Is Lobbying Really Necessary? You should ask your lobbyist about that.

As unpopular as it is to say, we need lobbyists. All governments have lobbying to some extent. Lobbying is merely speaking on behalf of a cause or issue to a person in power. In order to get that person to use their power/influence to create political change beneficial to that cause. Everyone has a lobbyist. And anyone who doesn’t, usually does and they just don’t know about it. Everyone else needs to get one.

A democratic republic like ours is all about balance. Balancing the powers of government as a check on itself and balancing the interests of the individual vs the collective. It is this second balance beam we are interested in.

In order for the government to function with any regard for the well-being of the citizens, it needs to know what the citizens need. Perhaps sometime in the future we can have some way to instantaneously transmit every single person’s informed consent directly to the legislature on every issue. Until then voters and politicians need an informed pipeline between each other. Lobbyists.

I spent some years in the legislative side of government, where the lion’s share of the lobbying occurs. As a legislative aide it was my job to help craft, carry, and/or defeat legislation. Do you have any idea how many bills get drafted every year?

This image comes from just the Virginia legislature, where they introduced over 2,000 bills in just 2016! Imagine how many bills there are for Congress. (Image stolen from here. Thanks by the way.)

Nobody could read and understand every bill brought before them in a single year. In a given legislative session you could be asked to support or oppose everything from establishing National Marmot Day to regulating the parts per million of contaminants allowed in a natural watershed to writing criminal statutes to manipulating the tax code to subjects you can’t even imagine.

Proposed laws would be brought to the office by lobbyists for oil companies and teachers unions, manufacturers and environmentalists. If I needed help understanding some criminal justice bill or the effects of budget cuts in public safety, I’d call the police union rep and the guy from ACLU. Everyone has a lobbyist. And they know a lot more about their issues than I or anyone else in my office and all the other offices in the building ever will.

I call those people because they represent the groups of people who spend their time on this one issue whereas I spend my time on literally hundreds of issues. I call those people because they represent the entities that other people call for help and information about those issues. Whatever your (and more importantly in this context, my) opinion about abortion, Planned Parenthood is a demonstrable expert on women’s issues, so when something related to that issue comes to my office the PP lobbyist will be on my list of people to call. If I have a bill on gun control, I’ll be calling the NRA among others.

They all have agendas. Of course. That’s taken for granted but every lobbyist who has ever come to Congress is there because they represent the legitimate interests of some of your fellow Americans. And business interests that employ or provide goods and services to your fellow Americans are legitimate grounds as well. Whether or not that should extend to foreign countries and companies is a debate worth having perhaps but damn near every country on earth allows it to some extent.

You may not like their issues, tactics, or goals but other Americans do and have every right to petition the government using whatever representative they want. That’s right, lobbying is in the First Amendment.

Lobbyists are biased. Anyone who represents one group of people is biased. I fully expect everyone who comes into any politician’s office anywhere to enter with two things: bias and a request. Always. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever walked into a politician’s office not intending to ask them for something.

It’s about balance. I expect the lobbyist from the auto industry to downplay the environmental concerns of the Greenpeace lobbyist who won’t mention the economic concerns of the union lobbyist.

But don’t you think that I should have a chance to listen to all of their voices?

Originally published at intheswamp.wordpress.com on October 28, 2017.