Lobbyism In America

In his report Dan Rather centers on the lobbying industry of Washington D.C. In a term of decades lobbying has turned into a multimillionaire business, nowadays the K street operation center counts with more than 30.000 lobbyists and, the annual estimated profit range around the order of billions of dollars. Lobbying deals with the support and leveraging of a whole diversity of, if not all, interest groups; “Every possible group in America is pushing something in Washington”. Consequently, lobbyist are important players in policy making in the present days, just as mentioned in the video, an important part regarding the conception and promotion of laws is directly linked to K street. However, given the high stake made to push interests, the influential spheres and finally the money implied in lobbying, this approach to the government power frequently threatens democracy.

In first place, when considering the essence of lobbying as that of a business, is the money the goal and meaningful interest pursued. Lobbying is a force that generates an imbalance in the representation of the interests. Then, wealthy
In some cases, the influence of this companies in government is so strong, that attempts to protect the rights and interest of people are hindered. Mr. Rather shows an example of this with the litigation between consumer interest groups and payday companies. Lobbying as a big fish in a political and economic sense is not an exception. The access to crucial information, the great amount of money and the network possessed by lobby firms, places lobbyist in a position of power. Consequently and despite the constitutional regulations imposed to lobbying, this power can arouse corruption, greed and violations to law when used by unscrupulous people, just as exposed by the Abramoff’s