Influence-Peddling

Mar. 5, 2008 — -- Since The New York Times published its Page One story claiming an inappropriate link between Sen. John McCain and telecommunications lobbyist Vicki Iseman, we've heard much more about the evil of "influence-peddling."

The day the Times story ran, Sen. Barack Obama debated Sen. Hillary Clinton, saying, "Washington has become a place where good ideas go to die. … They go to die because lobbyists and special interests have a strangle hold on the agenda in Washington".

Then Ralph Nader announced he would again run for president because Washington is "corporate-occupied territory, every department agency controlled by overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists. …"

"Good government" types like Nader love to decry the cozy environment in which members of Congress and corporate lobbyists work closely together and even socialize. They warn that this gives an unfair advantage to special interests.

They have a point.

Major economic interests can afford to pay for lobbying operations that provide congressional staffers reams of information about their industries and their "need" for legislative favors.

Under these circumstances, what chance do masses of unorganized taxpayers have?

The Public Choice school of economics calls this the problem of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. Individual members of relatively small interest groups stand to gain huge rewards when they lobby for government favors, but each taxpayer will pay only a tiny portion of the cost of any particular program, making opposition pointless.

Sugar consumers, for example, far outnumber sugar producers, but the benefits of a sugar program that keeps out foreign sugar and forces up the price helps each producer far more than it harms individual consumers. Sugar growers have an incentive to hire full-time lobbyists, while consumers do not. So the minority rules. The disgustingly unfair and expensive sugar support program is renewed year after year.

"Good government" types rightly abhor this influence-peddling, but they propose pointless reforms, like bans on lobbyist-sponsored gifts, junkets and rides on corporate jets. They also back a vicious assault on free speech: campaign-finance restrictions designed to reduce the influence of lobbyists in political campaigns. Despite all these "reforms," influence-peddling goes on.