Again, Just Why is it We Register Lobbyists?
At the federal level, anyone who is paid to persuade Congress is required to register as a lobbyist. Now, you might think the benefit of identifying lobbyists is a wonderful thing. In the name of transparency, surely we should want these folks out in the open.
Well, I'm not sure it actually works that way.
They register as lobbyists, but is there any record of who they meet with, which laws they work on, or when they are influencing Congress? If you don't make those things transparent, what good does it do to merely make it known that they exist as lobbyists? If you are not tracing their influence, does it matter?
Here's one benefit of the lobbyist program, you say: They can't buy gifts for Congress members. Surely, that is worth something, for we don't want our elected officials to be influenced by money.
No, we don't. Certainly not.
How is it, then, that we allow them to contribute to political campaigns? Which does the politician more good, a ski pass to Vail or, say, $20,000 being poured into his or her campaign treasury? If we can see the ski pass is a bad influence, why do we not worry about the $20,000 going into the campaign treasury? We are penny wise and pound foolish, if we suppose our no-gifts-trick is doing any good at all.
If our politicians really wanted to ward off such bad influences on themselves when they passed the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, something tells me they would have gone about things a little differently.
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