OVERLOADING THE MINDS OF POLICYMAKERS

                 “He [Lee Drutman] shows persuasively how big spending

                 on lobbying has changed the legislative environment to favor
rich corporations. As lobbying expenditures rise, the game

of influence has become far more competitive, so any given
business is required to spend more to gain access to lawmakers
and to develop the best expertise on various issues. Drutman

also notes that it is harder to change the status quo with new
legislation because there are so many influential interests

benefiting from existing law. The victor who favors change
is often the business that spends most.

                   “Over the years, business spending on lobbying has been
aimed at changing the ‘intellectual environment.’ The requirement
is again to invest ‘considerable sums in saturating the ‘intellectual
environment,’’ writes Drutman, making it possible to overload
‘the minds of policy makers and their staff so that when the time
comes to make a decision, certain argument[s] and frames will
come to mind quicker than others.’ The lobbying firms. with

their clients’ funding, underwrite think tanks that write research papers
and Op-Ed pieces and participate in countless panel discussions. The
number of think tanks tripled from one hundred to roughly three hundred
between 1970 and 1996, most of them right-wing. These include conservative
think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Business Roundtable, and
the US Chamber of Commerce. There are far fewer liberal think tanks,
an influential example being the center-left Center for American Progress.
‘Often, the intellectual environment is overwhelmingly on one side of the issue,
but is sparse on the other side,’ Drutman points out.”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, a review of Lee Drutman’ The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.

LOBBYIST LURE AWAY CONGRESSIONAL STAFF FOR $300,000

“The point [Lee] Drutman raises most clearly is to me the most dangerous. Business lobbyists are offering higher pay to more and more congressional staffers, thus depleting Congress of its best, most experienced analysts. Those who hold senior staff positions that bring them into constant contact with lawmakers are offered up to $300,000 a year and more, and typically lobbying firms offer double the pay of less experienced staffers. Thus, lobbyists are not so much pounding on the doors of congressional offices; staffers are welcoming them in.

“Lobbyists, writes Drutman, are now deeply involved with developing and drafting of legislation. They also help staffers develop the talking points and explanations for why the legislation makes sense, write speeches and letters in support of it, seek out co-sponsors and supporters both within and outside of government, and generally see a bill through from start to finish.

“Some analysts term this a ‘lobbying subsidy’ to Congress. Oddly, Drutman is not always alarmed at this influence. In a study he did with a colleague, for example, he found that Enron’s political e-mails made arguments on the merits, and that its great resource was ‘its monopoly of policy-relevant information.’ He was on the staff of a senator and he writes that ‘this author’s personal experiences working in the Senate found that the majority of corporate lobbyists do know an incredible amount about their particular policy area, and are indeed very helpful as researchers and analysts.’”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, a review of Lee Drutman’ The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.

THREE IDEAS FOR LOBBYING REFORM

[Lee] “Drutman maks three serious recommendations for reform. One complex proposal he offers for reducing the imbalance of corporate spending on lobbying is to provide a federal subsidy for lobbying advocates who are outgunned financially by business. The catch is that they would have to show that there is widespread public support for their antibusiness position based on polls or surveys.

“A more simple plan he proposes, which I’d certainly prefer, would be to establish an Office of Public Lobbying, which would create a team of lobbyists to represent public opinions legislation in opposition to the overwhelming corporate positions. Drutman thinks a job in an Office of Public Lobbying could be appealing to staff members whose boss just lost an election, or others who want to remain in Washington and not work for corporate lobbyists. It could also have more appeal than working for an advocacy organization because it would probably be more secure.

“The imbalance of information available to congressional staff that so favors business could be offset by a congressional Lobbying Procedure Act. Any and all positions taken by a business lobbyist would be posted on a central website, to which opponents could react. The posting would include a list of any lobbyist meetings with staffers or policymakers, the names of those attending, and a short summary of the position offered. White papers or drafts of legislation would be posted on the website as well.

“The most important benefit of this proposal would be that the inner workings of business lobbying would be made public. Thus the advantage of having countless lobbyists to reach all policymakers with their messages would be reduced; their arguments would be available to all on the website. Opposition could also develop counterarguments once they knew the corporate lobbyist positions, and post them as well. The website would become an open marketplace of ideas, undoing the secretive nature of business lobbying.”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” a review of Lee Drutman’s The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.

LUCRATIVE JOB OFFERS FROM LOBBYING FIRMS

[Lee] “Drutman also suggests a number of ways to increase the capacity of Congress to research and write legislation, work now being undermined by lucrative job offers from private lobbying firms. One would be to improve the salaries and working conditions of staffers, including more acknowledgment of their work. A second is to make use of the expertise of faculties of local universities, which might provide formal credit to young faculty and students who work with congressional staffers.

“To me, the more promising possibility is federal funding of a corps of research consultants who would be available to policymakers when they need them. This would be the equivalent of public policy defenders. Thus policymakers would have access to less biased research.”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” a review of Lee Drutman’s The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.

LOBBYING REFORM NOT TAKEN SERIOUSLY

“There are no takers for [Lee] Drutman’s reforms. It seems that the reform of lobbying, for all the rhetoric, is not taken very seriously in America, and certainly not in the presidential campaigns so far. Campaign finance reform gets all the headlines while basic and immensely influential corporate lobbying is hardly noticed. Drutman presents one of the more thoughtful analyses of lobbying in America that has been made so far. But it may not inspire the anger and frustration that a campaign to reform lobbying will probably need.”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” a review of Lee Drutman’s The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.

OBAMA HIRES LOBBYISTS

“On President Obama's first day in office
in 2009, he issued an executive order to close ‘the revolving
door’ between government and the private sector by
restricting the hiring of any registered lobbyists for
positions in his administration. But Obama himself eventually
hired at least seventy lobbyists, many of whom then returned
to lobbying after a stint in his administration. So much
for Obama's campaign pledge that he would ‘tell the .
corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in
Washington are over. ‘The executive order has since been
dropped, and the number of business lobbyists in
Washington has continued rising rapidly.”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.

LOBBYISTS WRITE LEGISLATION

“ . . .  he[Lee Drutman]  remains highly concerned about the imbalance of spending and information in Washington today. He quotes Richard Hall and Alan Deardorff, authors of the 2006 paper ‘Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy’:

‘Legislators…work hard primarily on behalf of the interests that can afford the high costs, not only of organizing and making campaign contributions, but of paying professional lobbyists and financing the organizations that support them.’

“One example of how lobbyists actually write legislation involved a controversial rule to disallow banks from using depositors’ money to invest in derivatives. Financial reformers believe that such speculation shouldn’t be financed by savers’ deposits, which are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In this case, Citibank rewrote almost all of two paragraphs of legislation that undermined the reform. Drutman provides too few such examples. But a number of academic studies conclude from specific cases that lobbying pays off financially. Several of the studies he cites briefly arrive at the following conclusions:

—“ ‘The stocks of the firms that spent the most on lobbying as a percentage of their assets beat market averages substantially.’

—“ ‘The more firms lobby, the lower their tax rates.’

— “ ‘Lobbying has a positive effect on a firm’s return on equity compared to the market as a whole.’

— “ ‘Companies that lobby intensively are less likely to be detected for fraud than other companies.’

— “ ‘Companies with politically connected board members have higher stock market returns than others.’”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, a review of Lee Drutman’s The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.