When school children are taken through the Capitol, the great dome, they’re taught, this is where laws are made. This is where the dance of legislation gets carried out. True? That’s where the laws are voted on, but that is not where they are first conceived and where the hard sausage-making process happens. It’s all in these buildings and offices. I remember when I went to school they didn’t even mention lobbyists in history books. There were the three branches of government.

I had no idea until I was an adult and I arrived here that everything I read was basically, not right. It’s not really how it works here. To show how us how it does work, Lewis took us to a new kind of Washington Monument devoted to influence-peddling. At 101 Constitution Avenue where Pennsylvania avenue ends and congress begins sits a gleaming, new ten-story building. It is home to some of the busiest paid-persuaders, among them mining, insurance and tobacco interests. On the ground floor is an elegant restaurant, Charlie Palmer, where lobbyists and lawmakers meet over 80-dollar steaks.

101 Constitution has been called K-street in a box. If folks want to see what really goes on in Washington, they should skip the capitol and come over here to this building . . .

But not everyone has a lobbyist. Here’s where it breaks down. What about the groups that don’t have any lobbying at all? What about the 60-80 million who are under-insured or uninsured with healthcare? What about the one in six children living in poverty? Who do they talk to? They don’t have a lobbyist. And so, what happens is you have thousands and I do mean thousands of lobbyists on one side imparting this very important information, that possibly might not be entirely objective information and you have no one on the other side saying ” well wait a minute. Are you sure? Did you think about this?” without a lobbyist, it is hard to develop relationships with lawmakers.

And there is no better way of developing a relationship, says Lewis, than by whisking a member of congress or their staff away from Washington for so-called ” educational” or ” investigative” trips. The last five years members of congress or their staff have taken 23,000 trips around the world . . .

[Note: Charles Lewis is the founder of the Center for Public Integrity.]

http://www.hd.net/transcript.html?air_master_id=A4289

At one point, they actually listed the amounts which the various senators/reps had received. The amounts were into the millions, not to mention the job offers, and other undocumented bribes. Then he focused on the issue of “payday lending” institutions (post 962) and how they had also bribed members of congress to look the other way.

It may not have been a specific sinister reason for the phrase used in this particular story, but the point is still very important: that the more powerful congress members, those in prime committee chairs, are the ones that have been able to get elected because they can raise a lot of money. They raise money to get elected, and keep getting money because of what they do for the people that gave them money. No big surprise that GWB’s largest single contributor for one of his campaigns was MBNA, and now MBNA doesn’t get monitored/regulated by the administration. More later from me on that, I’m writing a post on it.

Usually, these positions are based on seniority. One of the reasons many states keep voting in old fart incumbents is that those guys have put in the time to be on the purse-string committees.

Not the best system in the world, but not the sinister evidence you assert, IMHO.