Lobbyist

On PBS there is a Moyer & Company promo in which a woman laments that we (the American Everyman) don’t have a lobbyist working for us in Washington, D.C.

I did a search and found out at http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby that there were 12,655 Federal registered lobbyist in 2011 with combined expenditures of $3.31 billion dollars. (You’ll find a lot of interesting information at http://www.opensecrets.org)

Lobbies by definition are special interest groups whether they are the American Association of Retired Persons ($15 million spend in 2011http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023726&year=2011), Pfizer Inc. ($1 million spend in 2011 http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=H04) or The National Association of Broadcasters ($13.9 million spend http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000000202&year=2011, and on and on and on. A lobby’s business is looking out for their own issues.

The United States once experimented with a group of multi-issue lobbyists. The thought was that one person could look after the interests of a diverse group of people. So our population was divided up and assigned lobbyists. These multi-issue lobbyists were called Senators and Representatives. Apparently that experiment did not work out as expected. But maybe it’s time to reset that idea of representing a diverse group of people.

George W. Parker