ignt rn's List: 2010 Feb Lobbying

• Georgia’s  lobbyists are, in fact, invaluable resources. Specialists in their areas of  expertise, the well-informed lobbyist can help decipher the overwhelming  information in a legislative session. To understand their value, consider the huge number of bills introduced this session. The General  Assembly Web site lists 777 House bills and 313 Senate bills introduced.   

   

  Some  bills, like Rep. John Noel’s tongue-in-cheek proposal to mandate sweet tea  in restaurants, are easily dismissed; others can involve complicated issues  such as riparian rights or eminent domain and virtually require a translator.  Georgia’s lobbyists often ease the burden. Specialists in their areas of  expertise, they can promote their view, but the good lobbyist facilitates  decision-making and the passage of reasonable legislation that has been  enacted after weighing the impact on all sides.   

   

  When  an agency chief or legislator is educated with the opposing viewpoints of  lobbyists from the environmental activist group and the utility, the  neighborhood association and the developer, or the consumer group and the  corporation, the result ought to be a better informed decision-maker.   

   

  A  lobbyist who delivers bad information loses credibility and won’t last long.  Lobbyists who would buy influence, and the bought legislators, are quickly  revealed when disclosure requirements are adequate and the information is  easily accessible to voters and advocates of good government.

• stark correlation between lobbying by lenders and high loan-to-income loans.

  The paper, written by a trio of high-profile IMF economists, established that firms who spend more on buying access to politicians are more likely to engage in risky securitisation of their loan books, have faster-growing mortgage loan portfolios as well as poorer share performance and larger loan defaults.
• "Our analysis suggests that the political influence of the financial industry can be a source of systemic risk," Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra and Thierry Tressel wrote in their conclusion. "Therefore, it provides some support to the view that the prevention of future crises might require weakening political influence of the financial industry or closer monitoring of lobbying activities to understand better the incentives behind it."

• Health care and insurance lobbyists spent more than $648 million in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money on elections and policy. That figure is not final; the center has not been able to process about 20 percent of the year-end lobbying reports.

• Drug companies spent more than $245 million on lobbying last year (Pfizer, for example, chipped in $22 million) — more than any other single industry has ever spent on lobbying on behalf of any issue, and by far the most that any group spent last year on health care.

   

  To put that figure in perspective, it is about $90 million more than the oil and gas industry spent on lobbying last year.

   

  In addition to the $648 million that all sides spent lobbying on health care, they also poured $210 million into television advertising, according to Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks television commercials.
• The American Hospital Association, which also supported an overhaul, spent $16.3 million on lobbying. Like the drug industry, the hospital association also made a pact with the White House, agreeing to give up $155 billion in Medicare payments over the next decade to help lower the cost of the overall package; in return, hospitals would get millions of new customers who would have insurance, so hospitals would have to provide less free care.
• The campaign against a health care overhaul was led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, which spent about $144 million on lobbying and worked hand in hand with the insurance industry, which the White House chose as its villain.
• Their crowning achievement was to kill the so-called public option, at least in the Senate, in which a government-run health insurance plan would have competed with private insurers.

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• In the last two weeks, the American Medical Association has endorsed the House’s version of the health care overhaul, and lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies and for-profit hospitals have stood with the White House to pledge billions in cost cuts so long as the proposed public health insurance program does not threaten to undercut them. The drug companies are even underwriting television commercials supporting an overhaul.
• Lobbyists for coal-powered electric utilities say they are backing House emissions-cap legislation as it moves to the Senate, so long as they can perhaps loosen the caps a bit and retain subsidies that the House provided to win their support.
• Lockheed Martin publicly washed its hands of any lobbying to save its F-22 fighter jet contract from Pentagon cuts, then watched as its unions, subcontractors and Congressional allies persuaded House committees to restore the plane. (The White House is threatening a veto.)

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• Washington lobbyists earned a whopping $3.2 billion last year. That’s the highest amount in the decade tracked by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Executive Director Sheila Krumholz says interest groups spent $17.4 million on lobbying every day Congress was in session last year. And with Washington on a spending spree, companies are boosting their influence on Capitol Hill.
• Center for Responsive Politics says that health and pharmaceutical companies were the biggest spenders
• Center for Public Integrity that says the number of green lobbyists has tripled in the last five years
•  February 26, 2009

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• National Council of Senior Citizens had received more than $150 million in taxpayers’ money in four years. A more recent report estimated that AARP had received over a billion dollars in taxpayer funding. Both groups, of course, lobby incessantly for more spending on Social Security and Medicare. The Heritage Foundation reported in 1995, “Each year, the American taxpayers provide more than $39 billion in grants to organizations which may use the money to advance their political agendas.”

   

  In 1999 Peter Samuel and Randal O’Toole found that EPA was a major funder of groups lobbying for “smart growth.” So these groups were pushing a policy agenda on the federal government, but the government itself was paying the groups to lobby it.

• January 15, 2006
• The number of companies with registered lobbyists is up 58 percent in six years. The amount of money lobbyists report spending has risen from $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion in that time,
• In 2003 Congress passed a trillion-dollar prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients. Not surprisingly, there was more lobbying on health care than on any other issue that year, some $300 million by PoliticalMoneyLine's calculation. AARP was the biggest single spender. But unions and pharmaceutical companies accounted for most of the total.

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• First, the way Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae spent millions of dollars lobbying some influential members of Congress in exchange for, among other things, lax capital reserve requirements for these mortgage giants.

   

   

  Second, how AIG's "small" derivatives unit located in London managed to obscure its accounts, be governed by lax regulatory oversight, and take inordinate risks that effectively brought down AIG's empire of 100,000 employees in 130 countries, accelerating the global financial crisis.

   

   

  Third, how giant mortgage lenders such as Countrywide Financial switched regulators so to fall under the lax oversight of the Office of Thrift Supervision, which was funded by fees paid by the regulated banks (and which also supervised AIG's derivative unit).

   

   

  Fourth, how in April 2004, during a 55-minute-long meeting at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the largest investment banks persuaded the SEC to relax its regulatory stance and allow them to take on much larger amounts of debt.

   

   

  Finally, Madoff's giant Ponzi scheme, some of which appears to be plain fraud, though system-wide irregularities also point to subtler forms of corruption and capture. Years ago the SEC knew that Madoff, who had served on the commission's own advisory committee, had multiple violations and was misleading it in how he managed the funds of his customers. Yet the SEC failed in unmasking the Ponzi scheme.

• Let's look at the U.S. Over the past few years, traditional measures of corruption, such as the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, have placed the U.S. among the least corrupt nations in the world, currently ranking No. 18 among 180 rated countries.

   

   

  In stark contrast, when in 2004 I calculated an index of "legally corrupt" manifestations (measured through the extent of undue influence through political finance and powerful firms influencing politicians and policy making), the U.S. rated in the bottom half among the 104 countries surveyed. Countries like the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Finland exhibited low levels of "legal corruption" (ranking Nos. 1 through 4, respectively). Yet the U.S. was rated 53rd, a few ranks below Italy. Chile rated 18th. Also rating better than the U.S. were countries like Botswana, Colombia and South Africa.

• Employees of the PMA Group, the firm founded by the lobbyist, Paul Magliocchetti, have given a total of more than $1 million to political campaigns over the last three election cycles, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
• In the first half of 2007, the PMA Group and its clients contributed more than $500,000 to three congressmen, Mr. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, and his close allies on the panel, Representative James P. Moran of Virginia and Representative Peter J. Visclosky of Indiana.
• The lawmakers, meanwhile, earmarked more than $100 million in defense spending for PMA clients in the appropriations bills for 2008, according to a study by Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks earmarks.
• In the last two weeks before the 2008 election, Mr. Murtha went on a last-minute fund-raising blitz, and PMA executives and clients gave him more than $100,000, according to a tally by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.

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• the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Lobbyists are people hired to do that for you, so that you can actually stay home with the kids and remain gainfully employed rather than spend your life in the corridors of Washington.