On this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck talk lobbying. This practice is nearly universally disliked, even though it’s as old as the U.S. government, due to its propensity for corruption. However, it would be unfair to say that lobbying should be outlawed, or serves no useful purpose. Special interest lobbying groups can range from big-business interests to grassroots nonprofit agencies to labor unions, and the work they do is important to passing legislation. Unfortunately, it’s way too easy to use lobbying against the American people, protecting the interests of giant corporations over average citizens, and pumping a lot of money in – and out – of the government for shady reasons. Josh and Chuck break down the history of lobbying, the reasons there are so many problems attached to it, and what could be done to prevent the corruption that strangles its usefulness.
There have always been lobbyists, but by the end of the 19th century, people were sick to death of them. Throughout the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and early 1900s, corruption in the government was blatantly rampant, and after the Credit Mobilier scandal when the Union Pacific Railroad was found to have artificially driven up the value of their shares as a Congressional incentive to let them grab land, lobbying restrictions began to be put into place. But remember how lobbyists do serve a useful purpose? Congresspeople don’t have the time to take a deep research dive into every issue or topic brought to them by their constituents or other lawmakers. So they rely on congressional staffers to figure out the facts and the various solutions that could be applied, and that’s how legislation gets written. Lobbyists do that work, too, and not just for Big Pharma; NASA, the Girl Scouts, the arts and culture sector, affordable housing, and environmental concerns all practice lobbying to make change.
Unfortunately, the corruption has scaled back up over time due to a variety of factors. There was an act passed in the 1980s that defined lobbyists as spending “21% of their time” advocating for a client; thousands of lobbyists de-registered immediately, realizing they could simply say they were spending only 20.9% of their time advocating for clients and skirt all the lobbyist regulations. And in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House, he slashed congressional spending, saying it decreased government waste. But it actually resulted in less congressional staff to do that essential research, making politicians increasingly reliant on lobbyists to write legislation. It didn’t even save money – the Congressional Budget Office found that for every dollar spent on staffing their office, they could find $90 worth of budget cuts; more staff actually means less waste. And all this barely scratches the surface. Learn more about the dark side of lobbying, and what could be done to save it, on this episode of Stuff You Should Know.
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