Senator Reid is part of the Old School. He does not understand anything about what President Obama is about to try and do, and he will end up being an obstructionist, whether he intends to or not.
I present the following quote as evidence of that fact.
People should understand that lobbyists, per se, are someone's father, mother, son, daughter," said Reid. "They work for a living." The Democratic leader's sons and a son-in-law have worked as lobbyists.
Harry, why do we have to explain this to you?
Senator Reid, you believe that Lobbyists are a permanent part of Washington politics. But you clearly have not been paying attention.
"Lobbyists" are NOT people because they do NOT represent themselves. They represent the firms, industries or entities that pay them to schmooze you and sometimes even do your work for you. Yes, they are human beings, but it is the role (not necessarily the person) that I find offensive.
While it is true not ALL lobbyists are bad (I actually currently financially support lobbyists for universal healthcare, veterans issues, and motorcycle rights and I feel these are all good causes) it is the PERCEIVED necessity of lobbyists with which I take issue because if you gave ME, an individual citizen, the same access that you give lobbyists, why would we need lobbyists? (The answer to this is also disturbing because many of you in Congress have deferred all your research and bill authoring to these same lobbyists. But I digress.)
Thus we come to the crux of the anti-lobbyists issue. They simply are no longer necessary:
- Whether you wish to admit it or not, lobbyists are people that represent not themselves, but rather represent entities with vast amounts of money that they throw at you to buy your influence at the expense of the influence of the American people.
- Because of this relationship, lobbyists have hijacked the entire political machine and it becomes simply an issue of he who has the most money wins.
- President Obama has looked at this situation and has decided this is bad for America and has found a better way.
- President Obama has shown that you can raise plenty enough money on the Internet to finance any campaign of any size without relying on the lobbyists for assistance or "percs".
- President Obama has enlisted 100 million US citizens to substitute their ideas for those of the lobbyists (see Change.gov and WhiteHouse.gov)
Now you may say, "yes well that isn’t how Washington works" and apparently ABC News agrees with you.
While Obama has banned lobbyists and their money from his White House, he may find that he can't ban them from Washington or even his inauguration. Indeed, given the number of events in the past few days, there's no sign the city's 15,000 lobbyists will give up their power easily.
But that was OLD Washington. Pre-Obama Washington. And today, everything changed. In fact, the lobbyists have already lost their power. It is just that they haven’t figured that out yet.
And Senator, I’ll let you in on a secret. Congress has less than 2 years to figure this fact out before we start getting rid of everyone of you Old School, money grubbing POLS that don’t buy into the new way of running this country.
So, Senator! What is it going to be? Our Way or the Hi-Way?