Over at Political Animal, Ed Kilgore recaps and briefly discusses
two ideas regarding lobbying members of Congress. One idea seeks to level the playing field and the other seeks to provide some transparency.
Competitive lobbying
The first proposal, to create a system for public interest lobbying, is similar to the system of public financing for presidential elections. There would be a process to register an issue or affected constituency, demonstrate that it is effectively unrepresented to Congress, and then grant public funds to support professional lobbyists on behalf of the issue or constituency.
It sounds good in theory, I suppose. But I fail to see the need and I believe it addresses a nearly non-existent problem while ignoring the real challenge, as explained below the fold.
Most issues and constituencies are already represented in Washington. Think of anything: LGBQT folk and fundamentalist Christians, spotted owls and hunters, climate change deniers and climate change heralds, labor unions and Wall Street financiers, black or brown or any other color of people, and so on. I think most issues and groups already have people ready and willing to advocate on their behalf.
The problem is not lack of lobbyists, it's lack of equal access and weight. Congressman Tallywacker isn't about to meet with a lobbyist on behalf of the spotted owl because said lobbyist can't promise him votes nor can he wink-wink-nudge-nudge that the honorable congressman can expect a 7-figure donation from the Spotted Owl PAC.
However, if the lobbyist for the Wall Street Fat Cats Benevolent Society phones, the congressman will tell his mistress or boytoy to take a rest for a few minutes while he servilely receives his marching and voting orders from Wall Street. He knows who will arrange fundraisers and PACs and outside "educational" or "grassroots" groups to advertise thinly on his behalf.
So, how effective would a publicly funded lobbying system be? Representatives and senators already ignore existing lobbyists who can't cough up plausibly-deniable bribes campaign donation bundles so why should we expect that to change? To truly compete with lobbyists from industries, Wall Street, and richly endowed groups like the NRA, a public system would have to offer competitive inducements, i.e., campaign funds.
I think rather than invest in an effort to implement this idea, we would be better off working toward eliminating the money=speech lunacy and the free-for-all auctioneering of public offices. We should put that energy toward a constitutional amendment, if necessary, to make public campaign financing exclusive and mandatory, with strict limits on donations from individuals or groups (and sweeten the deal for politicos with things like free franking for their mailers, obligatory time for debates and ad spots on the public airwaves, etc.).
If congresspeople weren't required to raise vast sums in order to campaign for office, and if individuals or groups were equally limited in their ability to promise or provide those funds, they would have far less incentive to cater only to lobbyists representing the rich or powerful groups with vast resources.
Transparency in lobbying
The second idea in the article is a proposal to enact a law to require disclosure of lobbyist meetings with our congress-critters. It would publish the basic data about the meeting (who, what, when, etc.) as well as require that accompanying documentation be publicly released as well (such as draft legislation, white papers, and so on).
This idea has great merit. We should know with whom our representatives are meeting and what they have discussed. Barring a few exceptions for very specific agenda items (e.g, national security or trade secrets), there is no reason for the topics and details of such discussions to be secret.
If true campaign financing reforms were enacted, this transparency proposal would benefit all parties. The public would see what issues and ideas are being proposed or debated and could communicate their consideration, endorsements, objections, or alternative ideas. Congresspeople would get the benefit of input from their constituents and a good sense of how popular or loathed any particular idea is. Lobbyists, and their employers, would also see quickly how likely the public is to accept or reject what they propose and perhaps modify their stances or legislative proposals.
In a healthy functioning democracy it would be a win-win-win for all of the involved parties.