With the antics of Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and others getting attention in the mainstream media, there's been a call to reform Washington to remove the influence of special interests. Most of the proposed fixes have focused on preventing members of Congress from receiving any money from special interests. Such fixes are basically band-aids to patch up the loopholes in widespread use. Any proposed band-aid will fail to correct this problem permanently by not addressing the underlying causes.
Three reasons come to mind why someone would want to pay off a government official. The reasons are that they seek to preserve or increase our freedoms, to restrict our freedoms, or to get at a piece of someone else's pie.
People who are in Washington for the first reason are the only honorable lobbyists. These are groups that our trying to actually preserve our freedoms. Two prime examples from this group are the tobacco and gun lobbies. They may not be the most glittering examples, both are in Washington trying to counteract the push to make their respective products illegal or so restrictive they might as well be illegal.
The gun and tobacco lobbies are a direct result of the people who are in Washington for the second reason: people who want to restrict our freedoms. Just as there are people trying to preserve our freedoms, there are people in Washington trying to do the opposite by making it illegal or extremely inconvienent to do or own something. People in this group are either anti-something or another, assuming they're not double-speakers, or in a business in which they want to shut down or prevent competition.
The final reason could be the biggest: people seeking a piece of someone else's pie. These are the envious pull-peddlers that live according to Robin Hood ideals. Lobbyists for this group seek the right to take money from one group and possibly give it out to another. It's not just the poor seeking unearned money. This group extends the entire spectrum of Americans: rich, poor, elderly, middle class, farmers, employed, unemployed, incorporated, unionized, non-union, white, black, latino, etc. Any person who thinks they deserve a payout or break from the government that their neighbor or competitor does not.
The above reasons may not be exhaustive, but they explain why lobbyists have spilled out of the lobby and into entire blocks of Washington. If we want to remove them from Washington we'll have to do more than plugging up leaks as they appear. We have to fix the problem at the base by removing the reasons why they're in Washington in the first place. To do that our representatives must be prevented from passing laws that do not protect our natural rights or that cater to any one group. Only then will Washington become a smaller town.
