The Daily Show takes on lobbyists. Apparently there is a law afoot (for now, still just a bill) that would prohibit lobbyists from hiring people to wait in line for front-row seats at meetings of committee meetings and the like. My question: who wins and who loses if this bill passes?
First, let's set aside the notion, compelling though it may be, that lobbyists are anthropomorphic pond scum bent on buying out our government. There are good causes, and there are bad causes, all of which have lobbyists. For example, I once met a lobbyist for the National Science Foundation. I presume we can all agree that we're in no danger of the government selling out to… the government.
In fact, consider this: there are 300 million people living in this country. With only 535 members of the two houses of Congress, that's roughly 600,000 apiece. If a legislator spends all day, every day, 365 days a year talking to citizens, never stopping to sleep, that would give us each about 50 seconds a year to make our concerns known--to just one member out of 535. Clearly, we can't all go up to Capitol Hill and make our concerns known. What we can do, however, is to get together with a bunch of like-minded people and hire a spokesman to go up to Capitol Hill for us and tell our concerns to as many Congresspeople as will listen. That is, we could hire a lobbyist. In this sense lobbyists perform a valuable service. Without them, only a select few would get to express their views to the Congress, and I have a hunch that it wouldn't be you and me.
It's not a perfect system, I concede. People with more money can hire more and better lobbyists. Some lobbyists engage in questionable practices, if not out-and-out bribery; however, sadly, it's the best we've got.
But, we were talking about the effects of the new (proposed) law. It turns out that you have to wait quite a long time to get into these meetings where you can get on with educating legislators, expressing concerns, and whatnot. And it turns out that good lobbyists are in demand, so they command shockingly high salaries (as anyone who has competed in the housing market in the DC area will ruefully tell you). Consequently, having them wait around in a queue for the legislators to show up is a tremendous waste of money. Better to hire a bike messenger (or even an "unemployed puppeteer") at much less cost to wait while the expensive guy does something productive (inasmuch as the deadweight losses associated with influencing government can be considered "productive" -- work with me here).
So, what happens if you can't hire cheap placeholders for the line? Well, then you have to have the actual lobbyists do it, which means that each one accomplishes a lot less in a day. Equivalently, lobbying gets a lot more expensive. Who loses from this (apart from the placeholders themselves, of course--apparently the pay is pretty good)? At the margins, every cause will consume less political lobbying, but for interest groups who can already can afford to do only a little bit, that marginal decrease translates to a huge reduction in their effectiveness at influencing policy. Conversely, well-funded interests may at the margin get fewer hours of face time with legislators, but will overall be more effective due to reduced competition from other interests.
Conclusion: Congressmen Cohen's bill, however well-intentioned it may be, will probably have the effect of concentrating influence in the best-funded special interest groups while driving niche interests out of the political process.
First, let's set aside the notion, compelling though it may be, that lobbyists are anthropomorphic pond scum bent on buying out our government. There are good causes, and there are bad causes, all of which have lobbyists. For example, I once met a lobbyist for the National Science Foundation. I presume we can all agree that we're in no danger of the government selling out to… the government.
In fact, consider this: there are 300 million people living in this country. With only 535 members of the two houses of Congress, that's roughly 600,000 apiece. If a legislator spends all day, every day, 365 days a year talking to citizens, never stopping to sleep, that would give us each about 50 seconds a year to make our concerns known--to just one member out of 535. Clearly, we can't all go up to Capitol Hill and make our concerns known. What we can do, however, is to get together with a bunch of like-minded people and hire a spokesman to go up to Capitol Hill for us and tell our concerns to as many Congresspeople as will listen. That is, we could hire a lobbyist. In this sense lobbyists perform a valuable service. Without them, only a select few would get to express their views to the Congress, and I have a hunch that it wouldn't be you and me.
It's not a perfect system, I concede. People with more money can hire more and better lobbyists. Some lobbyists engage in questionable practices, if not out-and-out bribery; however, sadly, it's the best we've got.
But, we were talking about the effects of the new (proposed) law. It turns out that you have to wait quite a long time to get into these meetings where you can get on with educating legislators, expressing concerns, and whatnot. And it turns out that good lobbyists are in demand, so they command shockingly high salaries (as anyone who has competed in the housing market in the DC area will ruefully tell you). Consequently, having them wait around in a queue for the legislators to show up is a tremendous waste of money. Better to hire a bike messenger (or even an "unemployed puppeteer") at much less cost to wait while the expensive guy does something productive (inasmuch as the deadweight losses associated with influencing government can be considered "productive" -- work with me here).
So, what happens if you can't hire cheap placeholders for the line? Well, then you have to have the actual lobbyists do it, which means that each one accomplishes a lot less in a day. Equivalently, lobbying gets a lot more expensive. Who loses from this (apart from the placeholders themselves, of course--apparently the pay is pretty good)? At the margins, every cause will consume less political lobbying, but for interest groups who can already can afford to do only a little bit, that marginal decrease translates to a huge reduction in their effectiveness at influencing policy. Conversely, well-funded interests may at the margin get fewer hours of face time with legislators, but will overall be more effective due to reduced competition from other interests.
Conclusion: Congressmen Cohen's bill, however well-intentioned it may be, will probably have the effect of concentrating influence in the best-funded special interest groups while driving niche interests out of the political process.
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