there is value in hearing both sides because there is often information that is agreed to by almost everyone. And as more info is developed, it’s interesting to see the two sides alter their positions - OK, it’s deadly sometimes, but not most of the time. Staying aware of what the interested parties are saying is a good way to see which way the debate is moving.
My experience is that no one seriously listens to the people who exaggerate too much. Everyone puts their spin and interpretation on things, but lying and excessive exaggeration put you out in left field. By spin and interpretation, I mean comments like “there is too little data to make a decision” or “if this is allowed to proceed it will cause 1000 people to get sick,” when the data might actually say that only under very certain conditions would 1000 sicknesses be possible - the spin is to leave out the limitations and focus on the worst case.
At the two organizations where I worked most closely with the lobbyists (one was a trade organization, the other an advocacy group) we knew much more about the issues we were involved in than almost any staff member – we gathered data from multiple sources, gave both the raw data and our interpretation of it, commissioned economic analyses of the effects of proposed legislation, etc.
Obviously our data had to be as complete an accurate as possible because even a semi-knowledgable staffer would know enough to know if we were hiding something. As with all information, the devil is in the details. A lot of what we talked about with legislators involved hidden costs, unintended consequences, long-term projections and other interpretations.
Yes, by definition lobbyists are not impartial. But the lobbyist requires a certain amount of credibility to have any influence at all. And influential lobbyists didn’t get their clout by continually misleading elected officials or their staffs.