 Good afternoon. Good evening. Welcome to New America. My name is Mark Schmidt. I direct the program on political reform here At New America, and we're a relatively new program I've been I had been at New America previously returned about a year ago to launch this program and you know our main goal here is To kind of get some fresh thinking and and fresh voices into the conversation about political reform and the challenge of economic inequality perpetuating itself through the political process and Leading to greater inequality and a kind of economic stagnate societal stagnation Is the way we put it and yet we're a small lean program that sets out to solve that problem In October of last year Lee Drutman joined our program as a senior fellow and and we're thrilled to have him and A couple weeks ago his book the business of America's Lobby and came out Which makes it pretty much the quickest production of a book by a program or an individual in the history of New America So we're pretty excited about that and at this rate. We should have about 20 books in the next in the next five years I'm kidding. I'm kidding. This is this is a this is a work of long-standing For the Lee's been working out for a great long time And it's sort of a happy coincidence that we're be able to to be his home at the point when it comes out And I think we'll have a really significant Role in helping people we think very common assumptions about lobbying some of which are true and and Explained in detail and some of which are a lot more complicated than that Then maybe we think they are when I started the program one of my one of my things was to say I think I feel like there are a lot of people out there who don't have quite aren't quite as heard in the public Debate as as they ought to be and one of the things that we can do here is is is give them a little bit of a Of a platform and more of a voice and the first person I thought of when I thought of what's that kind of person is is Lee who I'd known and worked with for it for a number of years And so we were able to bring him over from the Sunlight Foundation and beginning to Really put it put a great program together Lee is Lee has a great range of experience. He has a PhD from Berkeley I was out there last last week and everybody was talking about how great Lee was He's also worked on the Hill and he's been a journalist so to me. That's a good That's a that's a good a great new America combo of Academic and journalist and journalism in real-world experience that you see a lot of around here So what we're gonna do tonight is Lee's gonna talk a little bit about the book what he's learned how he came to think about lobbying and And then he'll join a conversation with Peter over be of NPR Peter's been at NPR covering money in politics since 1994. We all know his voice Some of us know some of us would recognize him on the street. Most of us would recognize his voice And he's also been involved in beyond radio He's been involved in some really significant multi-media Projects that has helped people understand the role of money in politics and and and lobbying as well So they'll have a bit of a discussion We'll open it up to people here and and then we'll reopen the bar in the back of the room and I encourage people to Indulge hang out don't overindulge hang out and don't don't feel don't do what lobbyists would do And and enjoy yourself. We're glad to have all of you here. Thank you. All right. Well, thanks for the introduction mark and I'm really thrilled to be here tonight with all of you to tell you about my new book the business of America is lobbying It's a book about the growth of corporate lobbying here in Washington DC It's about how and why corporations came to overwhelm this town with all the lobbying that they do It's about what this pervasive position of business is doing to American democracy And it has a few ideas about what we ought to do in response So you all know that there's a lot of lobbying here in Washington. That's that's not new information, but How much lobbying well, it's about two point six billion dollars a year in lobbying is what? Corporations spend that's in reported lobbying You probably want to double that to get an accurate picture of how much lobbying is going on and that's a that's a big number. It's More than we spend on the entire house and the entire Senate combined that's two billion dollars It's also a lot more than corporations spend on their campaign contributions They spend about 13 times more in lobbying than PAC contributions It's also a lot lot more than Countervailing institutions like labor unions and public interest groups spend on lobbying in fact for every one dollar that Public interest groups and labor unions combined spend on lobbying Corporations now spend thirty four dollars of the hundred biggest spending organizations here in Washington DC on lobbying Ninety-five of those are business organizations biggest most active companies spend upwards of Ten million dollars a year on lobbying they hire 100 plus lobbyists and that kind of allows them to be everywhere all the time you know there's an old saying in Washington if you are not at the table, then you are probably on the menu and The biggest companies are increasingly buying up every seat at every table and increasingly they're even writing the menus Now I do want to be clear business does not always get what it wants. In fact Politics is not a vending machine It's not this kind of thing where you just put your campaign contributions and the slot and get your nice shrink wrap policy outcomes Below it's it's much more complicated and much more interesting, which is why there's so much money spent on lobbying A lot of times businesses fight each other both directly and for attention Creates a situation that ultimately I don't think is very good for business It makes it harder for anybody to get what it want what they want. It makes our politics dysfunctional But I do think it creates an environment where if anybody gets what they want It's most likely to be large corporations and it also makes the status quo a lot harder to change So I'm gonna talk I'm gonna cover try to answer three questions in my remarks here I'm gonna try to answer How did we get here? What has this transformation rock wrought and what should we do about it? So how did we get here? And really that's two questions sub questions. What changed and why? Because there wasn't always this much lobbying in Washington DC In fact, if you took your time machine and went back to the 1960s You'd find very few companies with lobbyists here in Washington. There were trade associations And in 1963 a hot new study by some political scientists came out It was called American business and public policy and the conclusion of that book was Quote when we look at the typical lobby we find its opportunities to maneuver are sharply limited It's staff mediocre and it's typical problem not the influencing of congressional votes But finding the clients and contributors to enable it to survive at all now Doesn't really describe lobbying today very well. So a lot has changed It's the number of lobbyists has grown tremendously and also the nature of lobbying has changed It's gone from lobbying used to be very reactive sparse defensive and it's become ubiquitous proactive Preemptive and increasingly ambitious and a lot of that story Is because lobbyists were key drivers of this growth So went back to the 1960s again not a lot of lobbying and this is why Congress was Enable to enact all kinds of regulatory laws created a whole new swath of federal regulatory agencies in the mid 1960s to early 1970s Department of Transportation OSHA the EPA consumer product Safety Commission a whole lot of a lot of agencies that you maybe know and then love and By the early 1970s corporations CEOs were Feeling a bit of an existential threat almost they they felt that that they're That the whole free enterprise system was under attack and that they needed to do something to to fight back All these regulatory agencies were heaping on compliance costs The economy was was stagnating dealing with wage and price controls and so 1972 they formed the business roundtable Chamber of Commerce was reinvigorated and 1970s Corporations for the first time really invested in in Washington. They hired lobbyists and and you know what they started winning By the early 1980s. They had significantly rolled back regulation Taxes were considerably lower cost-benefit analysis was was entrenched in the White House and It's a pretty good situation for business. So they could have just said, you know what we got what we wanted We don't need to keep investing in Washington But you see now they had lobbyists and those lobbyists wanted to stay doing lobbying and They started teaching the companies. Well, here's all the things that you could do in Washington And here's all the policies that are at stake and we're gonna come up with new policies. So over time Corporations began to become more ambitious. They began to see more opportunities. They began to see Washington almost as a profit center Well, not almost Quite quite as a profit center So I interviewed a bunch of lobbyists for this book, which is one of many reasons why you might want to buy the book There are a lot of great quotes from from real working corporate lobbyists who were generous enough to Talk to me And I'll share two of them that I think captured this transformation while I did these interviews mostly in 2007 and 2008 so one lobbyist said 25 years ago our companies were run by engineers and it was just keep the government out of our business We want to do what we want to do and gradually that's changed to how can we make the government our partners? It's gone from leave us alone to let's work on this together And I think if you take away one summary sentence describes the transformation of corporate lobbying It's gone from leave us alone to let's work on this together. Keep government out of our business, too Let's let's work with the government another lobbyist another quote When they started management thought government relations did something else They thought it was to manage public relations crises Hearing inquiries my boss told me you've taught us to do things. We didn't know could ever be done And I think the key verb in that sentence is taught right lobbyists taught companies to to see politics in a very different way and Lobby has this kind of self-reinforcing quality once companies hire lobbyists once they set up a government relations office They they see more things to be involved in they have the capacity they've paid the sunk costs of setting up an office and There's always more to do and so lobbying kind of feeds on itself There's always new issues to get involved in and over time to to justify The cost of lobbying lobbyists have focused more and more on bottom line benefits They focused on narrow issues that individual companies have at stake don't don't leave it to the trade associations new You need your own representation and over time. This has increased the particularism of corporate lobbying fragmentation So All right, so so there's a lot more lobbying than there used to be it's become more proactive and aggressive than it used to be So what is this transformation brought? Well, I think there are three things three trends that the growth of corporate lobbying has both interacted with and exacerbated first is increasing competition second is declining government capacity and the third is increasing policy complexity and and So, you know, so three C's competition capacity and complexity. All right, so Competition right there's a lot more lobbying than there used to be in fact There's about a six-fold increase in lobbying expenditures since the early 1980s not more hours in a day Not more days in a year not more members of Congress not more Congressional staffers in fact there are now fewer committee staffers than there were in 1980 So There's one lobbyist said it's gotten more brutal more cutthroat all in all it becomes harder to penetrate Capitol Hill Because there's so much white noise. So what do you have to do? You have to do more lobbying You have to build bigger coalitions hire more lobbyists talk to more people Do more you mobilize grassroots pay think tanks to do research reports get off-ed seated Whatever it is more more more and as the competition has increased Corporations or business associations have the capacity to keep pouring more resources in not everyone has that capacity so as time has has passed and the cost of Getting anything done have increased. This is made corporations more and more dominant as the leading actors in the Washington lobbying game Second trend declining congressional capacity You know sarcastic observers often complain that we have the best Congress that money can buy Actually, I think it's quite the opposite. We've been doing Congress on the cheap for decades and increasingly we get what we pay for We have an institution that increasingly can't afford the capacity Expertise and experience to conduct its basic functions without considerable support from outside lobbyists You know Congress again as I said Congress is about one-third fewer committee staff than it had in the 1980s People spend less time on the hill. They go quicker to lobbying and it's sort of like once people gain some experience and Really understand what's going on They they the pay is not good enough to keep them and I think that's a real problem Is one lobbyist said it's tough to live off the government paycheck You make so little money one of the big things that's wrong with the system is that somebody finally learns their job And then they have to move on so you have a bunch of young folks who turn to lobbyists to figure out their jobs I do think that's a problem Some of this is right. There are more jobs on K Street more lobbying jobs So that draw some talent out of Congress But some of it is just frankly self-imposed. We've as a society decided We don't want to give Congress the resources to hire the best people and You know we get what we pay for So finally increasing complexity right again Some of this is is driven by my just societal forces Technology is has become more complex world has become more specialized. So there needs to be more rules So things become more complex naturally, but a lot of this is driven by Policy complexity is driven by lobbying Think about the tax code 1986 we passed a major tax reform act simplified the tax code dramatically 1986 to 2005 we had it we made Congress made 15,000 changes to the tax code tax code is incredibly complicated Maybe some of you just finished paying your taxes I don't know how much time you spent but the average person spends a lot of time the average business spends even longer There are now about three point eight million words in the tax code Which is about six and a half times the length of a foreign piece Although the plot is he is not particularly coherent and all this complexity makes it hard for anybody to makes it very hard to reform the tax code and A lot of the complexity is driven by lobbying activity lobby Corporations they want things to be obscure because it's easier to hide the benefits when things are obscure Multiply this across any number of policy areas, and you see increasing complexity driven by lobbying So summarized what I just said there's more competition lobbying is more competitive that raises the costs of doing effective lobbying which Means that those who can spend the most money mostly businesses are in a more preeminent position Congress hasn't invested in its own capacity, which means that Congress becomes more reliant on the lobbyists to make policy And as policy becomes more complex Congress and government generally becomes even more reliant on Outside lobbyists and you know, I don't want to demonize lobbyists because I mean they are very important parts of the policy process and they provide a lot of information and And and a lot of policy expertise, but my worry is that they've become too central to particularly corporate lobbyist Have become too central to the policy process. So Now what do we do about it? So I have some ideas And they're in the book. I'll speak about them briefly here. There's more reason to buy the book, but basically I Think the problem as I said is that Congress has become too reliant on outside lobbyists, particularly corporate lobbyists and because the overwhelming share of lobbyists represent corporations, we don't have a balance in representation in Washington, so Fixing congressional capacity is actually a pretty simple and straightforward thing. It doesn't require constitutional amendment You can just we spend 0.06 percent of our national budget on Congress Tiny sliver We barely notice if we doubled that and we'd get a whole lot a lot of bang for a buck if Congress could hire Enough and and really good people I mean, I shouldn't say there are a lot of really good people working in Congress But they're overworked and they tend to be not as experienced as we might like to have And the second is I you know There's this huge imbalance in who's represented here in Washington and that imbalance is is growing I think we need to think about ways to level the playing field a little bit but we've basically we've left advocacy up to the market and Economic winners reinvest their profits into lobbying and economic losers don't That's the reality and so basically a market failure is now becoming a democratic failure And I think we ought to do something about that so I you know I I don't think any side has a monopoly on the truth I think there are a lot of important policies that business advocates for that industry advocates for but what I worry is When things are so one-sided There's there's a problem I think I think as a society we benefit when all sides of the argument have the capacity to put forward their best case And I think we ought to think seriously about how we can do that. So, you know again, I think the good news is I don't think our politics is corrupt. I think it's just imbalanced And I think that's something we can actually do something about so I look forward to continuing this conversation and And hearing your thoughts Okay so Thank you all for coming Thank you all for staying for the Q&A part of it. This is where it starts to get interesting. Yeah Well, well first of all I wanted to Just to make note of my favorite sentence in the book It comes at the beginning of a chapter Which is basically one long regression analysis and Lee writes readers who are either convinced of the stickiness of lobbying by now or who have little interest in heavy data analysis May wish to skip ahead. I just want to thank you for that So to to pick up with with where you left off the One thing that occurs to me is this favorite phrase of Lobbyist world Everybody has a lobbyist, you know You can find Lobbyist representing at least theoretically every interest in Washington But I've always thought that that may be but it doesn't mean that the lobbyist is gonna Be in It's gonna have that seat at the table. So Is this more pronounced now, do you think if you know if there's this winnowing of Well-funded corporate lobbyists and everybody else Yeah, I think it's exactly right everybody There are a lot of organizations here in Washington with lobbyists about 14,000 organizations but about a third of the lobbying spending is done by a hundred organizations and Again, those hundred organizations are almost all big corporate organizations to to to enact policy And to make policy change requires a lot of resources It's very hard to get anything done in Washington, especially now because it's not just getting something through Congress It's funny. It's it's also implementing it and there's a whole whole process And it's you you really have to build a big coalition. You have to build a bipartisan coalition and the only so so some shoestring lobbyist for for some some favorite Cause of some group of people It's very hard for them To get anything done. You really need a big a big coalition to get anything done Or some some lobbyists who are who are really understand the process and know when that right moment to insert the right Language into a bill happens So resources really do matter. What does it mean for the? The people sort of at the bottom of the scale You know, who are their lobbyists and where do they stand in the pecking order here? Well It's you know, it's very it's it's very hard for them I think some of them may be maybe in the audience here I've taught I know a lot of them and and it's very people will people will meet with you and be polite in Congress But then say look we need a bill that we can move and until you have until you build a large coalition until you have a lot of supporters It's a nice idea, but but we're not gonna. We're not gonna put resources into it. Okay, um If there's been this this growth at the top of the lobbying industry Have you thought about how that affects Washington Washington's culture? How does it affect? Yeah, yeah in terms of You know the wealth of people Around Washington. Yeah. Well the what was the six six was six six wealthiest counties are now the the Washington suburbs Certainly a lot of nice restaurants in Washington My my the price of my house keeps going up. So I guess I guess that's that's good But I don't know if it's great for American democracy. Yeah, I I can remember in my young days all of a sudden there are a lot of BMWs around and you know, it hadn't been like that and then it was and That was I think in the late 70s so another thing about the 1970s that You're talking about the The growth in federal regulation that triggered the yeah the growth in lobbying it also led to the The memo by Lewis Powell to the guy at the Chamber of Commerce. Yeah, which is Generally credited with leading to the conservative infrastructure of Ideological and ideological lobbying and political groups. So How do you make the connection there? Well, I think you know when I talked about how there was this moment when CEOs kind of felt this sense of almost existential threat Powell's memorandum which If you really basically says the free enterprise system is under attack We got to do something business is business has no influence whatsoever in Washington I and I think you can read that those those thoughts as a as kind of an insight into the mind of corporate executives at that time and There are there are various theories on on how much of a galvanizing effect that memo had But I think it did it was it was a very good description of how The sense of threat that corporations were feeling and for a long time business leaders most business leaders didn't really feel it was appropriate to hire lobbyists in Washington and To extend that business leaders were involved in politics. It was through the Committee for Economic Development, which is still around But it's not a major player anymore It was kind of Committee for Economic Development sort of a very progressive business or a organization that accepted the government intervention the economy Keynesianism Supported supportive McCain fine gold. Yes, we're McCain fine gold also So so but that but as the CED Committee for Economic Development built to the background and pure business Lobby organizations like the business roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce became ascendant that kind of changed how corporations viewed politics and did that Did that make the make the corporate part the corporate sector in Washington pioneers in in polarization Well, or is that a lagging indicator? Yeah, so that's a good question and and the relationship between lobbying and polarization is Pretty complicated. I think I mean certainly polar is a as Washington has become more Polarized companies have had to hire more lobbyists because now you got to have your Republican lobbyists and your Democratic lobbyists which has the effect of raising the cost raising the cost of doing anything even higher and a lot of a lot of Public interest groups which like it like the like the environmental groups used to have Republican supporters and Democratic supporters now They only have Democratic supporters, which makes it harder for them to get anything done businesses are often very good at building alliances on both sides of The political playing field, but there's a way in which I think lobbying actually exacerbates polarization in that there are times In in any industries history where they feel like they they have an opportunity with one party or the other and they Really double down at one party particularly when they want to stop an issue like actually thinking about the environmental movement Climate is a great example of that that the energy industry Saw that that the way to stop climate legislation was really to double down on Republicans and that further polarized an issue you had the Clean Air Act passed in 1990 Which was pretty by it was recently bipartisan act I can't imagine anything like that happening now and in such a bipartisan way and partially because the energy industry doubled down on the Republican Party Although now you're seeing People on the right starting to rethink the climate change thing I was just reading Jonathan altar Libertarian Saying well, you know, it's we may not like it But it is something that seems to be here and we need to figure out a libertarian way to deal with it. So Yeah, so so maybe there's hope yet Don't don't give up on America. Yeah And What is What's the lobbying? Connection to to the campaign money scene citizens united McCutcheon The one that I hear most often is that after McCutcheon especially Lobbyists can't get off the hook anymore by saying they're tapped out or they're maxed out Which yeah, which is not good news for lobbyists. Yeah, you know, it's funny How many when I did interviews how many lobbyists actually complain about the campaign finance system and how they how they hate being Hector they some of them They complain I don't want you know, they intentionally limit the size of their packs so that they don't have to constantly be called upon You know, I think certainly certainly citizens united is a is a is a is this? You know giant issue that looms over the political influence debate I think one of the surprising things is that corporations actually haven't Poured all these independent expenditures that a lot of people thought that they they would do we know of sorry that we know Of that we know if they may be doing it through dark money organizations, but mostly a lot of I would argue that a lot of what they do is in the day-to-day of governing of helping to draft laws of providing information of implementation Staffers turn to lobbyists because they don't know what the heck they're doing and that's the real power of corporate Lobby in Washington, I think yeah My father was a lobbyist back in the 1960s, oh wow, and yeah for trade association and I Remember that you know when I was trying to figure out what he did I I asked him one of the first things he said was well, we explain Explain the situation and you know we explain everything to the congressional staff because you know because they didn't know it so So even then there there's a certain amount of that going on but I think it's gotten a lot worse. Yeah, yeah and It occurred to me if you were talking about it that Part of that the dumbing down of Congress was the elimination of the office of technology assessment. That's kind of the You know the prime example Which was done when when the Republicans took over in 94. Yes, which Makes me think they were they were okay with the lobbyists having the expertise Yeah, I mean that you know, this is a gingrich not only cut the the office of technology assessment killed it entirely But significantly cut committee staff, which were the policy expert Was where a lot of policy expertise lived in the house part of it. He wanted to centralize power. Yeah in the leadership but I think Part of it was also well, well, you know, we'll just let the lobbyists do it for us, right? Why waste government money when? You know we can we can let the lobbyists help us, right? And he was I think there was sort of an idea that that the Republicans would build a natural alliance with business and That would advance both of their agendas mutually Would you say that that's that's come true? Well, it's come true that Congress is a lot dumber than it used to be You know, I you know, I don't know because I actually think that that is that long-term. This is not good for business Because it's not good when you have a government that really doesn't have the Capacity and the understanding I think when we had the government shutdown in 2013 there was a lot of panic in the business community that like this is a government that can function and that's really bad for the economy When we can't do tax reform, that's really bad for the economy. So so like the the shutdown was an issue that was sort of beyond the reach of the experts Among the corporate lobbyists. Yeah. Well, and it wasn't that they mostly lobby on their narrow issues for the company but This this basic idea of congressional confidence nobody Nobody in the business community says oh gee what we need is a more competent Congress even though I think they should want that in the long term But a less competent Congress means a Congress that is more susceptible to to corporate lobbyists In the short term so there's a kind of short term short-sightedness that I think may undermine the long-term health of American democracy and more susceptible to You know public interest in union lobbyists if the pendulum number swings back that direction Yeah, if when if when well, well, we can we can we can choose to to try to level the playing field a little bit by really investing in This idea that we should have lobbyists who represent diffuse interests as well as concentrated interests That's a choice we can make okay did the Did the evolution of corporate head? No, how did the evolution of of lobbying? Changed the behavior of the lobbyists themselves. Do you talk to people about that? Yeah, well, I think what has happened is that lobbying has become You know, I mean, I think lobbyists saw I should I should step back and that lobbyists saw companies as lucrative clients and so lobbyists have have worked hard to make sure that That companies understand the value of lobbyists. So so that's that's been a transformation Okay, and I realize we've gone through this whole thing without Really laying out The the idea you started the book with which is stickiness. Yeah. Yeah, can you tell us what stickiness is right? So lobbying has a self-reinforcing quality And that once companies start to lobby they tend to stay lobbying because they they become invested in Outcomes in Washington and they understand managers are paying attention to to what's happening in Washington and You know, they see Opportunities they see they see threats and the more the more you lobby the more you the more you lobby Is I think a lot of the story and that's and that comes through in the data I spent a lot of time the chapter that you That you were encouraged to skip. Yes, it is is is is when I just Run every possible test I can to say that lobbying is really sticky that once companies start lobbying they keep lobbying and And pretty much they just stay on a trajectory. It's not that they respond to what's on the agenda I mean the issues change but But But they keep they keep lobbying yeah, and The solutions I thought were really interesting. Well, thank you and and and daring because I you know I read a lot of books about campaigning finance and used to be that anyone who wrote a book about campaign finance would end with a chapter recommendations and you look back at them, you know, they look dicey at the time and now they You know, they look unfortunate The one that really intrigued me was the The thing that that included a possible office of public lobbying Yeah, well, I'm trying to think about ways right there. There are there are issues that there are perspectives that are not Getting representation in the policy process and there's a mark as I said, there's a market failure, right? groups that represent Dispersed diffuse interests have a hard time organizing, right? It's easy for a company to take ten million dollars to Fund a lobbying operation. It's hard for its consumers who customers who may be unhappy to organize a ten million dollar lobbying So this is a market failure. Look in in in our justice system. It's not perfect But we recognize that both sides should have best their best to have advocates in the courtroom in Lobbying we we don't do that and I think we ought to think about that So we think of a kind of public defender model an office of public probably something that would make sure that those interests that are not able to hire adequate representation Yeah Not something that I suspect the corporate lobbyists would go for but well, you know, they may not but Okay, I Think we should probably move on to the Q&A if there are any cues I'm good. You were first. I'll try to offer some names I actually have a follow-up question right on on that in the public office of public lobbying there have been Some people have been celebrating lately, especially with the net neutrality issue of this The people power and social media are coming together as a tool that can be used in this You know collective action campaigns to combat the power of tens of millions of dollars of corporate lobbying and There's kind of this extreme optimism from those advocates and I'm wondering from someone who's been studying this for so long Do you think that that's That that's real. Could that actually be an antidote? I think there are there are certain cases where when the public gets involved the public is an incredible force But it's really hard to get the public engaged The net neutrality issue was I think a rare example where the public was really engaged It was this this incredible John Oliver clip that that galvanized the public This is the same thing that happened with with with sopa When there was this moment in which all these activists flooded Congress They were gonna pass a bill that a lot of people were afraid was gonna basically cause censorship on the internet And so you there are There are occasional moments when the public does really get involved and when the public gets involved Can make an incredible difference but both of those issues share something in common in that they were on on the internet and they affected Internet users and so these are people who are Feeling that their own ability to watch things or use information on the internet It hits it may it becomes very salient for individual people But there are a lot of issues that are just kind of obscure like Financial regulation right people don't really understand that and you know people might say oh, you know go after the big banks But when it comes to like writing the Volcker rule who's in their day after day, it's it's the it's it's the banks I guess I get the privilege of even though I can ask you a question any day Well, you can ask me a question in front of an audience what I'd like you to do Is can you talk a little bit about how kind of part of your subtitle how lobbying actually changes companies and how their Strategies change as they become more oriented to Washington as the Locusts of how they can make profits as opposed to just kind of doing their business in the marketplace. Yeah Well, I think that that does change if you if you if you if your view is well We we want to structure regulation to help our business. I mean general electric is actually a great example of this that general electric basically was was instrumental in rewriting the tax code in in 2004 to To help general electric and then it was this big story several years later about they how they paid nothing in taxes because they hire that they've rewritten the tax code and they had hired all these tax accountants and lawyers to to help them and so Whereas G might have invested those resources in Innovation and said they invested those resources in lobbying and lawyers and accountants so that they could pay nothing in taxes And that's that's an extreme example, but I think there's a lot of energy When when again, I think this is something that that hurts all companies when when there is the sense that well The only way you can get ahead is is to really invest and try to rewrite the rules and game the system You know that that Misdirects energy that could be spent trying to focus on making the best product or or that you feel like You know, there are a lot of industries that are just not that competitive And the way that companies get ahead is by limiting competition rather than trying to make the best product I think that's a real problem Question doing a research and article about the 2010 stimulus and companies that took money They spent a lot more on lobbyist than companies that did not in similar Manufacturing types of companies, but if it's interesting is the companies that ended up going bankrupt or could not pay back their loans They use certain lobbyist and I will not name names, but those lobbyists have a very bad track record Is there like a lobbyist like? Way to like flag these people so they can't lobby anymore. I mean, what is the deal? Thank you. I Don't know or you know, I think There are lobbyists like all you know all people are varying quality In terms of your like all professions Nobody grades them. Yeah, you know, there's no accountability for lobby. I mean there's some sense of reputation, right? But there there are some there are a lot of lobbyists who who who just take advantage of clients who don't know any better One of them by the way went to jail his name was Jack Abramoff You know, I mean Jack Abramoff is is is not really typical of the lobbying profession And I think a lot of people focus on Jack Abramoff and they misunderstand what the lobbying profession is about He was an outlier who? You know Not but but there is a sense in which law. I mean that lobbyists do have have a business and Some of them are don't do right by their clients I you know, that's but there are still clients who will hire lobbyists even though those lobbyists are no good but also it could be that That these lobbyists were less expensive and the companies were already in trouble So they hired the cheapest lobbyist, you know Because that's what they could afford and they were headed toward bankruptcy anyway You talk quite a lot in the book about the intellectual climate in Washington Would you kind of would you care to characterize the current electoral? intellectual climate Yeah, so the phrase I use is actually the intellectual environment by which I mean that there's including events like this But like there, you know if you open up your political or your Hill or your vocal You'll see a lot of sponsored content and a lot of panel discussions a lot of papers a lot of discussions and and a lot of it is is promoted with some some agenda and there's only so much that anybody can pay attention to in any given day and So there's a lot of effort that goes into just kind of shaping What what is what is top of mind when people think about policy issues, right? If you there's all kinds of Advertisements that that are on the subways and on the talk shows Reading the Washington Post or Fox or Politico, right? It's Some of those stories are planted, right? So it's not any one thing but the the the accumulation of it kind of Shakes shapes what narratives are are readily available and what are what are not? Hi, I'm Meredith McGee he registered lobbyists since 1987 Mostly representing the underdog as opposed to the big dog One of the things that I've run into occasionally is on the more conservative Republican side a Critique of the system which is somewhat of what you talk about Where they believe that the problem both with the lobbying and the money in politics is that government has gotten so big and basically, that's where you go because that's where the money is and They have an approach that if you cut back the power of government many of these other things the lobbyists Etc. Would dry up and so their solution is to reduce the size of government Do you think at the same time? The folks that represent many of these people in Congress don't seem to have any interest in and taking on these issues at all So my question to you is to what extent do you buy this critique that it's the size of Government that's grown so much over the last several decades that has made Washington the honeypot. So you have to come in lobby It's a great question. I think there are Two ways to think about this one is that government is actually the Significant growth of lobbying has been over the last three decades and government actually has not grown all that much over the last three decades The big growth of government was really in the 70s so if that's the story then you know, I don't know that doesn't seem to Jive but I think that the but I do I have I do think that that part of that critique is actually right that there is That it's not so much the size but it's not so much the size of government is as it is the complexity of government that Enables all this lobbying that if you made you could you could simplify a lot of policies the tax code being greatest example of that and that would Probably reduce the amount of lobbying now the question is how do you do that because there are a lot of policies that yeah It would be great to get rid of but they are actually policies that help some Interest or some industry or some set of companies and those companies pay great attention to those policies and they lobby very hard around them, so Yeah, you you could simplify grammar, but you actually need a lot of resources to do that, right? It's it's you know It's the the second law of thermodynamics where things tend towards chaos and entropy and the only way that you make things Simpler is by adding energy from the outside, which is going to be either groups that want to Simplify government actually getting involved or government itself saying we need to make things simpler and so that requires resources All the way in the back. Yes You've used a business round table as an example of big business lobbying and talked about the the successes that business had Businesses have as opposed to the public but the Fortune magazine within the last month ran an article talking about 2.78 billion dollars of Lobbying by business round table companies and they didn't get anything for it And while you talk about big banks, so Dodd Frank has been in the crosshairs of the banking industry ever since the minute it was passed And it doesn't involve the internet and yet they can't seem to to get it get the repeals through so I mean, what is it with With these phenomena that seem to run counter to your basic premise Those are great questions. So one again so I did read that that article and And they pointed to immigration reform tax simplifications things that this that were top priorities for business and those things Haven't happened. They're really hard things to to enact immigration is is one of these examples where public opinion and business probably it's it's a difficult issue because of The way public opinion is oriented on that But again, what I said at the beginning is that business actually doesn't always get what it wants, right? Nobody always gets what they wanted the idea that just because Companies invest money. They're automatically going to get something. I think that's that's a that's a It's an oversimplification of how things how things work You know Dodd Frank. I think actually Yeah, the thing hasn't been repealed but a lot of a lot of the regulations still haven't gone into effect A lot of them have been watered down in the process and a few of the provisions actually have been repealed So nobody gets you know to say that business automatically gets what it wants I'm not I'm not saying that I think anybody who does is incredibly over simplifying What I am saying is that we have a policy process where if anything is going to get done For the most part it's going to have to align with the interests of large companies Three more questions. Um, I was happy to hear you say that Jack Abramoff isn't emblematic of the lobbying industry as a registered lobbyist myself There is certainly the the pariah that goes along with being a lobbyist in this town and I lobby for a public university I'm a state employee. I'm about as far away from Jack Abramoff as you can get as a lobbyist. I don't have a pack I Lobby for the good guys But there's no differentiation as a lobbyist in Washington in terms of the perception in terms of the treatment even certainly by this White House on a lobbyist so Persona non grata. It doesn't matter Yeah, I mean, I think I think the Obama administration made a terrible mistake in demonizing lobbyists And I think collectively the public makes a terrible mistake in demonizing lobbyists You know lobbyists are important to the policy process and by demonizing or trying to ban them It's just stupid You know, but I think I think the the real problem is that you know There is an incredible imbalance in who is able to hire lobbyists and Who hires the best and the most lobbyists and and how much Congress relies on lobbyists to do its basic work? I don't think we get anywhere by deepening lobbyists Over there So I think one of your most interesting ideas is wanting to put more money back into Congress because I think that makes a lot of sense being allowing them to think for themselves, but Given the low approval rates of Congress that have been around for a while Do you think it's feasible for them to like present to the public? Hey, we want to give ourselves more money You know, this is it's kind of this negative cycle, right where Congress has these low approval ratings because it's so incompetent right so Yeah, yeah, it's not a it's not a it's not a great Public issue, but I think Congress needs to do a better job of Explaining itself and what happens is you have a lot of members of Congress who run against Congress and keep saying oh government is incompetent government is incompetent and I think you need a different message. Look, I'm actually encouraged because finally the Republicans are actually like there was a house administration committee hearing where early in February Where Republicans fiscal conservatives like Paul Ryan were saying hey, you know, we need some more money so we can actually like hire people who understand things and So I think we're finally getting to this point where even even fiscal conservatives say, yeah, you know if we're going to accomplish anything We need to do that. I also think Conservatives in Congress who may likely face a Hillary Clinton administration like they're gonna want to be a Co-equal branch of government and if they're gonna want to do that they need to be able to hire people to do that So I think things may change Well, yeah, I gotta be So one thing I didn't hear a lot about that I was wondering about is disclosure and You know as you know the the theory of course is that if we have more transparency around it Then there's greater accountability for those actors and so I'm curious specifically with your Experience at the sunlight foundation if you see that as having a role at all or is this so much bigger than just knowing Who's spending what? Well, look, I think we do know who's spending what I think we could know a lot more I have one of the things that I that I argue for in the in the book is is that we we ought to create a basically Situation where lobbyists put all their advocacy online so everybody can see who's who's making what claims and we can have a public discussion about them But you know, I think disclosure by itself it requires That there are people on all sides of the issue who can take advantage of it with actual resources and you know I think it's part of a package. I think it's important, but by itself. It doesn't get the job done All right, thank you all very much Thank you sir