294 sats \ 15 replies \ @Cje95 30 Aug \ parent \ on: Which U.S. Industries Spend the Most on Lobbying? charts_and_numbers
Proceeds to crack knuckles and mentally prep to dive into this "industry"
Welp here goes nothing... the typical process is company contracts a law firm and that firm has a bunch of registered lobbyists. The lobbyists can be lawyers but the ones I run into the most are people with connections. They were either staffers on Committees or in important Members' offices so they know who to talk to about what to get results.
Given the pretty complicated rules and regulations companies go to these law firms to make sure they are all in the clear. Lobbying in itself and what it was meant to be has a good purpose... Take AI for instance Members of Congress and even staffers like myself who are wading pretty deep into AI and AI policy we cant keep track of everything or how certain things will affect the industry. Lobbyists are there to bring in the companies that would be affected and have them break it down to us.
Sometimes they actually bring us really good and insightful stuff that we otherwise never would have known about so we can work to either redraft or recraft the legislation to try and prevent an issue. An example of this is a pipeline R&D bill I worked on that we altered after hearing back how the legislation as it was written would have sent permitting into a bureaucratic hell that we had no clear about.
I am trying to remember off the top of my head what the numbers were but I want to say it was for every dollar spent lobbying roughly a company could expect $4+ in benefits. Most of the time I believe these were government contracts but also just legislation changes that either A) lead to less regulation or B) fixed some stupid bureaucratic issue and thus freed up company $$$
Thats not to say people are all innocent and looking back FTX is a prime example of everything that can be wrong with lobbying because you hardly ever see the heads of these companies get as involved in this stuff as he did. Look at Sam Altman and Nvidia as examples were they are big time in lobbying but you don't see them hands on involved.
I hope this helped! If you have any specific questions feel free to ask!
Great overview!
When the clowns talk about "saving democracy" this is what they are saving... an illusion. A lie. I remember when there were people that said we need to reform the laws around campaign financing and lobbying... It failed. It never would have worked because of the incentive structures. When so much power is centralized in one place, D.C. things like this system will develop. The only solution I can see is radical decentralization of power structures and truly free markets. If what we have is democracy, to hell with democracy.
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I will say it is my opinion and observation that the big issue would be campaign financing and Super PAC... Lobbying still serves a good for the most part these PACs esp the Super PACs that are not required to show who is backing are scary...
There was a report yesterday that I saw involving China getting involved in the Congressional Races and not the Presidental one because it is easier to affect the Congressional ones via funding/leaks compared to the Presidental and could allow for China Hawks to be knocked back
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I wont lie I do think one party who may or may not start with a D and be Left operates as a hive mind. Except for a very specific few and only over very specific things they will not speak out against the party. Within the R and right-leaning party you tend to see no only a trend of the representatives in both the House and Senate getting younger but also coming from a wide variety of backgrounds who stick to what they know from experience and not just off what the vibes are or the catchy phase is
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In my humble opinion the big problem is political parties because they evolve into a separate class of citizens which represent themselves rather than the people :/
(If political parties werent allowed people would be running as themselves. and be beholden to no-one but their voters. today holding office has become a career path, which was never the intention. i for one would like the doctors, dentists, farmers, you name it hold office but instead we get generic politicians who has done nothing but worked in politics their whole lives. they do not represent anyone other than the political class. /rant off)
tl;dr ban political parties
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Good ol George Washington warned us about political parties but alas we failed him there....
I will say at least in the House of Reps side yes there are some career politicians but there are also a ton of people who are not. On my Committee we have several ranchers, a guy who was a weatherman, a dentist, a guy who has a PhD in I believe Plasma Physics (he worked for the national labs), numerous small business owners heck even a guy who helped build the freaking Saturn Rockets for Apollo (he is retiring).
The Senate side tends to be career politicians in my opinion because they are people who have climbed the latter from things like Congressional or State Office. If they arent then they tend to be very wealthy people who may or may not be in touch with the Common Man anymore but again because that is the chamber that only has 100 people and is thus much more powerful per person wise compared to the House I see how it could easily happen.
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Pharma spent $383 Million on lobbying in 2023.
The lobbying amount is a small portion of a billion dollar industry.
Medicare and Medicaid spending is over a Trillion dollars per fiscal year.
The total annual budget for the federal government is over 6 Trillion dollars.
Total annual GDP is almost 30 Trillion dollars.
The amount spent on lobbying is peanuts.
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It was more than 500k, maybe only 500k was reported.
His wife was also a big DNC donor.
Federal prosecutors who built a case against Rich were irate by his pardon on Clinton's last day in office.
Clinton's critics alleged that Rich's pardon had been bought, as Denise Rich had given more than $1 million[37] to Clinton's political party (the Democratic Party), including more than $100,000 to the Senate campaign of the president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and $450,000 to the Clinton Library foundation during Clinton's time in office.[32]
edit: I forgot Eric Holder was also involved in the Rich pardon!
Rich's lawyer, Jack Quinn, had previously been Clinton's White House Counsel and chief of staff to Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, and had had a close relationship with Holder.[33] According to Quinn, Holder had advised that standard procedures be bypassed and the pardon petition be submitted directly to the White House
Marc Rich received a pardon from U.S. President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, Clinton's last day in office.[6][15] The pardon became controversial after reports surfaced that Denise Rich had made donations totalling more than $1 million to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Presidential Center.[6][15] At a congressional hearing into whether the pardon was granted in exchange for her contributions, Rich invoked the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which denies the government power to compel self-incrimination.[6][15]
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The ROI for companies tho is wild and what they chase. I've seen things from 1,000% returns to 22,000% returns according to a quick google. One example even showed that for every dollar spent companies were getting and average of $760 in federal support and/or tax benefits
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The root of the problem is a bloated federal budget
Lobbying isn't the problem per se
Lobbying exists in Sacramento and Austin and the other 48 state capitals.