What Is the Relationship between Lobbyists and Congress? (with Timothy LaPira)
What Is the Relationship between Lobbyists and Congress? (with Timothy LaPira)  
Podcast: Understanding Congress
Published On: Mon May 02 2022
Description: The topic of this episode is, “What is the relationship between lobbyists and Congress?”My guest is Timothy LaPira. He is a professor of political science at James Madison University and a faculty affiliate at the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia. Tim, I should add, is the lead editor of our volume Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline of Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform (University of Chicago Press, 2020). But even more relevant to the subject of this podcast episode is that Professor LaPira coauthored the book Revolving Door Lobbying: Public Service, Private Influence, and the Unequal Representation of Interests. This makes him an especially apt person to answer the question for us, “What is the relationship between lobbyists and Congress?”Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It’s a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be. And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation.I’m your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.Tim, welcome to the podcast.Timothy LaPira:Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.Kevin Kosar:Let's start very simply, with the definition of a lobbyist. Now, under the First Amendment, anyone can petition the government for a redress of grievances, as the Constitution says. So plenty of people do talk to Congress, and the executive branch and judiciary, for that matter. In fact, in my job at a think tank, I am often asked to comment on bills or testify before Congress by congressional staff or even legislators who approach me. But I'm not a lobbyist. So what makes a lobbyist a lobbyist?Timothy LaPira:This is a great question. It's one that's often misunderstood. There's many definitions of what a lobbyist is, but I tend to think of—there's two ways to think about this. First, the more comprehensive, academic version of thinking about a lobbyist. It could go by the name of policy advocate, government relations professional, policy strategist, or something along those lines. These are people who make money to represent other people's interests. Those interests are typically going to be collected in organizations, but it's not just representing those interests in speaking. It's representing those interests in the policymaking process. There has to be a connection between the private sector and the government. So that's a very broad definition. There is, further, a statutory definition, primarily through the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, which has been updated a number of times. In that law, there's a three-test definition of what a lobbyist is. First, they have to earn money. There's a minimum amount of money that's frankly not all that much given the size of the lobbying industry. It's about $5,000 a month. Second, they have to contact more than one government official. The purpose of this in the law, of course, is not to simply capture everyone, as you suggested. They might want to call up their member of Congress and say, "Vote for the bill,” or “Vote against a nominee," or what have you. The third point of the definition is most critical and frankly controversial: the lobbyist must spend more than 20 percent of her time on lobbying services in a given three-month reporting period. Now, Senator Levin, when he originally wrote this law—the intent here was that he was hearing from a lot of CEOs from major corporations who said [that] frequently CEOs are picking up the phone and calling senators. It's a necessary part of their job, but they don't consider themselves lobbyists. And they're not, in many respects. So the idea was to try to capture, who are the day-to-day, routine, professional lobbyists? And this 20 percent definition was sort of picked out of thin air. If we think about it, one full day in a five-day week is 20 percent of your time. This was intended to not capture everybody in a given organization. The problem with that, as we'll see, is that a lobbyist could define the fact that they're spending 19 percent of their time on lobbying services and therefore not be a lobbyist, which is, frankly, pretty disingenuous.Kevin Kosar:Well, we have this category called lobbyists, but why do we have lobbyists? And are they helpful to Congress in any way, or are they just the bane of the legislative process?Timothy LaPira:That's a good question. I often pose this to my students to think about it this way. Are lobbyists good or bad for democracy? The answer is yes. It partly depends on what your perspective is. I don't like lobbyists who are taking on positions that I disagree with or oppose. I do like advocates who are speaking on my behalf and representing my own interests. But the real answer to your question here is that every person has a set of political interests by nature. We all have jobs, pay taxes, use roads, are protected with the common defense, and whatnot. We all have an idiosyncratic set of interests. And what lobbyists are doing—I would say we all have interests that deserve a voice. That's the First Amendment part. And what lobbyists are doing is acting on our behalf to be our voice because we're busy with our day jobs, and we're busy raising kids and doing the shopping. We don't have time every day to walk up to Capitol Hill and communicate what our interests are. So lobbyists act as our agents and as our representatives, much like a lawyer might act on our behalf in court. Lobbyists have highly specialized expertise as well. These are typically not just random people off the street who people would be willing to pay to represent their interests. They have technical policy knowledge. They have experience in and around decision-making venues like Congress or the White House. And they also have really dense professional networks, typically in and around the government, where they can pick up the phone and call somebody, and they'll call them back, or they know who to call with a particular question or who to communicate an interest to. So, in that sense, they're serving citizens as our representatives and our voice, and they're able to speak much better than we are, even on behalf of our own interests, because they know the backgrounds and they know who to talk to. On Congress's side, or more generally in the government, including the executive, they're also useful because of their expertise. Members of Congress, in particular—the universe of problems that Congress could be asked to resolve is everything. Meaning that any given member of Congress can't possibly highly specialize the way that a lobbyist might. That means members of Congress are human, and they have some blind spots. They have some spaces where they don't know the ins and outs of a given problem or a solution or a proposed law. So it's useful to rely on experts, and those experts are often lobbyists—as well as think tank scholars and other folks in industry or in a social organization, what have you. So they are providing a good service to government.Now, that's not to say that they're providing that service for free or without any prejudice. They are representing a particular perspective and a highly specialized interest in a fight that might be—All policy conflicts are, after all, conflicts. They are disagreements among several people or groups of people who see differently. So they're going to represent their own perspective. What that means is oftentimes there are some perspectives that are better represented than others. So when it comes to “Are lobbyists good or bad for democracy?” they're good because they do provide that service, but they're not always good because they're not always representing interests equally.Kevin Kosar:That's excellent, excellent. Thank you. Now, let's talk about money. That word came up a short time ago. One of the common claims about lobbyists is that they buy legislators' votes. They say, "Hey, take this position, and we'll give a whole bunch of money to your campaign." Do legislators get bought? Is that a typical thing that happens in Washington, DC, or are lobbyists mostly giving money to legislators who already have positions that coincide or are the same as what the lobbyists want?Timothy LaPira:Yeah, this is a great question. It's also I think largely [mis]understood, in particular how we discuss the role of lobbyists and organized interests in the media, and frankly, the very politicians we're talking about as well. Lobbyists don't walk around the Capitol with bags of cash to hand out. That's not how it works, both literally or figuratively. Lobbyists are often going to be making campaign donations themselves and working with campaign strategists. They'll be offering advice to their clients and those who they represent about who might be best to give money to. The number one category of legislator or politician, by far, and it's not even close, it is to give money to...