What are your views on lobbyist and should lobbying be made illegal in the us?

Answer 1

I think that lobbyists serve a vital interest. Using a lobbyist any group can have their issues and viewpoints heard. There are lobbists for business and unions, oil companies and conservationists.

If you were a congressman working on tort reform, you need to hear both the insurance side and the trial lawyers agenda. Should each insurance company and each law firm send employees to Washington to argue their cases? Some lobbyists are bad apples and play outside the rules.


What we need to stop is the fund raising. If a politican accepts money from a group, such as teachers unions or auto makers, they should recuse themselves from voting, just like judges. If it doesn't do any good to try to buy a politican, they will stop trying.

Answer 2

Lobbying is just another way for the rich to influence the lawmakers. Whoever has the most money has the most lobbyists, the most lobbyists buy the most influence.

One exception I know of a lobby that is doing some good is AARP. They represent so many senior citizens, they have some of the same power the big boys have.

Answer 3

The lobby money corrupts our political system, and it should outlawed. There should be manditory jail time for any elected official caught taking lobby money. The BBC has been runing stories about ALL our officials going in and out of Abramoff's bar. That was THE place in DC to get loaded with lobby money!

Answer 4

It already is. take away the fancy name and call it what it is.................
Bribe NOUN:

1. Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person's views or conduct.
2. Something serving to influence or persuade.

(courtesy of American Heritage Dictionary)


Yet another illegal act that we as Americans overlook and tolerate from our government officials.

Answer 5

Money should never be allowed to buy political influence. It's basically a bribe.

Answer 6

The framers of the Constitution recognized the tendency of people to organize to advance their own interests. They saw the activity of what we today call interest groups as neither sinister nor praiseworthy, just a part of politics in a free society. Their confidence was based on the belief that these interests were so numerous that they would constantly be in competition with one another and that no single group would be dominant.

Even so, the Founding Fathers were not gifted with prophecy, and in today's world of lobbying, the better-organized and the more affluent are more apt to get their case heard by lawmakers, if not always the outcome they seek.

Lobbying's early days

In the early 19th century, when few people were affected by the actions of the federal government, lobbying was a small-scale enterprise. But as the nation grew more populous, more complex and less isolated, the scope of the federal government's activity widened and its policies touched the lives and fortunes of more people. Then as now, when the actions of the federal government have an impact on citizens, they seek to make that impact work to their advantage.

The period of the Civil War saw a huge upsurge in interest group activity. The need to supply a huge army meant that lucrative government contracts were up for grabs. Financiers vied for the right to sell federal government bonds, and entreaties from people seeking government jobs and contracts to supply the army formed a constant parade to the White House. Nonetheless, the humble petitioners seeking government clerkships were overshadowed by aggressive corporations seeking the enormous profits to be made from the war.

The hope of some that the federal government would retreat to its pre-war compactness proved unrealistic. The entrepreneurs made rich by the war did not relinquish their profitable ties to government.

Added to that were new potential beneficiaries of federal programs: the soldiers who had served in the Union Army. In 1866, the nation's first mass-membership interest group was formed, the Grand Army of the Republic. What the former soldiers lacked in money they made up in numbers. GAR, at its peak, boasted a membership of more than 400,000 and was instrumental in lobbying Congress to enact a pension bill, in 1890. President Grover Cleveland, who had vetoed the bill, was defeated for re-election in 1888 in large measure because of the veto.

Economic changes after the Civil War led to demands for government to adopt policies that promoted industrial development. The railroads received huge grants of federal land to build transcontinental rail networks. The postwar growth of commerce resulted in an increase of mail and the hiring of thousands of postal workers, who organized the National Association of Letter Carriers to lobby Congress to improve their work conditions.

The half-century after the Civil War was also a period of congressional ascendancy. A succession of weak presidents and strong congressional leaders made Capitol Hill the logical place to go to seek the favors of government. It also initiated an upsurge in the number of former members of Congress who became lobbyists selling their legislative knowledge, and their close contacts.

Corruption on a scale never imagined by Americans was one byproduct of the frenzied activity of corporate lobbyists. It produced the scandal of Crédit Mobilier of America, in 1872. Officials of the company, which had been created to skim a profit from railroad construction, gave large blocks of stock to Vice President Schuyler Colfax and a number of GOP congressmen to forestall a congressional inquiry.

Ironically, reform efforts have produced heightened lobbying. When farmers from the Plains states urged Congress to protect them from price gouging by the railroad industry that hauled their produce to market, Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate rates, which merely led rail officials to target their lobbying at the ICC.

A growth industry

Sometimes, technological innovation has spurred lobbying. The advent of radio and TV provided an avenue for special-interest advertising capable of reaching large audiences. So too has the emergence of the automobile, pharmaceutical and energy industries, which led to government regulations. These, in turn, led these industries to form trade associations and hire lobbyists to influence these regulations.

The flaw in the Founding Fathers' benign view of interest groups is that while no single interest group dominates all areas of policies, the wealthiest groups and the lobbyists with the best inside connections or representing organizations with mass memberships do monopolize individual areas of national policy.

This does not, by itself, promote illegal activity of the sort ascribed to Abramoff. Certainly, there are not many like him among Washington lobbyists. But it is the Abramoffs who are more likely to get the ear of lawmakers than are ordinary citizens who lack the means to buy tickets to their fundraisers.