WP: Officials Fail To Track Lobbying, Report Says

Officials Fail To Track Lobbying, Report Says
Research Group Cites Billions Spent, but Spotty Regulation

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 8, 2005; Page E01


Washington's lobbying industry has mushroomed over the past decade but the government has fallen behind in keeping track of the billions of dollars a year that lobbyists spend, according to a study by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity.

Lobbying expenditures in Washington have at least doubled in the past six years, the center reported. Last year, corporations, labor unions and interest groups spent more than $3 billion trying to influence the federal government, up from $1.6 billion in 1998.

At the same time, the center said, enforcement of lobbying regulations has been lax. The center estimated that at least 14,000 disclosure documents required under a 10-year-old lobbying law were not filed over the period, including documents that should have come from 49 of the nation's 50 largest lobbying firms.

"Neither the House nor Senate offices responsible for keeping records on K Street's activities have audit or investigative powers," said Roberta Baskin, the center's executive director. "It is impossible, for example, to determine how many lobbyists there actually are in Washington."

The center's report gives only a partial picture of the size and scope of contemporary lobbying. It tallied the spending of registered lobbyists who directly contacted lawmakers and administration officials. That calculation, while accurate as far as it goes, leaves out the faster-growing and probably larger forms of indirect lobbying such as stirring up local contacts from the "grass roots" and buying newspaper, radio and TV ads....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35425-2005Apr7.html

Campaign finance and lobby groups. Both are rotten to the core...:grr:

The forms they make you fill out are a complete joke. If you never report, you never have to fill them out, and they would never know. You can also say just about anything on those forms, and there's no way for anyone to actually find out. We fill them out honestly, but somewhat vaguely, because it's a waste of our time to be more specific if we don't need to be.

I never have gotten how lobbying isn't the same thing as a bribe...
as well as "campaign" contributions by corporations.

The best way to describe a lobbyist is this:

If you have an issue before the courts, the person you would hire to represent you is a lawyer.

If you have an issue before Congress or the Executive Branch, the person you would hire to represent you is a lobbyist.

While making contributions on behalf of your client IS a part of the job of a lobbyist, it's certainly not the only part, by any means. What we do is act as a liaison between a private entity and the government. The clients I represent are mostly research universities. What I do for them is present the case to the appropriate people within the government as to why they deserve to get Federal funding for their research projects. Being a rather lengthy and complicated process, it's important to have a lobbyist to stay on top of all the things that are required and when they are due. Donations do play part. When you go to a fundraiser, entry to which can cost anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars, it's one of the few occassions when you get guaranteed face-to-face time with the people who can help you out. It also lets them know that you support them and what they do, because quite frankly, no one in ANY industry wants to help out their opponents. Now, are donations REQUIRED to get things done? Absolutely not. We only really go to fundraisers for the ones who've helped us out repeatedly over the years, the ones in key districts, and/or the ones on key committees. Does making a donation increase your chances of success? Absolutely.

Now, is it a bribe? I suppose you could look at it that way. But that would make every person in this country who contributed to a campaign guilty of bribery too. Political contributions have been protected by the Supreme Court as a method of free speech. While I disagree with this interpretation in the case of organizations and corporations, that's the way it is and will continue to be.

"Do the Right thing" to "Who has the best organization and money"...

fundamentally. the solution? Beyond me..lord knows
on some R&D project that is complex if there is no one around
to track it, address the reasons and so forth it would be buried...

but fundamentally it bothers me that those with the most buckos
gets the ear.

But short of the Supremes making a new ruling on corporate citizenship or having Federal elections being entirely funded by the government (fat chance of that), there really is nothing that can be done about it.

I should note though that I'm not exactly you're stereotypical rich lobbyist. Literally speaking, the janitors at Georgetown University make about the same amount I do after their students went on a hunger strike to get them a "living wage".

:shrug: Awash in corruption and no one gives a rat's ass. Ain't Amerika Grand????