Trevor Rogers
When one envisions corporate lobbyists one might picture a man in an expensive suit and a too white grin wining and dining a shady congressman. This is the image that comes to mind when we think of what a lobbyist truly does. However, lobbying is a relatively recent phenomenon, taking Washington by storm in only the last few decades. In the article, “How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy” Lee Drutman details the history of lobbying and how the practice transformed over time into its current iteration.
The “Big Idea” that is most prevalent within lobbying is its complexity, especially its transformation over time. So let’s go through the history of lobbying and discover how it has transformed. Starting off in the Gilded Age we had a time of extreme influence by business in the government, pushing for certain legislation. This relationship was disrupted by a Great Depression and two World Wars. Now skipping ahead to the 1960’s we had a system where labor unions had significant influence in legislation, not the corporations. At this time it seemed futile for corporations to spend money lobbying for legislation, with one prominent corporate lawyer even commenting about how useless it was to try to influence legislation.
As every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders. If one doubts this, let him undertake the role of ‘lobbyist’ for the business point of view before Congressional committees.”
As we can see the attitude of businessmen towards influencing the government was essentially, “Well, we can’t get anything done, so why even try?” That was the case until 1972 when the Business Roundtable was founded by several prominent businessmen. John Harper, CEO of Alcoa, remarked ” I think we all recognize that the time has come when we must stop talking about it, and get busy and do something about it.” His comment reflects the frustration felt by businessmen at their inability to influence the legislation that so directly effected their lives. After a few corporations sent lobbyists to Washington and started actually influencing bills, such as a major labor law reform and lowering corporate taxes, they began seeing just how successful lobbying could be. There was a major shift that occurred during the late 80’s that is perfectly captured by this quotation by a lobbyist, “Twenty-five years ago…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.'”
With the current state of lobbying we must now focus on another “Big Idea”, and that is the unintended consequences that came with allowing corporations and lawmakers to become such tight partners. We now are faced with a modern lobbying scene with more than the $2 billion spent to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). For every dollar spent on lobbying for labor unions, large corporations spend 34, totally flipping the status quo from the 60’s and 70’s. Corporations are now able to play both offense and defense against government policies, getting some passed and others blocked, whichever ones they deem to have the most benefit to themselves. So how to we get back the balance? How can we reverse this pattern of corporate control? Well, Drutman has a few ideas. First, we must invest more into the Government, especially Congress. This would allow the leading policymakers to have the resources that are necessary so that they can hire and retain experienced staff, so they will not have to rely so much of lobbyists. Second, organizations that advocate for policies that are less well-funded need more financial support.
Overall, we are posed with this simple question. Who do we want creating legislation that affects this country and our own personal lives, our elected representatives or multi-billion dollar corporations?