When I went to work in the Senate, I thought most lobbyists were criminals like the most infamous of them all, Jack Abramoff. But I was wrong.
In those pre-Abramoff days, none of them were that bad. Some of them surely were criminals at heart, but they feared the law too much to break it and there was way too much money to be made perfectly legally to ever risk jail time.I was chief of staff of two Senate committees back then, first Environment and Public Works, then the all-powerful Finance Committee.
Environment and Public Works is an odd mix of jurisdictions, basically protecting the environment and billing highways, courthouses, and order federal buildings. If you wanted to protect wetlands or an endangered species, of if your company poured concrete, your lobbyists desperately needed to see me.
Lobbyists for the biggest construction companies in the country tried to talk their way onto my schedule all the time. And when I moved to the Finance Committee in 1993, every lobbyist in town needed to see me because the committee's jurisdiction is so vast.
The corridor outside my office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building is actually known as "Gucci Gulch," because it's constantly patrolled by lobbyists.
My own sleaziest encounter with a lobbyist occurred in my Finance Committee office. One lobbyist who I didn't know somehow got 15 minutes on my schedule to describe the unbearable suffering AIG was being forced to endure because of some corporate tax provision or other that he wanted to get repealed or amended or something such. I feigned interest, I nodded a lot, maybe even led a hint of sympathy into my eyes and said nothing. If he told his masters that I was anything but noncommittal, he was lying.
The next day, one of our staff rushed into the office. She had just opened an envelope addressed to me and was shaking as she handed it to me.
It was from the AIG lobbyist, a letter thanking me for the meeting, and a check made out to my boss' reelection campaign. I would not even use a sheet of Senate stationery to reply.
Instead, I hand-wrote a very harshly-worded version of, "How dare you?"-and that's cleaning it up-on the lobbyist's letter and sent it back to him with that check. I didn't have to check with my boss, the late New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to know that is what he would want me to do. He was always impervious to the influence of campaign contributions and ran his campaigns on one-tenth the amounts that his successor, Hillary Clinton, raised to win his seat.
There are honorable lobbyists. I dealt with them every day. By "honorable lobbyists," I do not mean only those who do pro bono lobbying for charities or the underpaid lobbyists working for environmental groups. When a giant corporation, let's say Kodak, sends its very high-priced lobbyist to see you, to talk about how Fuji is subverting international trade agreements, you listen, because Kodak is the last manufacturer of film left in the United States, and the single biggest employer in Rochester, New York.
Yes, Kodak's lobbyists are trying to protect corporate profits, but they are also trying to protect American jobs and save Rochester from becoming a ghost town. Only the most zealous Marxist could fail to see the honor in that lobbying campaign.
Good lobbyists tell you something you don't know, like why teaching hospitals need more money for doctor training. They then tell you what they think you should do about it, how to pay for it, and most important, who opposes it and why. They know their opposition is going to be lobbying you too, so they don't say anything that can be proved wrong in your next meeting. And they don't promise their clients that they will always get what they want.
There are not enough Congressional staffers to keep track of the hundreds of thousands of complex issues under federal jurisdiction. Good government needs good lobbyists.
Our defense against the toxic mix of bad lobbyists and campaign cash, it always comes down to the people we vote for.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP. What follows is a clip of Laurence's former show, The West Wing, featuring Alan Alda playing Senator Arnold Vinick, and Patricia Richardson playing Shelia Brooks:)
SHELIA BROOKS: Now these energy guys that are going to be there tonight, obviously they're going to want to hear how you're voting on the energy deregulation bill.
SENATOR VINICK: Well, it depends on what is in it when it comes out of committee.
SHELIA BROOKS: Sends a very bad message to the big contributors if you vote against it.
SENATOR VINICK: Hey, if you can't drink their booze, take their money and then vote against them, you don't belong in this business.(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: Yes, "The West Wing" was a fictional universe, but I would not have written that scene if I never saw senators let lobbyists make their cases, contribute money to their campaigns, and then vote against them.
There is a massive amount of special-interest money from the health care industry sloshing around in the campaign coffer of our senators and Congressmen as they consider health care reform legislation. Let's just hope that enough of them still know how to take the lobbyists' money and vote against them.
