So much money, so few lobbyists in D.C. How does that math work?
Spending to lobby the US government has almost tripled since 1998, but numbers of registered lobbyists have barely budged. How the work gets done without the scarlet 'L' of lobbyist registration.
Spending to lobby the US government has almost tripled since 1998, but numbers of registered lobbyists have barely budged. How the work gets done without the scarlet 'L' of lobbyist registration.
When is a lobbyist not a lobbyist? We ask that because apparently a lot of influence-peddling in Washington is done by robots, ghosts, vampires, or other nonhumans. Total spending on lobbying the federal government has almost tripled since 1998, to $3.3 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Yet the number of registered lobbyists has jumped only about 20 percent, from 10,407 to 12,633.
It鈥檚 possible those official lobbyists are just doing a lot more business. But we don鈥檛 think that鈥檚 it. As presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich has demonstrated via his past work for Freddie Mac, it鈥檚 easy to do work that appears lobbyesque yet avoid the scarlet 鈥楲鈥� of lobbyist registration.聽
One way is to claim that in essence you鈥檙e a part-timer. Here鈥檚 how this works: Say you鈥檙e a Washington consultant and your client is a government-backed mortgage entity. If less than 20 percent of your work time for that client is spent on lobbying activities over a three-month period, then you don鈥檛 have to register as a lobbyist, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act.聽
Plus, the definition of 鈥渓obbying activities鈥� has some loopholes. Lobby activities include unsolicited calls to lawmakers or US officials, lobby campaign planning, and other stuff intended to influence a particular federal decision or piece of legislation. Yet modern lobbying is a sophisticated activity that involves general polling, ads, commissioned studies, and other work not directly related to any bending of congressional elbows about an amendment to a House bill.
鈥淓ach of these can be an effective component of a lobbying campaign, but even registered lobbyists don鈥檛 need to disclose them,鈥� wrote Howard Marlowe, president of the American League of Lobbyists, in a Hill op-ed on the subject late last year.
Activities defined as educational don鈥檛 count, either. An ex-pol can give lots of speeches at seminars sponsored by corporate clients without triggering the lobbyist label.
Thus, anybody who is a good lawyer or who has one can figure out how to get around the lobbying registration requirements. And in D.C., good lawyers are not in short supply, which may be why, on the surface, it seems that lobbyists are.聽