When I tell people who live outside of Washington, DC that I am a lobbyist, I get a mixture of reactions ranging from deep respect to choleric anger and everything in between. Regardless of the reaction, I am always struck by how little the public understands about the role of lobbying and the lobbyist in creating public policy.
Most people think that there is something mysterious, magical, and secret about lobbying as if the lobbyist is a form of Harry Potter and the Congress a grown-up Hogwarts. The most misunderstood part of the process is the most basic and least mysterious — the fact that lawmakers lack information and without lobbyists, lawmakers do not have the information they need to make good public policy decisions.
The public assumes, particularly in the age of the Internet, that a Member of Congress need only push a button and all the relevant information is revealed. This is a false assumption. The only information lawmakers have is information that is provided by people who will be affected by a public policy decision. Every public policy decision creates intended and unintended consequences, winners and losers. It is the responsibility of the people whose lives and/or livelihood will be affected to tell the Congress about those consequences, so that public policy is well-informed.
Lobbyists are professional information-gatherers and professional information-communicators and, without the data they provide, the Congress literally could not conduct the nation’s business. Lobbyists spend most of their time providing data and information to people on Capitol Hill who lack subject-matter expertise and doing it in a way that will cut through the competing “noise” of the other thousands of lobbyists whose issues have equal merit. It is very hard, important work and there is nothing mysterious about it!
