by Liz McGuire

Created on: May 31, 2007

Lobbyists are a necessary evil in all countries with voting officials. The very nature of the lobbying process requires contact with elected officials. Consider the United States lobbying system.

In a republic with over 300 million citizens, where would the United States be without lobbyists? With only 435 House Representatives and 50 Senators, there has to be a way for groups to petition Congress about issues that are important to them and to try to persuade members to vote on their side those issues. Who has the ability to educate Congress on vital facts necessary to the decision-making process? Who has the time to research the facts, and hang around in Washington DC to get appointments with numerous congressional aids and the Representatives and Senators? What elected official has the time to meet with all of his or her constituents, let alone constituents of other states who want them to vote for their causes?

The issue is not whether lobbyists should have access to congressional staff. For there is no other way a large group of citizens can crystallize their needs into a coherent platform and present them to Congress as one body. The issue is how the access should be granted and how the representatives should ethically make decisions based on contact with the lobbying parties.

Lobbyists have a bad reputation in modern US politics because of the news stories of scandals and corruption, and the appearance that politicians tend to vote on the side of the highest bidder, as measured in campaign contributions, entertainment and free publicity. Of particular concern is the imbalance of particular industries, which represent the industry more than the citizens. Whoever has the most money gets to shout the loudest. They've earned their bad reputations among common citizens.

What's needed are strict reforms on the areas where lobbying has gone wrong: spending and campaign contributions and no accounting of how the money is being spent, excessive entertaining and dubious junkets, undisclosed participation in policy-making, lack of easily available disclosure of who the major contributors of the lobbying entity are, and weak rules covering how long a politician must wait after he or she leaves office before joining a lobbying group.

Every citizen can't have access to congressional staff for all the issues. It is physically impossible. The most efficient method is to join or support a lobbying group that can do the job. With a few tweaks in the rules, lobbyists can fulfill that function. To deny lobbyists access to Congress, instead of fixing the system, is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

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