Crossposted from No Quarter with permission
Just got back from lunch at a Capitol Hill watering hole–the 116 Club. Private place that caters to lobbyists and Senators. I spent most of lunch looking at Tom Daschle’s wife, Linda, who was sitting at a near by table. She’s an attractive lady. I was with a lobbyist who is well plugged in with Democrats and Republicans. So he asked me, “Do you know the nickname the lobbyists have for the stimulus bill?”
“No, what is it,” I replied.
“FYGK, which means we’re going to f&#k your grand kids.”
The irony of the stimulus bill is that it is bringing business to lobbyists who are being asked to paw thru the garbage and figure out how to get folks money. When you put this news with the fact the current spending bill is going thru ladened with earmarks you might be a bit leery of Obama’s promise to bring a new day to Washington.
A senior official for a very prominent Democrat stopped by our table and gave my friend an update on the spending bill. He noted that many Republicans will back the bill because they have hefty earmarks in it as well.
Let’s face it–we have a culture of political corruption in Washington that is continuing unabated and Obama is catering to it despite grandiose promises to the contrary.
One other thing is happening–very few lobbyists are willing to take spots in the Obama administration. Like it or not, many of these lobbyists are the genuine experts on the issues they cover. So who is Obama tapping to take the jobs lobbyists might have been given in the past? Hill staffers. Earnest thirty year olds who have spent most of the post-college careers acting as butt boys and girls for various senators and representatives. They may know the Hill but they know very little about the America outside the beltway. Great!! Just what we need. Youthful exuberance tempered by ignorance.
There is an irony here. The lack of experience by these people will ultimately hurt the Obama presidency. His seemingly noble efforts to exclude lobbyists to improve government and reduce corruption actually is having the opposite effect. Unreal.
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as another poster on another thread asked, what happens when the administration implodes? there is nothing worse than a young energetic ignorant busybody running around making matters worse. if the rest of the country did things the way they do on the beltway the nation would have been lost along time ago. obama is so busy trying to turn this into a socialist nation that he is ignoring the fact that the nation doesn’t want to got that direction. how much of the stimulus money is going to sit there because they have no idea how to get it out, not that it really needs to get out in the way they are intending. i really believe we need an overhaul of our system.
If you figure the average Hill staffer started working on the Hill at age 22 or 23, that’s 7-8 years of experience if they are 30 yrs old. And most lobbyists are former Hill staffers, and are very Beltway-centric, are they not?
Except for PAS appointees, most people that work in Administrations end up being someone’s butt-boy or butt-girl anyway, right?
As someone said, it would be very easy to get lobbyists out of government – get government out of business.
As long as government is legislating business, business has a right to petition the government.
@Suek
How do you get Government out of business?
And moreover why would you want to?
Look at the current Credit Crunch mess…Clinton with Republican help relaxed the regulation on housing and banking. First by allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could spend $97.50 buying loans as opposed to the $90 as before for every $100. Then by having the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act which was designed to control speculation.
I see government as being a referee ensuring that the rules are balanced for those participating in our societies. If we remove government and just hope everyone plays fairly and it will all work out – then that results in anarchy.