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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

You have an incorrect view of what a lobbyist is and does. A lobbyist (or a lobbying organization or PAC) cannot give more to an official or campaign or party than any other private citizen; $5,000 per election. Lobbyists are primarily responsible for exactly what the GP said -- trying to bring expert information to non-expert elected officials.

PACs and other organizations that do lobbying can spend money on an independent campaign (Citizen's United), but they can't give it to the candidate.

Way more insidious than campaign contributions is the "revolving door" where former elected officials are hired as lobbyists or consultants as a deferred award for their support during their tenure.

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Lobbyists are not trying to bring expert information to elected officials. They are trying to influence public policy to the benefit of the people or organizations paying them.

Indeed, leveraging an information asymmetry between their employers and the officials they are lobbying is a key technique here.

There’s no necessary contradiction between those two things. More importantly lobbyists are indispensable because Congressfolk have tiny, tiny staff budgets so it’s not like they have their own internal researchers or even their own legal team. People forming the United States have unpaid interns because they can’t afford better.

Then they should be paid whatever is necessary to make lobbyists unnecessary. I suspect though that that would change nothing, because these "expert" lobbyists you support don't really want lawmakers to have full knowledge of whatever is important to them; their goal is to feed lawmakers the information they need to entice them to support the lobbyists agenda.

Congress has tiny staff budgets partly because one of the parties outsources all of its policy analysis and legislation writing to lobbyists, all of its public outreach/education to corrupt “think tanks” and corporate-owned media outlets, and intentionally eviscerated their own budget because in the past their own independent expert analysis often contradicted industry preferences, which was inconvenient for the corporations calling the shots.

One of the parties? You haven’t been around DC much I’m assuming.

Yes, one of the parties is largely responsible for budget cuts in the Congress’s own staff.

A web search turns up e.g. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2015/06...

Or more recently and pointedly, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-cbo-idUSKBN1...

Or you can find many other sources from the past 25 years discussing this.

The Congress should be robustly funding the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, committee staff, individual members’ staff, etc. But one party does not want the Congress to build up long-term institutional expertise or do careful independent analysis.

The EFF has lobbyists. Point: lobbying isn’t a “bad” thing. It’s only “bad” if you disagree with them. How else are lawmakers going to get detailed information about issues that interests care about? Some random constituent claiming to be an astrophysicist? Is it conceivable that ever member of Congress has a staff with experts in literally every possible subject that could come up for legislation? Nothing is stopping the “other” side from lobbying too. Lobbyists from both sides of issues are a critical part of the lawmaking process. We elect people to be able to balance those competing interests and ostensibly make the right decision. If you aren’t happy with that decision, there are elections every two years. No question there is corruption, but Congress itself isn’t corrupt. I am not a fan of Ocasio-Cortez, but she took out a prominent Democrat because, in the eyes of the constituents, that representative wasn’t doing the job in a way with which they agree. Congressmen win elections because a majority of their district wanted them to win. It’s a fact that a significant percentage of people complaining rarely vote, let alone actually volunteer for a campaign. We get the government we deserve, not necessarily the one we want.

The EFF needing to lobby is a bad thing.

There's a difference between someone representing an interest group and an expert and the difference is right there in the word "interest".

>> ..cannot give more to an official or campaign or party than any other private citizen; $5,000 per election.

Are you typing from the past? The 5k rule means nothing in today's world of dark money. A lobbyist can give unlimited amounts to third parties, organizations that will either support a campaign or not. Or they can just spend the money themselves. A billionaire may only be allowed to hand over 5k in cash, but they can spend millions on people to attack you online. So you listen to those lobbyists with the deepest pockets because they pose your greatest threat.

There are more subtle ways of transferring money from lobbyist to political party than just cash payments. Let's say that the lobbyist sponsor company promises to use a hotel chain owned by a party member for its bussines trips, or buy office supplies from a company owned by other member of the same party, or something similar. You can buy their support for your cause this way.

Since you seem informed on the matter, how much can a lobbyist give to a politician's charity foundation? For example, can they give more than $5,000 to the Clinton Foundation or the (now dissolving) Donald J. Trump Foundation?

I've always been very skeptical of the fact that high ranking and influential politicians (eg: ones that a lobbyist would want to influence) always seem to have a "non-profit" charity foundation, while low ranking politicians (ones who aren't high enough on the totem pole to be worth influencing) infrequently or rarely have non-profit charity foundations.

It's always about loopholes and indirect payments.

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