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Lobbyists demand some respect
Dave Wenhold runs the American League of Lobbyists.
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Tess Vigeland: These are the best of times and the worst of times to be a lobbyist in Washington. Congress has taken on everything from reshaping health care to the financial system. So business is booming. But lobbyists raking in money don't always get a lot of respect. And now they're lobbying for that, too. The American League of Lobbyists is ponying up a modest $25,000 to start a PR campaign.
Brett Neely reports from Washington.
Brett Neely: Washington's K Street is to lobbying shops what Wall Street is to banks. And so K Street drew hundreds of union demonstrators earlier this week who were protesting banks and their lobbyists.
Protestors: Whose street? Our street!
Beating up on Washington's 13,000 registered lobbyists is nothing new. Take the 2005 movie "Thank You for Smoking," a satire about a tobacco lobbyist. In this scene, a journalist tells the lobbyist what people think of him.
Heather Holloway: My other interviews have pinned you as a mass murderer, blood sucker, pimp, profiteer, child killer, and my personal favorite, yuppie Mephistopheles.
Now, lobbyists have called up their own lobbyist to turn their image around. Dave Wenhold runs the American League of Lobbyists. He's leading the industry's PR campaign. We met, appropriately enough, in the lobby of a building just a block away from the U.S. Capitol.
Dave Wenhold: We're going to be talking about, why hire a lobbyist? Well, there's a really good reason for that. One of the reasons is because they're an expert in the political process.
He says many politicians are stretched too thin, so they need expert lobbyists to give them advice on legislation.
Wenhold: I'm a pretty smart guy, I kinda know where my appendix is, but if I'm having appendicitis, I'm going to a doctor who knows where it is.
He emphasizes that lobbyists aren't just corporate hired guns. There are lobbyists who specialize in cancer research and homeless shelters. For Wenhold, it's not really members of Congress who represent the American public, it's guys like him.
Wenhold: Most people are represented by lobbyists, and they don't even know. I mean, to give you an example: The second you get up in the morning you're represented by a lobbyist. You go to have your toast, the wheat lobbyists love you. You have your eggs, the poultry farmers love you and their lobbyists. You get in your car, if it's a Toyota, you have a lot of lobbyists right now.
But cases like Toyota contribute to the industry's bad reputation. The company had to recall millions of cars because of sudden acceleration problems. According to Congressional testimony, Toyota's lobbyists bragged about aggressively heading off tighter government oversight before the safety issues became public.
Melanie Sloan runs the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Her group just hired its first lobbyist. Sloan says everyone, including lobbyists, has a right to petition Congress, but...
Melanie Sloan: Lobbyists are able to buy access to members of Congress with campaign contributions, and it's really that that so gets to the American people.
Because her group is nonprofit, its lobbyist won't donate. But Dave Wenhold says lobbyists' campaign contributions don't buy access to lawmakers. He does agree that the campaign finance system is broken.
Wenhold: I think it would be great if members of Congress stopped asking lobbyists for donations. I really do. I would love to go home on a Wednesday night at a reasonable time, and I know members hate doing it, too. But until every American is willing to pony up a couple of thousand dollars to elect their elected official, that process isn't going to change.
Wenhold says people may blame lobbyists for everything that's wrong with Washington, but lobbyists aren't the ones casting Congressional votes. And he says if voters don't like what their member of Congress is up to, they should vote for someone else.
In other words, blame the system. Don't blame the lobbyist.
In Washington, I'm Brett Neely for Marketplace.
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Those that say that if I actually knew how lobbyists work I wouldn't be blaming them. I know exactly how they work and I know exactly why I don't like them. All of them. The ones who lobby for everything. Even things that I may agree with currently. Apparently lobbyists don't know how the constituency feels regarding their responsibility int the political machine. So convenient to spin it off as "dumb people who don't know what we do" instead of realizing that you are part of the problem. I guess denial not only works for Wall Street and BP it also works for you.
I listened to this piece last night and immediately knew that I�d have to check this morning�s comments. Mr. Wenhold obviously didn�t do his homework before agreeing to be interviewed for this piece � apparently he didn�t recognize that Marketplace listeners don�t mindlessly swallow PR spin. And with a meager $25k investment, it�s clear that the lobbyist didn�t expect their PR efforts to be very fruitful. The fact that average Americans are enraged at a full range of political, financial and corporate interests is evidence that people will no longer view the �system� as a preprogrammed machine that operates out of anyone�s control, but rather as collective series of actions and decisions for which individuals (including lobbyist) should and will be held accountable.
Most of the people who complain about lobbyists don't have a clue about what we do. They hear about Jack Abramoff and think we are all like him. We're not! I invite anyone who "hates" lobbyists to go to my website -- www.theclagroup.com or follow me on FaceBook or Twitter (the_cla_group) and see what a real lobbyist does.
Mark Hoelter: Good point. I'm thinking of course of the lobbyists for companies like ADM who were guilty of price fixing agricultural commodities. Or many other companies who have been involved in price fixing. The lobbyist in that case is working for the company, against the consumer.
Another 'fun' example is Rod Blagojevich. The MPAA gave him tens of thousands of dollars, he signed a bill making it a felony to use your cell phone camera in a movie theatre, and some little girl got an arrest record because she was recording her birthday party and was facing years in jail before they threw the case out. I think the lobbyists in this case were not worried about the public very much.
The Toyota example, as the story points out, is a hilariously bad example for the lobbyist to have chosen considering the recent problems.
The 'solution' is to enforce laws against bribery and corruption, which is what 'campaign donations' are. But it seems that in the mind of the 'free market' fanatics, bribery doesn't exist, fraud doesn't exist, corruption doesn't exist, everyone is a 'rational agent'... and therefore anyone complaining about fraud, bribery, or corruption is some kind of 'anti free market' person. The free marketer ideological puritanism reminds one of Marxist dogma, simply flipped on it's head to benefit the free world's own version of the Nomenklatura.
For those of you who like to bash lobbyists but have never been to Washington, I suggest you come here to visit your Member of Congress to see how it really works. Our laws are made and negotiated by recent college grads who often don't know the first thing about how a poultry farm, a coal mine, a hospital or even your local car dealership is run. Without lobbyists, this country would grind to a halt. The size and budget of Congressional offices hasn't changed since the 70's, long before email began flooding offices with correspondence. Members of Congress have too many complex issues to try and understand before casting their vote. Therefore, they rely on lobbyists, and their engaged constituents, to educate them. If you've ever called you Member of Congress to try and change their opinion, you've lobbied. Let's face it, it's the money and the campaign finance laws that are the problem, but Congress and the Administration can't give up the money, and neither can the media, given the air time and adds it purchases, so instead they blame the lobbyists. Money buys access. Period. If you want to reduce "lobbyists" (a.k.a corporate) influence, change the finance laws. In the meantime, you can thank lobbyists for cleaning up your drinking water, improving the quality of the air we breath, saving and expanding our National Parks and green space, and preserving your civil rights. Oh and if you're a teacher, doctor, nurse, factory worker, small business owner, unemployed, a citizen, or even a non-citizen, of this country, trust me, you have at least one lobbyist or an organization of them working for you.
Two things. First, citing "union protesters" doesn't lend credibility to your story; even in the last few days unions' manufactured protests don't let even the law get in the way of their intimidation tactics. Second, if people have to hire lobbyists to get the ear of their representatives, that's really a good piece of evidence in favor of expanding the House of Representatives. The *smallest* districts nowadays have at least an order of magnitude more people than a district that would have been considered unreasonably large two hundred years ago.
Oh puhleeze..give me a break. Wenhold's statement that we should blame the system and not the lobbyist is like saying we shouldn't blame drug dealers for dealing drugs because -well- the system allows them to do it.
Get real, Mr. Lobbyist. Just because you CAN act in a certain manner doesn't mean your actions should be condoned. Fed-up Americans are tired of excuses about why the status needs to remain quo-ed.
I don't believe any lobbyist represents me or my interests. Most "average Americans" cannot even elicit a "real" response from their Congressperson when they write to him/her. What would make anyone think that a lobbyist cares about the faceless masses?
No lobbyists were injured in the creation of my point of view. But you can bet I won't support Love your Lobbyist day, either.
Mark hit the nail on the head. The lobbyist isn't representing me. It's representing a company. Pretty poor that the interviewer didn't point that out.
The lobbyists are casting the votes through contributions and lies to mislead the congresspeople. With my vote I can choose a person bought by one lobbying group or the opponent who is bought by a different group of lobbyists.
Lobbying in its current form should be outlawed.
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