Lobby

“ The lobby in the halls of Congress in your days is described as a bad crowd, but to compare it with the hustlers of our days, would be like comparing a Sunday school with pandemonium. Millions of people who desire better work or promotion, and who have nothing to hope from the influence they are able to command at home, write to the hustlers at Washington to secure their services. ”

“ I mean, I hate to -- I understand the semantic hurdles that you're setting forward for the policy, but let's understand, he wasn't a lobbyist, he wasn't registered to lobby, and if you're not registered to lobby you can't be a lobbyist. That's why people have rendered the policy to be the strongest that it's been for any administration. ”

“ A good deal of the trouble is due to party leaders and to lobbyists who plague the members into voting for measures or against them. Lobbyists are paid agents of corporations, labor organizations, women’s leagues, reform associations, granges, and so on, who hang around the lobby and argue with the legislators, trying to influence their action by persuasion or threats as may seem likely to be most effective. ”

“ It ought to be mentioned here that the "correspondent" esteems himself a much more respectable gentleman than the "lobby agent," whom he affects to hold in virtuous contempt. More than once was the general warned by these facile gentlemen of the press, not to have anything to do with the vagabonds of the lobby, who, though they gave it out that they had Congress between their thumbs, and could double it up, and mould it exactly to their liking, were regarded by every member honest enough not to crook his palm more than once during the session, as so many buzzards resolved on having carrion. ”

“ And now at the last minute, some are trying to defeat lobby reform with bogus arguments.
Last Thursday, the House of Representatives stood up to intense pressure and passed lobby reform by a large margin. This week, it's the Senate's turn. The lobbyists and their allies will throw up a lot of rhetoric about how this bill hurts ordinary people. Don't you believe it. It's bad news for people who use paid professional lobbyists to influence legislation and don't want you to know what they're doing. ”

“ The lobby is the army of the plutocracy. ”

“ This is the “style” which the fair belles of the capital have adopted. Our letters are meant to embody both political and social themes; but, if the truth must be told, the business of the people of the United States is suffering for want of being transacted. Our great men are too busy with the tangled skein of the next administration. Although half the present session has slipped away, scarcely anything has been accomplished. The real hard work is represented by the lobby, which is as ceaselessly and noiselessly at work as the coral builders in the depths of the sea. ”

“ The lobby which represents the railroad companies at legislative sessions is usually the largest, the most sagacious and the most unscrupulous of all. Its work is systematic and thorough, its methods are unscrupulous and its resources great. Yet all the members of a legislative body cannot be bribed, either by money, or position, or favors. Some of them will not vote for any proposed measure unless they can be convinced that it is for the public welfare. ”

“ At each extremity of the house there is a lobby—one behind the cross-benches, the other behind the Speaker's chair, between which and the door of this latter lobby there is a high screen surmounted by the arms of the united kingdom. When the House divides upon any question, those who vote for the motion or bill pass into one lobby, and those who vote against the point to question proceed to the other. ”

“ Influential interests may maintain a lobby at the legislature, which means that they are represented there by agents who seek to influence the members of the legislature, and especially of the committees, sometimes by corrupt methods. ”

“ There is nothing of this sort in either the Senate or the House of Representatives. It is true that each political party has a floor leader, but he has not effective control over his followers. The chairmen of the various committees also supply a certain measure of leadership, but their work is not unified. |The lobby.| Mention should also be made of the pressure which is applied to individual members of Congress by the lobbyists. These lobbyists are hired workers, usually lawyers, who are paid to help get measures through, or in some cases to prevent the passage of certain laws. ”

“ Vain men are flattered and given newspaper notoriety. Others are given passes for their families and their friends. Shippers are given advantages in rates over their competitors; in fact, every legislator disposed to barter his vote away receives for it compensation which combines the maximum of desirability with the minimum of violence to his self-respect.
Those who attempt to influence or control legislative bodies in behalf of interested parties are collectively called the lobby. As a rule, the lobby consists of prominent politicians likely to have influence with members of their own party ”

“ The lobby, in its broadest sense, is composed of all those persons who go to Washington in order to exert pressure upon Congressmen in favor of or against certain measures. Some of the best laws and some of the worst are enacted through the influence of the lobbyist. Log-rolling is an important influence in determining legislation; a member votes for the pet measure of his fellow Congressman on condition that the latter will vote for the bill in which he is particularly interested. Political patronage is a great factor in determining votes in Congress ”

“ Here and there a solitary voice is heard in our legislative halls protesting against the horrors of this traffic, but so powerful is the lobby influence of wealthy corporations that no law can be passed to prevent them. ”

“ True, its existence is neither provided for nor recognized by law; yet it exists nevertheless, and so powerful, although somewhat hidden, is its influence upon the other branches of Congress, that almost any measure it is interested in becomes a law. It is somewhat remarkable that those measures which are plainly intended to promote the public interests are seldom agitated or advocated in the third house, while those measures of doubtful propriety or honesty usually secure the almost undivided support of the lobby. ”

“ If higher wages and shorter hours are prime ends of a union in bargaining collectively, these goals may often be more effectively achieved by lobbying and the support of sympathetic candidates. In 1960 there were at least eighteen railway labor organizations registered as congressional lobby groups. ”

“ This piece of legislation is remarkable in that it was an entirely new bill, substituted for a former and altogether different scheme containing no prohibition whatever, and that it was passed through all the forms and stages of enactment in the short space of four days. History sheds little light on the official transaction, but contemporary evidence points to the influence of a powerful lobby. ”

“ I asked for an explanation, and soon [Pg 690] learned that the 'Third House' consisted of old ex-members of either House or Senate, broken-down politicians, professional borers, and other vagrants who had made themselves familiar with the modus operandi of legislation, and who negotiated for the votes of members on terms to be agreed upon by the contracting parties—in short, these were the Lobby members of the Legislature—a portion of mankind which I had never heard mentioned in terms other than contempt and disgust. ”

“ Being charged with the duty of keeping the respective sides in readiness for all emergencies, they are generally to be found in the lobby, where they make themselves acquainted with the incomings and outgoings of members, and learn a good deal as to their prospective movements. ”

“ When the day of his decapitation arrives—and it comes to him soon or late—he is apt to develop into a lobbyist. Having been a congressman gives him the right to the floor of the House or Senate. He will be found later on championing any bill that has money in it, no matter how patent the steal. ”

“ The bigger the scare the bigger the fund advanced, of course, for the lobbyist to handle. All this also helps the lobbyist to secure and retain employment.
Not all the Washington lobbyists are outside of Congress. The Senator or Congressman has unequaled facilities for oiling or blocking the course of a bill. ”

“ I enjoy it, but I think I've done all I can in the Governor's office. I see that lobbyists in the State Capitol filling the halls on occasions. Good people, competent people, the most pleasant, personable, extroverted citizens of Georgia. Those are the characteristics that are required for a lobbyist. They represent good folks. But I tell you that when a lobbyist goes to represent the Peanut Warehousemen's Association of the Southeast, which I belong to, which I helped to organize, they go there to represent the peanut warehouseman. ”

“ The discussion which takes place in such meetings as this, and which is stimulated by such meetings as this, in the club, in all the local associations and places where men meet throughout the country, is at once far removed from the secret and selfish devices of the lobbyist and from the stolid indifference which characterizes a people willing to be governed without themselves having a voice in government. ”

“ Every lobbyist is required to register, as soon as he appears at the Capitol, to state in whose interest and in what capacity he attends the legislative session, to keep a faithful account of his expenses and to file a copy of the same with the Secretary of State. ”

“ The professional lobbyist has, I regret to say, become one of the features of legislative assemblies; he has become a stench in the nostrils of a decent community and ought to be driven out with the lash of scorn, pursued by the penalties of the law from the presence of every official and from the precincts of every legislative body in the republic. ”

“ To understand more thoroughly the actions lobbyists take to influence elected officials, the bill requires lobbying firms, lobbyists, and their political action committees to disclose their campaign contributions to federal candidates and officeholders, their political action committees, and political party committees. ”

“ There has been substituted for the unschooled body of citizens that used to clamor at the doors of the Finance Committee and the Committee on Ways and Means, one of the most interesting and able bodies of expert lobbyists that has ever been developed in the experience of any country,—men who know so much about the matters they are talking of that you cannot put your knowledge into competition with theirs. ”

“ The professional politician and the professional lobbyist thrive most rankly under a system which provides a multitude of elective officers of such divided responsibility and of such obscurity that the public knows, and can know, but little as to their duties and the way they perform them. ”

“ The men themselves are suspected and charged with lobbying and being lobbied. No measure is attempted for itself, but the opinion of the people is courted in the first place, and the measures are perfunctorily carried through as secondary. ”

“ Second-class lobbyists, who cannot finance dazzlers in the top79 echelons, have lists of typists and file-clerks and secretaries who are happy to be taken out, or taken in, and are not prissy over how an evening winds up. ”

“ If lobbyists can be required to register, if political parties can be required to make disclosure of the sources of their funds, if the owners of newspapers and periodicals must disclose their affiliates, so may a group operating under the control of a foreign power. ”

“ But most of those we consider lobbyists are the ones who feel they are not required to register. When we mention anyone in this chapter, we are not inferring that if he is not a registered lobbyist he is breaking the law. ”

“ A measure without any merit save to advance the interest of a patentee, or contractor, or railroad company, will become a law, while measures of interest to the whole people are suffered to slumber, and die at the close of the session from sheer neglect. It is known to Congressmen that these lobbyists are paid to influence legislation by the parties interested, and that dishonest and corrupt means are resorted to for the accomplishment of the object they have undertaken ... ”

“ The leaders and organizers were maintained by the business men directly—aldermen and legislators by means of bribes, party officials out of the campaign funds, lobbyists and corporation lawyers in the form of salaries, contractors by means of jobs, labor union leaders by subsidies, and newspaper proprietors and editors by advertisements. ”

“ These paid lobbyists must file quarterly reports of all money received and expended in carrying on their work, to whom paid, for what purposes, the names of publications in which they have caused any articles to be published, and the proposed legislation they are employed to support or oppose ”

“ The hoodlums’ tie-up with some labor, which came about when unions needed sluggers, or when tough guys muscled in to grab union treasurers, or used them as part of their extortion rackets. Lobbyists representing the unions are feared and toadied to. ”

“ Frequently legislation closing establishments of a given trade is the product of lobbying efforts by associations of traders seeking to quash the competitive pressures which force unwanted Sunday labor. ”

“ These corporations own and control property worth billions of dollars; they rule the finances of the country; they have tens of thousands of men in their employ; as they increase in strength and wealth, they are constantly striving for greater powers and privileges. Their lobbyists and retainers surround every department of the government. When public offices are to be filled, they unite in favor of men in their interest ”