Lobbying on the Decline? Probably Not ...

Previous posts have discussed rules on lobbying, along with data on  lobbyists. The Center for Responsive Politics reports:

For the second year running, total spending on federal lobbying has declined.

It's only the third time in the last 15 years that overall spending on lobbying has declined. In fact, overall spending is at its lowest point since 2007.

Not all is gloomy on K Street: Overall spending on lobbying still topped $3.27 billion and more than 12,374 lobbyists hit the Hill this past year, making it the fifth highest-spending year overall.

But the numbers nevertheless represent a decline to a level of spending not seen since the days before the healthcare debate, which drove outlays for Washington representation to unprecedented levels. At the spending peak in 2010, during the height of the battle over President Obama's healthcare overhaul, more than $3.55 billion was laid out. The $3.28 billion spent this year is lower than the $3.30 billion spent in 2008 -- before health care became an issue -- but is significantly higher than 2007's level, when clients paid $2.8 billion for lobbying in the nation's capital.

The Center for Responsive Politics based its analysis on data filed in lobbying disclosure reports, which must be filed with the House and Senate every quarter. The reports detail, in general terms, what issues were lobbied, which lobbyists and firms were hired and how much they were paid for the work.

As Roll Call reports, however, these data do not necessarily mean a decline in interest group activity.

The tepid recovery and a dysfunctional Congress do bear blame, but a third, much overlooked factor exists: A lot of the work influencing government takes place in the shadows, outside of the view of public disclosures such as the LDA. And with a president who has further stigmatized registered lobbyists, K Streeters and some of their clients have made a practice of keeping their work just under the limits of the lobby laws.

In some cases, lobbyists have remained on the job, even with the same firms, but have deregistered, keeping their clients and their work secret. One prominent example is Steve Ricchetti, who stayed with his Ricchetti Inc., although no longer as a registered lobbyist, before joining the Obama administration last year. Lobbyists, of course, can’t work for the executive branch — President Barack Obama banned them — unless granted a waiver.

“I have looked at this very carefully over the years and thought about it a lot,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “I have come to the conclusion that the deregistrations that are going on, because people find out that they don’t really need to register or they’re trying to do a little bit of shadow advocacy . . . is the most important factor.”

More than the economy, more than the partisan gridlock on the Hill, Thurber asserted, it’s the lack of enforcement of lobbying laws and the resulting move to keep more lobbying work out of public view that is depressing the LDA tallies. K Street players don’t trigger the lobby law until they make more than one contact with government officials and spend at least 20 percent of their time on lobbying activities for compensation.

National Conversations and Deliberative Democracy

At The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada writes skeptically of "national conversations" and faults the president for promoting the phrase.

In 2006’s “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama hails the Constitution “not just as a source of individual rights, but also as a means of organizing a democratic conversation around our collective future.” He even defines our democracy “not as a house to be built, but as a conversation to be had.”

From his college days, Obama was imbued with the concept of “deliberative democracy,” explains Harvard University historian James Kloppenberg, the author of a book on Obama’s intellectual development. This is the notion that politics is “not just the registering of brute individual interests and tallying of the votes, but discourse, conversation, deliberation,” he says. “Individual interests are not a given but something to be developed in dialogue with other participants in your democracy.”

But deliberation is not mere conversation, which can just be an airing of grievances or other feelings.  Deliberation involves reasoned exchange on the merits of public policy.  Officials and political activists deliberate in order to reach decisions, not just to vent.

Super Bowl Politics

Previous posts have discussed campaign contributions and lobbying expenses by professional sports.  So even the Super Bowl has a political angle, as the Center for Responsive Politics reports:

Managers and players from both teams have stepped into the political fray, donating $160,500 to politicians and to the NFL's political action committee since the early 1990s, according to Center for Responsive Politics research. Contributors related to both teams leaned slightly Republican, by $10,000. But most of the donations ($115,000) went straight to the NFL's PAC. League commissioner Roger Goodell and his wife have given an extra $55,900.

In addition, the NFL spent $1.14 million on lobbying last year. That's down from its record $1.62 million in 2011, but the league has come a long way in its political influence since 1998, when it spent just $360,000 to lobby tax, gaming, and broadcasting issues, according to OpenSecrets.org data.

Now the NFL has much more legislation to monitor. Last year, it lobbied TV programming and copyrights, human growth hormones, player safety and antitrust issues, sports betting and concussion legislation.

Births and Policy Problems

Previous  posts have discussed changes in the number of births. Jonathan V. Last writes at The Wall Street Journal:

The nation's falling fertility rate underlies many of our most difficult problems. Once a country's fertility rate falls consistently below replacement, its age profile begins to shift. You get more old people than young people. And eventually, as the bloated cohort of old people dies off, population begins to contract. This dual problem—a population that is disproportionately old and shrinking overall—has enormous economic, political and cultural consequences.

For two generations we've been lectured about the dangers of overpopulation. But the conventional wisdom on this issue is wrong, twice. First, global population growth is slowing to a halt and will begin to shrink within 60 years. Second, as the work of economists Esther Boserups and Julian Simon demonstrated, growing populations lead to increased innovation and conservation. Think about it: Since 1970, commodity prices have continued to fall and America's environment has become much cleaner and more sustainable—even though our population has increased by more than 50%. Human ingenuity, it turns out, is the most precious resource.

Low-fertility societies don't innovate because their incentives for consumption tilt overwhelmingly toward health care. They don't invest aggressively because, with the average age skewing higher, capital shifts to preserving and extending life and then begins drawing down. They cannot sustain social-security programs because they don't have enough workers to pay for the retirees. They cannot project power because they lack the money to pay for defense and the military-age manpower to serve in their armed forces.

Ranking States: Ideology, Party, POTUS Approval

In several chapters, our textbook examines differences among the American states.  Demographics, policies and electoral patterns can change substantially as soon as one crosses a state line, say from Nevada to Utah. 

Gallup ranks the states by ideology:

Alabama, North Dakota, and Wyoming were the most conservative states in the union in 2012, with between 49% and 50% of residents in each identifying their ideology as conservative. Residents of the District of Columbia were by far the most likely to identify as liberal (41%), followed by Massachusetts (31%), Oregon, and Vermont (each at 29% liberal). 

The distribution of ideology in 2012 generally reflects the familiar "blue state," "red state" patterns that define the political geography of today's modern America.

... by partisanship:

There were more blue states than red states in the U.S. in 2012, by a margin of 20 to 12. After the District of Columbia, the most Democratic-leaning states in 2012 were Hawaii, Maryland, Rhode Island, New York, and Massachusetts -- where Democrats held at least 20-percentage-point advantages in party identification. Republicans enjoyed this lopsided an advantage in Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho.

Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois, and Delaware round out the top 10 most Democratic states. Thus, eight of the top 10 are located in the East.

...by approval of President Obama:

Residents of Hawaii, along with those living in the District of Columbia, were most likely to approve of President Barack Obama in 2012, according to an analysis of Gallup Daily tracking for the year. Residents of Utah and Wyoming were least likely to approve, with fewer than three in 10 residents giving Obama a positive review.
...
The states with the highest and lowest approval ratings are generally similar from year to year, with some shuffling of the rank ordering. This year, only one of the top 10 states (plus D.C.) is different compared with 2011, with Rhode Island moving into the top 10 and Illinois dropping out. Among the bottom 11 states, Kentucky and South Dakota have dropped out, replaced by Alabama and Nebraska.

Celebrities and Policy Advocacy

As we note in the textbook, Hollywood figures often use their celebrity to draw attention to policy causes.  The latest example is Bradley Cooper of Silver Linings Playbook.  In the movie, he did a splendid job of portraying a man with bipolar disorder, but he has no expertise in mental health issues.

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The Washington Post suggests a more cynical explanation for his appearances in Washington:

Was this all about using a star to promote a cause — or using a cause to promote a “Silver Linings” Oscar campaign? The invisible hand of media-savvy executive producer Harvey Weinsteinseems to be at work in Cooper’s last-minute advocacy blitz, a week before ballots go to Academy members. But the mental-health professionals seemed thrilled with the turnout (about 100 people spilling out of the room) and the media exposure.

Hagel's Bad Day

The Constitution empowers the Senate to confirm the president's nominees for Cabinet posts and other high office.  In all of US history, it has rejected just nine Cabinet nominees.  A dozen other nominees either withdrew or failed to get a floor vote.  Nevertheless, confirmation hearings can be contentious: senators can use them to gain publicity, score political points, or send policy messages to the administration.  Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense, had a difficult time in his confirmation hearing yesterday. CNN reports:



Dana Bash also reports that John McCain (R-Arizona), who was very tough on Hagel, was once a close ally:




Lindsay Graham (R-SC), another senator who has been close to McCain, illustrates a point about political rhetoric:  when you make a categorical statement, you'd better be prepared for a particular kind of followup question:  "Name one."