Lobbying Congress and the Executive: Turtles Atop the Brackish Waters

 

• DC PROGRAM PRESENTATION
• Washington Program Information Session Thursday from  7:30 – 8:30 pm,  Adams Hall. Davidson Lecture Room
• Early adjournment today for first of three back-to-back meetings.
• Next Monday, Casey Pick of The Trevor Project.  Have questions!
• FOR WEDNESDAY: New York State Attorney General, "Fake Comments: How U.S. Companies & Partisans Hack Democracy to Undermine Your Voice" (2021), at https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/oag-fakecommentsreport.pdf
• Story on amicus briefs

"The Most Permeable Branch"  -- why?

• Members and staff  (and yes, you can find salaries)
• Committees
• Committee staff
• Party Leadership: House and Senate
• Leadership staff
• Congressional Member Organizations

Constituencies (Holyoke p. 171)

ACCESS: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) says that if she finds 30 phone messages, "of the thirty, you're going to know ten of them. Anyone is going to make phone calls to the people they know first.  I'm going to call the people I know. Among the people I know are donors."

The lay of the land"

• Know the jurisdictions:  tax, appropriations, regulation
• Know the process
• Know the calendar
• Know the people
• Plant seeds

A leading lobbyist offers Eight Truths:

• Lobbying is persuasive advocacy.  … lobbying is attempting to convince 535 judges, based on their prior records, known beliefs, public comments and legislative histories that can be known by those who put in the effort.
• Lobbyists spend most of their days reading & researching.  As with the law, effective advocacy requires preparation.  Your meetings are with crazy-busy staffers who have maybe 15 minutes for you amidst receiving texts & emails.  You need to be concise, compelling and clear 
• Most lobbying meetings are with young(ish) staffers, to help them understand things they don’t know (about technology or medicine or energy or countless other areas where staffers are getting up to speed).  Their jobs are to research the issues to help educate their bosses.
•  Lobbyists are specialists like so many others inside companies… just as businesses have specialists who handle HR, niche lawyers to deal with niche legal matters and investor relations, they need and have government relations.  Government is an essential stakeholder, especially for regulated industries.
•  The majority of lobbying fights are between big dogs… rather than screwing the little guy, patent reform is Big Tech vs Big PhRMA vs Big Universities.  Tax reform was a clash of the titans.
•  If you were re-designing Washington to be better and more effective, you would still create lobbyists… to stand between Members & staff who mean well but lack expertise, and businesses where most people are inventing, manufacturing or selling products.
•  Lobbying entails more than face-to-face meetings with Members & staff.  Effective advocacy campaigns are surround sound…. deploys its lobbyists to meet with staffers on the Hill, flys-in executives to meet with Members, invites local representatives to visit in-district factories, encourages its industry allies and trade associations to follow-up with similar visits, runs TV ads to influence what staff sees, runs radio ads to influence what they hear in the car, runs digital ads to influence what appears on their phones, hires academics and think tanks to influence what they hear from others and see on social media, works the press to influence what they read in the papers, organizes local advocates to shape what they hear from the grassroots, potentially invests in political activities to bring political pressure and salience to the issue, engage NGOs (that by one estimate spend $10B annually on policy), etc. etc.
•  Of all of the individuals involved in the effort described above, ONLY lobbyists (who spend at least 20% of our time on meetings) disclose our clients and fees.  All the other media advisers, grassroots specialists, digital strategists, legal analysts, hired-academics, etc. – at least 65% of the total spend according to Prof. Tim LaPira, are part of the influence industry but not (technically) lobbyists.  It’s a swamp because the waters are opaque… we lobbyists are the turtles who swim atop the brackish waters