How and Why to Take Quick Action Now to Protect the Autonomy of the Economic and Political Realms: The Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act of 2005

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Conservatives and liberals have some common ground when it comes to keeping government distinct from economic life. They just come at the problem from opposite sides. Conservatives tend to be more wary of government power merging with and dominating economic life. Liberals tend to be more wary of economic power merging with and dominating processes of government. Both sides in the debate too often fail to realize that both sorts of merging and dominance mirror each other rather closely and can be about equally destructive.

The worst political nightmare of a conservative is perhaps an all-powerful, tyrannizing state that in effect becomes the sole capitalist, horribly inefficient and corrupt. The worst nightmare of the liberal is the all-powerful capitalist who manages to take over the state as his own personal property and tyrannize on behalf of his narrow self-interest, impoverishing, exploiting and enslaving others. These two opposed phantasms, like many other opposites, meet in a kind of peculiarly close mirror resemblance to each other, somewhat as Hitler and Stalin met in their pact.

So in theory liberals and conservatives should be able to work together in this area, since both in their different ways are seeking the same thing: to insure that the economic and political spheres retain some autonomy vis-à-vis each other and are able to check, balance and correct each other ongoingly.

In that spirit, conservatives might agree to support new lobbying laws (in a moment, specific info on how persons of any political persuasion can take quick action on that) that liberals favor to create more of a barrier between monied special interests and government. And in exchange liberals might cease from reflexively treating privatization as a dirty word, and instead consider each case of potential privatization a little more open-mindedly on the merits.

So now to what you can do about new lobbying laws. On May 4, two representatives (Meehan and Emanuel) announced the Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act of 2005. You could find out your own representative’s phone number and email address very easily by clicking this link: My Representative. Consider asking your representative to support passage of this bill. If passed, it would require that professional lobbyists -- people paid to try to persuade lawmakers to pass legislation desirable to the lobbyists’ clients -- submit quarterly spending disclosures to an electronic system open to public view. The bill would also bar lobbyists from organizing junkets for lawmakers – junkets basically being pleasure trips members of Congress take to gather supposedly necessary information. The problem with junkets is that they sometimes amount to a kind of bribe given by the lobbyist in exchange for desired legislation. Passage of this bill, furthermore, would mean members of Congress would be required to know who is paying for an overseas trip. Congressmen could no longer pretend ignorance when lobbyists set up a dummy sponsor whose purpose is to conceal from the public just who is paying the congressional piper. More important, the bill if enacted would forbid members of Congress from being hired by lobbying firms until two years after the member retired from Congress. At present, only a one year hiatus is required. The result is that too often laws and lawmakers are in effect bought by lobbyists, insofar as lawmakers know that if they satisfy the lobbyist legislatively, the lobbying firm may well hire the lawmaker at a high salary when he or she leaves Congress. The newly required two year hiatus would however make the former lawmaker less valuable as a lobbyist, since he would be less an ‘insider’ to Congress than someone retired only a year. Thus it would become somewhat harder for members of Congress to in effect trade legislation in exchange for a lucrative career down the road.

And the bill closes off other forms of corruption. If you want to help keep the economic and political systems relatively distinct, then whether you are conservative or liberal, you could do worse than to contact your representative and ask him or her to help pass this bill. If you desire more info on this, try googling “Meehan Emanuel”.