Lobbyist

“ The lobbyist who is for or against anything for hire, who haunts the chamber of legislation and taints the atmosphere with his corrupt designs, who shadows members at their homes and hotels, injecting his poison into the public service, is a criminal, whose approach is an insult, and to whom the doors of the Capitol should never swing inward. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And very likely if you are wronged, the wrongdoer has so cleverly gone round the law that it needs legislation to set you straight, and that needs a lobbyist, whom the lawyer must hire, or he must turn lobbyist himself. Now, a lawyer costs money, and a lobbyist is one of the most expensive of modern luxuries ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 third temptation to which the commercial man is subjected is the corruption of politics. Just in proportion as a corporation secures a monopoly of the business in which it is engaged, in that proportion the necessity for government regulation increases, and I may add, the difficulty of securing regulation increases in proportion to the necessity for it. Municipal corruption has become a byword, and the lobbyist has made his evil presence felt at the national and State capitals. Bribery is becoming a fine art, and neither the voter nor his representative is spared. ”

“ Where corruption can easily occur is when a lobbyist, knowing the rules of the game, receives special treatment for his or her client, irrespective of the public interest, simply by enjoying a relationship with a member of Congress who can, by the process we call earmarking, provide their clients a benefit that is seldom scrutinized by Congress as a whole. ”

“ His eyes darted first to Peabody and then to Stevens, waiting for either of them to open the conversation.
The highest class lobbyists, those who "swing" the "biggest deals," concern themselves only with men who can "handle" or who control lawmakers. They get regular reports and outline the campaign. Like crafty spiders they hide in the center of a great web, a web of bribery, threat, cajolery and intrigue, intent on every victim that is lured into the glistening meshes.
Only the small fry mingle freely with the legislators in the open, in the hotels and cafés and in the Capitol corridors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If a Member, upon leaving office, becomes a registered lobbyist under the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946 or any successor statute, or is employed or retained by such a registered lobbyist or an entity that employs or retains a registered lobbyist for the purpose of influencing legislation, he shall not lobby Members, officers, or employees of the Senate for a period of two years after leaving office. ”

“ We group together for purposes of posing a picture, every Washington lobbyist, fixer, five-percenter, hot-shot lawyer, industrial press agent, and man from Missouri. They are a multitude, especially men from Missouri.
When a really big fix is made, it usually is not handled in Washington at all. The deal is consummated back home, as a quid pro quo for a large campaign donation, after which the county or state chairman sends word through channels to his men in Washington that the matter should be okayed.
Lobbying can be a delightful and well-paid occupation. ”

“ The term ‘covered executive branch official’ and ‘lobbyist’ have the meanings given those terms in section 3 of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (2 U.S.C. 1602) . “ (5) The term ‘registered lobbyist or lobbying organization’ means a lobbyist or an organization filing a registration pursuant to section 4 (a) of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (2 U.S.C. 1603 (a) ) , and in the case of an organization filing such a registration, ‘registered lobbyist’ includes each of the lobbyists identified therein. ”

“ The United States Senate has just passed a lobbying reform bill which will require all of our lobbyists to register for a change and require them to report any gifts beyond a very small amount that they give to any Member of Congress. And I've introduced the toughest campaign finance reform law ever, to lower the cost of campaigns, reduce the influence of political action committees, and open the airwaves to honest debate, all paid for by lobbyists, by repealing the lobbyist tax deduction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER XXII LOBBYISTS—AND ONE IN PARTICULAR Washington has known many lobbyists in its time, and it keeps on knowing them. The striking increase in legislation that aims to restrict unlawful or improper practices in business, the awakening of the public conscience, has caused a greater demand than ever for influence at the national capital, for these restrictive measures must be either killed or emasculated to a point of uselessness by that process which is the salvation of many a corrupt manipulator, the process of amendment. ”

“ 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 Court's assumption that an agreement between private parties and public officials is an "inevitable" precondition for official action, however, is simply wrong. [8] Indeed, I am persuaded that such agreements are the exception rather than the rule, and that they are, and should be, disfavored. The mere fact that an official body adopts a position that is advocated by a private lobbyist is plainly not sufficient to establish an agreement to do so. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the courts had all along held that any proof of fraud or corruption in obtaining a franchise or other legislative grant was sufficient to justify its revocation, the lobbyist, the bribe-giver, and the "innocent purchaser" of rights and privileges stolen from the people, would have found the traffic in legislative favors a precarious and much less profitable mode of acquiring wealth. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ It was in the days before the legislature was prohibited from granting, by special act, franchises and charters, when banks, turnpike companies, railroads, and all sorts of corporations came asking for charters, that the figure of the lobbyist first appeared. He acted as a middleman between the seeker and the giver. The preeminent figure of this type in state and legislative politics for several decades preceding the Civil War was Thurlow Weed of New York. As an influencer of legislatures, he stands easily first in ability and achievement. ”

“ Big government always writes a lot of regulations, rules, and has a lot complexity. So if you are a multibillion-dollar corporation, a powerful labor union or a billionaire, you can come and hire the best lawyers in America and they will help you figure out the loopholes in those laws. Let me tell you what else you can do: You can hire the best lobbyists in Washington to help you get those loopholes written in. ”

“ Professor Bryce says of the American lobby system: "All legislative bodies which control important pecuniary interests are as sure to have a lobby as an army to have its camp followers. Where the body is, there will the vultures be gathered together." To such an extent is the lobby abuse carried that some large corporations select their regular solicitors more for their qualifications as lobbyists than for their legal lore. ”

“ Nor is congress quite guiltless in this respect, since it has recklessly granted principalities in the public soil to aid enterprises designed by private companies for their own benefit, these grants being obtained by representations, wholly unfounded, of the public utility in the undertaking.19 The hand of the lobbyist is visible in these matters, while suspicion attaches to both state and national156 legislators, who too frequently have other than the people's interest at heart. ”

“ The female lobbyist is a character that “once-upon-a-time” flourished at the national and in State capitals, but modern methods have made her, to a large degree, superfluous, and now the high-priced lawyer, representing the Trust, deals directly with the party boss instead of the individual lawmaker. It is cheaper and quicker. ”

“ We desperately need to pass lobbying reform. The lobbyists didn't go away with the last election, and we still believe that they shouldn't be allowed to give gifts, entertainments, or trips to lawmakers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Real reform means ensuring that a ban on lobbying after members of Congress leave office is real and includes the behind the scenes coordination and supervision activities now used to skirt the ban.
Real reform means giving the public access to now-secret conference committee meetings and posting all bills on the Internet at least a day before they're voted on, so the public can scrutinize what's in them.
Real reform means passing a bill that eliminates all gifts and meals from lobbyists, not just the expensive ones. ”

“ The great corporations were obliged to have lobbyists on the ground to keep them informed as to the prospective legislation. If these lobbyists found nothing which would harass their employers, they frequently took the trouble to see that something was introduced which would so embarrass the corporations in order that they might continue to hold their jobs and obtain more money to spend. The "hold up man" was prominent; one man every session brought a trunk full of "strike" bills to be distributed among his loyal supporters. ”

“ It's time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or with Congress. It's time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. ”