The Intense Lobbying Frenzy Over Stimulus Dollars in Congress
With Uncle Sam poised to drop $700 billion or so to get the economy going again, one group rushed into overdrive weeks ago: lobbyists.
Congress goes out of town at year's end, so the lucky ones on K Street usually cap the year with holiday bashes, bonus checks, and vacation getaways. Not now. Many are burning up shoe leather as they pitch people, projects, companies, and places of higher learning as deserving of stimulus dollars.
The frenzy is hardly surprising, since the stimulus is apt to spiral into the biggest government spending binge since World War II.
"It's very intense right now," one Washington lobbyist said. "I'm working late every day, until 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock. Every imaginable client has been calling me with ways of how their business, or their projects, should fit into the economic stimulus package. It's wild. No idea is too far-fetched for people."
An estimated 13,500 lobbyists toil in the nation's capital, but the boom is not universal. Some lobbyists have been given pink slips or warned they'll be let go in March or April, says lobbyist Paul Miller, the immediate past president of the American League of Lobbyists. Those who've kept their jobs find they're "so busy it's hard to keep their heads above water," he says. "There is a scramble with regard to the stimulus."
At one of the major players, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, lobbyist Janet Kavinoky says the last week of the year often is a time to catch your breath, plan for the next 12 months, and, when a new Congress is preparing to be sworn in, schedule meet-and-greets with new lawmakers.
"This time, the pace is much faster, and there is much more going on, because everyone recognizes that next week, Congress is going to be in a full-court press to get a stimulus package moving," she said. "It's a scramble to put out information to shape or frame the debate and to try and get key priorities into the stimulus legislation."
The chamber bills itself as the world's largest business federation, representing more than 3 million businesses and groups. For Kavinoky, this is an especially hectic time because she directs its lobbying in the area of transportation infrastructure—in her words, "everything that floats, flies, rolls, and flows: planes, trains, automobiles, information, energy, and water."
She has a plan of attack similar to the chamber's support for the $700 billion financial rescue package in the fall: sending its small army of lobbyists to visit congressional offices, coordinating with trade associations, and marshaling the grass roots and so-called grass tops, or influential people on the local and state level, and asking them to voice support for priorities drawn up by the chamber and sent to Congress three days after Barack Obama's election. The group is keen to stimulate the overall economy, especially sectors hurt by the recession, such as housing, auto manufacturing, infrastructure, and travel.
Infrastructure is one priority identified by Obama and his team. Others include a middle-class tax cut, aid to the states, so-called green jobs, building schools, expanding broadband access, and improving information technology within healthcare.
Several other major players are busy lobbying, including the National Governors Association, the Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Counties, and the AFL-CIO. There's also a bipartisan group called Building America's Future that is pushing for infrastructure dollars. It's led by three heavyweights: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York.
This week, a half-dozen Republican members of Congress are being singled out by a group called the Campaign for Jobs and Economic Recovery, a coalition of progressive and labor groups. The members are being urged to vote in favor of the stimulus. The coalition says it will make its point with news conferences, ads, and a barrage of "phone calls and E-mails to be lobbed into Congress."
Congress is often late in passing major, multiyear spending bills—from the farm bill to money for highways and transit—but the economic crisis means time is of the essence. President-elect Barack Obama, who takes the oath of office January 20, wants a stimulus package approved by Congress on his desk immediately and is intent on approving "shovel-ready" projects to inject money into the economy quickly. The new Congress meets January 6, just two weeks before Obama's swearing-in.
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Reader Comments
Be afraid, very afraid, of fear tactics
No one is obliged to agree with Peter's argument but he has laid out a rational, fact and data driven argument. So what does J.M. of W.I do? He resorts to ad hominum insults, calling Peter "dumb" and employing fear campaign tactics when he implies there is "...massive effort to take America without firing a shot." Well, at least Peter used his full name.
Peter's Dumb Dumb Comments
After reading the great oratatory on how well Social Security is doing, I wonder if he took into account that nearly 40% of the population will be able to draw from this system because of the age of our Boomers. Along with that at least 20% is under the age of even contributing. Build into that the fact we have a shrinking economy built on the premise that we are the largest debtor nation in the world that has our moneyprinted by an organisation of Banks that won't let us audit them, and he thinks we're doing better now that Bush and his heirs are out of office? I notice he failed to mention the changes that the Clinton administration implemented to reflect better unemployment numbers after he and Gore approve the NAFTA and GATT agreements. Or the fact that he improvised a new way to allow the removal of the M3 in inflation figures to fudge matters. To get back to how well Social Security is doing and the 40% who remain to pay the bills. 2-5% of the population is wealthy enough to not worry about it while up to 10% are on welfare in our country. Nearly 2% are in prison and the remaining 25% are worrying about their jobs who actually pay one half the money going into the system. Wow! What a great future to look forward to when we now have a president who wants to run trillion dollar deficits to boost the economy with more fiat dollars. I have to wonder if their on blinders on those are claiming to be in charge or if this is a massive effort to take America without firing a shot.
Social Security COLA
Kevin Phillips in BAD MONEY, and many others, have documented how in 1990, as part of their campaign to destroy Social Security and force everyone to “invest” (give) money to Wall Streeters, Alan Greenspan, with the approval of the first Bush administration replaced the measurement of inflation that determines Social Security COLAs with a bogus measurement that deliberately understates inflation. This actually served two purposes. It made it appear that Greenspan was doing a great job managing inflation when in fact he was doing a terrible ob, and, it gradually reduced the purchasing power of Social Security recipients to in some cases, virtual starvation levels.
Since 1983 the Bureau of Labor Statistics has maintained an experimental consumer price index for seniors (CPI-E) that tracks seniors expenses more closely than the formula currently used to calculate today’s COLA, which is calculated based on the habits of young, urban professionals and doesn’t take into account the rising health care, insurance, and energy costs America’s seniors are currently struggling with. ccording to the (CPI-E) seniors have lost as much as 40% of their buying power since 2000.
For twenty years now Republicans have conducted a fear campaign suggesting that Social Security was insolvent and that the only safe and secure way for Americans to plan for retirement was to hand over their money to Wall Streeters like Bernie Madoff ,on a regular basis. Of course today we know which was the Ponzi scheme. Many who have seen their private 401K accounts dissolve before their eyes are now reduced out their retirement on Social Security. Fortunately Social Security is fully solvent for years to come.
Actually if people who make more than $250,000 a year had to contribute their fair share into Social Security, it would be able to restore the huge cuts in benefits that Greenspan and the Republicans covertly introduced, and still be fully solvent for the next 50 years, or longer! This would not only enable American to retire with dignity, as Canadians and Europeans already do, but would of course immediately inject tens of billions of dollars of consumer spending into the economy which our economy t needs soon it is to avoid deflation. Unlike the bank give away program which cost middle and low income Americans more than the wealthy, and only benefited bank executives, requiring everyone to pay their fair share of the Social Security tax would only affect the wealthy who can most easily afford to pay, while benefiting middle and low income Americans who have seen their private retirement accounts disappear, and it is guaranteed to provide a huge, immediate stimulus to the economy.
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